In my dating time, we would fight over whose turn it was to do the cooking or dishes. But these days, I see young couples supposedly in love fight over the last time someone was online, the angle of an Instagram selfie, or why a message was read (blue ticked!) but not replied to. I was recently sitting at a coffee shop and reading my book selected by our book club for this month when I happened to overhear the conversation of the couple next to me. It was something like this:
Girl: I sent you 4 texts last night after work, you did not reply to any of them, it was not even read, it’s like you just ignored (even though I could see you were on-off online on WhatsApp
Boy: I was just tired and didn’t check phone
Girl: I don’t believe you, are you fed up with me?
That’s when I stopped listening to them and switched my focus back to the book, the conversation was so cliche that it was painful to hear. Today’s love is not just an emotional ride, it’s survival of being monitored, tagged, tracked, and occasionally hacked.
In an age where you can video call your partner from the bathroom stall of a restaurant 10,000 miles away, you’d think relationships would be more intimate than ever. Spoiler alert: they’re not. In fact, some might argue that the more connected we are digitally, the more disconnected we’re becoming emotionally. I’m still old school and have never monitored my partner’s phone or asked him where he is every hour, but when I talk to other people, they feel it’s their right to monitor and find nothing wrong with this behaviour.
The Mystery of Blue Tick
WhatsApp messaging is the in-thing for people. What started as a simple way to say “I’m on my way” has become a psychological thriller. Enter: the blue tick. It’s the Morse code of modern love.
You see the ticks go blue.
You wait.
And wait.
Nothing.
By the 3-minute mark, your imagination is writing horror scripts. Are they ignoring you? Are they mad? Are they dead? Or worse—texting someone else? Meanwhile, your partner is just trying to find a charger in a crowded subway or is in a call with a client so couldn’t reply on time.
We’ve gone from waiting for love letters that took weeks to arrive, to melting down over a delayed emoji reply. To be honest, it’s just sad and pathetic.
Call Monitoring: Love, Now with Surveillance
There’s no trust like “Who were you talking to for 17 minutes and 43 seconds last night at 11:06 PM?” trust.
Modern phones provide us with a gift that we didn’t ask for: call duration logs. A simple missed call can now spiral into a full-blown relationship audit. And if you don’t call back within an hour? That’s not just a delay, that’s emotional neglect.
Let’s not forget FaceTime. Nothing says romance like someone demanding a “quick call” to prove you’re “just watching TV.” You go on a business trip leaving your partner behind, wait for the video call to give a tour of the hotel room to ensure there is no one hiding in the closet.
Location sharing: Great for safety, Terrible for relationships
Thanks to location tracking, couples now have the power to stalk each other with the intensity of a KGB agent. “Why were you near Jenny’s apartment?” “It’s a Starbucks, Karen.” “Sure it is.” (imagine eyeball rolling)
You are just leaving office, don’t forget to send location tracking so that your partner can track that you come straight home. I would prefer a normal call saying, “honey, I have left, should be home in 30 minutes”, just so that we can have piping hot dinner ready, not to track where the other person is. Today, people don’t get to enjoy the thrill of missing someone or the mystery of not knowing where they were. Now we’ve got live location sharing, which means your partner knows exactly when you leave work, stop for snacks, and spend 7 suspicious minutes in a parking lot (it was for a quick smoke before reaching home because your wife doesn’t like the smell of smoke in the house).
Social Media: The Highlight Reel That Kills Relationships
Instagram, Facebook, TikTok—today’s platforms are more than just fun—they’re romantic minefields. Heaven help the couple where one partner posts a story without tagging the other. Or worse, uploads a group photo with their ex “accidentally” cropped in. Internet is bombarded with speculation of celebrity couples if they post something cryptic or unfollow the partner or just post a selfie or forgot to hold hands on red carpet.
Don’t the dopamine bomb of seeing your significant other like someone else’s post at 2:37 AM. Cue jealousy, insecurity, and a frantic scroll through old comments for clues.
We’ve traded private moments for public performances—and somewhere in the likes, hearts, and retweets, genuine connection gets ghosted.
Anxiety, Panic, and the Modern Relationship
We are living in the world of instant noodles, where everything has to be done immediately and now, patience has become extinct. When replies aren’t immediate, assumptions fill the void. And let’s not even get started on the mental Olympics of “Why did they update their status but haven’t replied to my text?”
Modern love is now powered by Wi-Fi and sabotaged by notifications.
The result? Rising anxiety, chronic overthinking, and a new generation of lovers who don’t know how to be, only how to check. We’re over-informed, under-connected, and constantly one push notification away from an argument. Today’s relationships are fragile and can break in an instant over something as stupid as a comment on Instagram.
What we need is not to track every move of our partner, not to analyze every word or emoji sent in text, not to monitor the call logs and maybe once in a while write a hand-written note and wait for a love letter to pop in the postbox. Let real love thrive on trust and not on timestamps.
