Today’s World of Speed Dating

This happened over the routine weekend conversation with one of my school friend. After a few decent minutes of talking, the conversation took a serious turn. (With due respect and privacy of my friendship the topic of discussion shall be kept under wraps). I had a jaw dropping moment and decide to quit the conversation politely. 

It brought me to think: 

1) Are we living in a generation of speed dating? 

2) Isn't there a true meaning for 'love'? 

3) Why are all friendships misunderstood to be the stepping-stones for affairs? 

4) Are we so hormonally imbalanced that each one is a walking sex object? 

5) Can’t there ever be true friendship between a girl and a boy?   

In today's world there is so much of freedom for people, bigoted by globalization. We are slowly adopting and moving towards westernization. The transformation in Indian culture started drilling fast with the onset of IT revolution in the 90s.  Employees who travelled abroad adopted the culture in bits and pieces. The inflow of knowledge in terms of movies, technology, etc are uncontrollable. Our people learn a lot from movies, as it  is the surrogate life they live in. And with globalization, also there were increased stress levels among the people due to stringent work schedules and as a consequence relations take a toll. And the easy way to find solace is being with opposite sex or  getting addicted to alcohol or smoking. This instability forces people to meet the opposite sex to ease  their pressures/tensions. They can meet people of same sex, but as opposites attract, they connect emotionally well. 

I would say sex is the driving force. The only way a person vents his energy is by anger or sex. Many of us find reasons to be angry or upset on some issue or the other.  If not explicit forces, we create situations to be angry. Sex is an alternative to ease off as it maximizes pleasure. Utilitarian way. 

Sex is definitely the most driving force in today’s way of surviving a relationship. Sex weakens the bond between the two involved. How? Have the marriages of our parents' weakened over the years? If anything they've strengthened over the years that they have lived together. Of course they have their points of differences and fights, but it has never let them to let go off their partner. The earlier generation people though maximized their happiness in order to minimize pain of family and society they were bonded. Even their expectations were low.

In the current situation once sex is over, the mind becomes happy and ultimately with time the partner becomes an object as the person has attained maximum pleasure. It is like buying a new phone, once you are satisfied, you do not like it and want a new model.  And if you ask me why people do such things? That is because they are emotionally unstable and the earlier culture has been infringed. Also it is a problem of surplus. Wasn’t this problem of surplus there in earlier days? Yes indeed it was, but back then, we were bonded by culture and were better individuals, morally.

Are we living in a generation of speed dating? This is the day of ‘free world’. We want to end a relation as quickly as possible to form a new one. We do that, because we have become more individualistic and financially independent. We want to get what we want; and we do!

For example: if a couple is in a relationship and things don’t work out, instead of finding the root cause of the problem they call it quits and call it off. This is now the increasingly visible ‘new culture’. Imagine earlier, during an arranged marriage if the girl had affairs prior to marriage, the guy would straight away reject her. But that option was not given to girl. And also, if a girl had any affair with any guy, she would marry ONLY him if not commit suicide. Very few ended up choosing another guy.  With the changing times, this fact is also seen changing. Now a days, neither the guy nor the girl worry about the past. Whatever happened in the past is done and a new life together MUST start. That is the idea. Surprisingly parents also support this probably as they want to support their children despite the mistakes.

What is love for us (us meaning the current generation)?  Nice bike rides, gifts, movies, sex, and then bye bye??! How many couples have married their 1st love? More importantly it is related to emotions, and we do not think it through before giving the commitment. If we say we thought well, before falling in love, and still it did not work out, it means we did not think well.

Consciously or unconsciously our brain works towards indulging our self in opposite sex. Opposite poles have to attract, come what may! Peoples thought process has changed, and hence when they enter into a bond of friendship they know it could/will turn into an affair or may be friends with benefits. The movie strengthens the idea too. Why do people consider friendship as an affair is mostly because of our culture that never encouraged friendships with opposite sex in the earlier days. This shows that the world has changed while the saying  remained true! Frankly speaking a girl and guy will make good friends, as sometimes friends of the same gender cannot convey their feelings as it is. There is a veil always. But with opposite sex there is no problem as such. The energy just flows.

We are morally corrupt- that’s the whole problem here! People need counselling. But what is the measure for this problem? Work culture, friends, lifestyle…. are just a few factors that can be changed to change our mindsets. We are what your friends are, right? We get influenced by our surroundings might not by 100% but at least to about 10%.

Finally, it is a combination of one or many of globalization, easy access to sex, craziness, stupidity, hormonal imbalance, blindly trusting people, trying to explore new things.