5 minute read

We live in the age of instant gratification. Commodities are purchased and delivered within hours with money we haven’t earned yet. This might be fine for the free market, but is it just as good for mental health?

Dating apps and websites sound like a good idea, as people get more social. They are able to meet their potential significant other or experience an exciting hookup outside of their everyday circles. But I think something went terribly wrong.

What is the problem with the instant gratification? It seems like a good idea, but it is not. Psychoanalysis has long ago proven that complete satisfaction is impossible and there is always something more out there waiting for you to achieve it. This is the whole essence of the desire, that hot feeling inside us making us tremble in anticipation of something big and exciting. It can be sexual or social, a new lover, a new car or a new job, it doesn’t really matter. For the mind the excitement is important because this is the way we move forward and quite frankly… feel alive.

Then the instant gratification took it all from us. It might sound like a conspiracy theory, but it isn’t. Nobody wanted to screw up your social and sexual life with cartoon villain laughter from his fancy top floor office. Not really, it just happened because we naturally prefer to have some desirable things now rather than wait for them to be achieved in the future. This is a simple pick, sex now or after 12 dates, new car on lease now or an old car after one year of saving money. Your conscious mind says “go for it now!!” but your unconscious mind is confused “where the hell do I invest all that desire??”

Craving for things from time to time makes us emotionally healthy.

If I have no desire at all it means that there is something wrong (anxiety, depression, etc.). For the healthy mind craving for different things is just part of life, but taking desirable things without any effort numbs this exciting feeling.

It is not strange that the statistics about the levels of satisfaction of the users of dating apps are quite pessimistic, and yet people keep using them with even greater vigor. What is going on?

Having a Tinder account and browsing for easy sex is just like getting a credit card for the first time, when you have no self-control over your spending. Yes you will have a lot of fun initially, but after a while, the excitement will go away and you will have much less or no fun at all. In the end you will have to pay the full price for those not so pleasant experiences including a huge interest.

At first, it might seem fun to hook up with people you don’t even know, but after a while it becomes so easy that the gratification you get out of it is not more than masturbating… or even less in many cases. So if porn is available 24 hours, just a click away, and you know you do it better than anyone else… why bother though??!!

And then again, the satisfaction decreases drastically due to another psychological phenomenon – the paradox of choice. In a nutshell, having unlimited options paradoxically makes you less satisfied with whoever you pick.

Now let me be clear, random hookups are OK, just like masturbation is, and you can enjoy them. If there is mutual consent there is nothing wrong with it. The problem is when you decide that you will always go for the easy mode and start preferring masturbation or the cheap quick hookup to the real thing. You see, the “real thing” is not exclusively monogamy, marriage, and children, but actually meeting a person, getting to know him/her having fun together, figuring out what turns you and the other person on and experiencing deep sexual and emotional connection. Depending on your priorities in life this can be casual, monogamous or polygamous, whatever floats your boat.

Actually, this meaningless “in and out situation” (I can’t even call it sex, because it is an offense to the whole idea of sex as full physical and psychological experience) can be very addictive. My opinion about it is the same as my opinion on drugs. I don’t say you should never try, but be conscious about the possible risks.

And last but not least, as it happens in the passionless marriages, where you are stuck having the same boring sex year after year with a person you don’t really know, this online sex browsing situation is just the same boring and meaningless “in and out” with random people. So, use social media intelligently and for its initial purpose – to become more social, get to know people, flirt, and have fun, because in no sane mind “wanna fuck?” is an appropriate way to present yourself to a stranger.

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