Connecting: Why Facebook Isn't Enough

I have been thinking a lot about connections lately because I often feel like mine are minimal.

My husband and I are experiencing a rough time right now in that he currently has to work a few hours away several days and nights of the week.  It is hard on him and me and our marriage. In a time when we should be blissfully swimming in our newlywed situation, we go several days and nights without seeing each other, and depending on his work schedule, we may not get to speak more than just a few words a day.  My primary means of showing and receiving love is through quality time spent with a person, and I find myself lonely when we are apart. In a time when our connection as spouses should be incredibly strong, Matt and I are having to put in extra effort to maintain that connection.

As Matt said to me this morning before he left again for San Antonio, it really sucks that this stint of being away from each other fell so early in our marriage.  But it also is providing extra income for us while we are preparing for a move and helping Matt to further his career.  Neither of those make it suck any less.

I have been thinking about the connections I have with other people a good bit, also.  I am a millennial; my generation thrives on instant gratification.  We use credit cards and loans to procure things that we have to have the instant we decide we have to have them.  We expect relationships to be sexual the instant that we form them because the idea of waiting for something as special as making love is just preposterous and unnecessary.  We have surgeries to change our bodies quickly instead of working for that change.  We walk into the workforce with a college diploma expecting to make six figures a year fresh from graduation.  We expect new cars on our sixteenth birthdays, 'I love you's after the first date, and dream homes to return to at the end of our honeymoons.  We do not like to wait, and we have created a world in which we often do not have to.

But many things require waiting.  They require patience and nurturing.  They require time.

If you are also a product of the eighties or nineties, then you can probably recall the grating sound of a modem attempting to connect to the Internet, all the beeps and whirring and scratches that you endured just to hear a voice declare that you had mail.  You know that sometimes (a good bit of the time), it would not connect and you would have to try again later.  Now, how frustrated do I get when Matt and I are driving through east Texas and my Facebooking or pinning is interrupted by a message at the top of my phone's screen that reads 'No internet connection'?  I have the ability to surf the web on my cell phone (that doesn't have to be connected to any sort of phone line or electrical outlet to work), and I get frustrated that the hours I spend pinning useless crap that I really don't need get interrupted on rare occasion by a lack of connection for ten minutes.

Talk about the need for instant gratification.

I read once that some scientists were theorizing that the amount of time one spends on social networks has an opposite affect on the ability one has to form real connections with people away from the screen.  I understand that my generation has a desire to use social media.  We are a generation raised on and responsible for the development of social technology.  We used live journal, Xanga, MySpace, open diary, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snap Chat, Linked In, Vine, and a plethora of others.  We see all of these products as an opportunity to connect with people, to shrink our world down to the size of a smart phone's screen.  We can Face Time or Skype with our parents out of state or country.  We can see live footage of the streets surrounding the Eiffel Tower with Google Maps.  Facebook allows us to post our opinions and then get into flame wars about them.  Twitter allows us to evangelize by retweeting the Pope!  Everyone in the world can know that I like to prepare colorful paleo dishes if I post them on Instagram.  There is a panda cam that allows me the joy of watching pandas play!  We are instantly satisfied that we have communicated with society and our egos have been sufficiently stroked because people 'liked' our statuses.

I have, literally, hundreds of friends on Facebook.  I know people who have over a thousand.  And of those hundreds of friends, none of which are people I work with, I have had meaningful verbal conversations with four of them in the past week.  Four.  I had meaningful conversations with four or the hundreds of people I claim to socially connect with several times a day.  I understand our need to use social media.  It is simple and instantly gratifying.  I we feel down, it takes only a few seconds to find someone who has a more depressing life.  If we feel lonely, Facebook messenger is right there!  But how long does that social high last?

Matt and I are making an effort to be less connected with the world and more connected with each other when we are actually able to see each other.  It is my goal for us to go through an entire meal without checking our phones, eventually for us to just be able to lie in bed without wanting to stare into a screen. It is so easy to feel close to someone just by being near them, so we assume that being glued to our phones or the iPad isn't diminishing our connection.  But how much do we miss by having a screen in front of our eyes.

How many parents miss important first steps or words because they're too busy trying to get to the camera function of their phones so they can post a video of it on Instagram?  How often do we fail to give someone a hug on his or her birthday and justify it by wishing them a happy birthday via Facebook wall message?  How often do we forget to be thankful for all we have because we pinned too many things we still want? When is the last time you went to the gym and didn't post a status about it.  Sometimes we get so carried away trying to post our awesome lives on social media that we forget to live them.

Of the hundreds of Facebook friends I have, there are many I don't even like.  I assume I don't like them because of things they post, because they're either too liberal (unquestioned abortions and unregulated government assistance and 'Christians are unintelligent' types) or too conservative (zero gun control, supporters of the death penalty, and 'Obama is the anti-Christ' types).  But the percentage of the ones I don't like who I haven't actually had a conversation with is staggering.  I am socially connected with them, but I have never made an actual connection them.

And that is our problem.

The smaller our world gets, thanks to technology and social media, the larger our hatred gets.  We are so quick to write off people without getting to know them, simply because they 'liked' something posted by a page we don't agree with or they use profanity in their posts.  Or simply because they post selfies.  We have access to thousands of cultures and perspectives because of the Internet, and we consider ourselves connected to those cultures and perspectives because we have social network friends who practice different religions or do illegal drugs or happen to be attracted to the same gender, the opposite gender, or no gender.  But how often do we connect with those other cultures in reality?  Liking a photo or even a thought-out comment doesn't connect us to those people.

We must talk to our friends about what makes us different or, more importantly, what makes us the same.  We must look past their opposing views on gay marriage, abortion, or Saints football to find that small seed of commonality.  That seed, given time and nourishment, can bloom into a real human connection.

Human connection, real, no-screens-involved connection, is vital for our survival.  If we cannot connect, we cannot form empathy.  And a world without empathy for others is a world destined for hatred and destruction.

Marrying Young

I suppose it's not typical to dedicate one's first blog post to someone else.  But I thought there weren't many better ways to begin a blog about married life (and all it's adventures) than by showcasing an inspiring married couple.

My husband, Matt, and I have only been married for (almost) five weeks.  We're hardly experts on the topic.  (Although, really, who is ever an expert on something that changes so much?)  But Matt and I have been blessed with many inspiring married couples as examples of fully living the sacrament.  None of those couples are prefect, and none of the couples are without their own struggles and tribulations.  But they all are strong.

This past weekend, I made the seven hour drive from Austin back to Louisiana (by myself, as Matt was working in San Antonio) to celebrate my paternal grandparents' fiftieth anniversary.  The fiftieth anniversary is considered the golden anniversary, and that's too fitting, I think.  Chapter two in the book of Sirach says, "For in fire, gold is tested, and the chosen in the crucible of humiliation."  Gold is such a worthy symbol of fifty years of marriage, because in fifty years of marriage, the love and commitment of that couple has gone through fire many times.  Just as the strength of gold is tested in the heat of fire, marriages and their participants are tested many times in the crucible of humiliation, in the chore of humbling oneself to serve one's spouse.  For a marriage to thrive for fifty years, it must be strong.

My grandparents married young.  They were in their early twenties, wide-eyed and ridiculously in love.  Their wedding pictures are just adorable.  My grandfather, as skinny and as tall as a bean pole with big goofy glasses and wearing the same hairstyle he wears fifty years later (granted, it was a bit thicker and darker then), and my grandmother, elegant, poised, practically floating in a gorgeous hand-beaded gown, were surrounded by and emulating the love of their families.  Not long after their wedding, they began their family, which would eventually consist of three sons, two daughters-in-law, six grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.

(Aren't my grandparents and their three sons just precious?  That's my father on the end, by the way, the only one with a full head of hair.)

Marrying young was quite common for my grandparents' generation, so common that marrying in one's early twenties wasn't necessarily considered marrying young.  But times have changed.  For my generation, society as a whole has shifted it's views on marriage.  Instead of being the beginning of a great adventure, so many of my generation view marriage as an end to adventure, the beginning of ennui.  My generation tends to see marriage as the end of fun, and therefor, we are encouraged not to marry young, to put it off until our thirties or later (or to not get married at all) to ensure that we have all the fun we want before tying the knot.

Recently, Facebook has popularized a list of twenty three things to do instead of getting engaged before the age of twenty three.  The post circulated among young women, many of whom were probably lonely, secretly yearning to put their Pinterest wedding boards to use, and unsure and trying to rationalize why exactly they weren't engaged when so many of their friends were.  I had been married for a grand total of two weeks when I read the blog, the entire thing from condescending beginning to ridiculous ending.  I would like to say that the blog had some redeeming qualities, and the list did have some nice ideas, but I can't give it much more credit, because the entire list features only two things that cannot be done after marriage (and even those can be done with a spouse, though your morals will be seriously questioned).  I promise you that I still binge-watch 'Girls' and spoon Nutella strait from the jar to my mouth.  And the entire rant surrounding the ridiculous list suggested that the author, Vanessa Elizabeth, had a positively unrealistic idea of a healthy marriage.

You see, I got engaged at the age of twenty three.  Matt and I dated for about a year before we were engaged, and before we dated, he was my best friend of two years.  We got married one year to the day after he proposed.  I was twenty four and a half when we got married; he was four months shy of thirty.  So I guess we do not necessarily completely qualify as marrying young or being engaged before the age of twenty three.  And I did more thrilling, life-fulfilling things during my serious relationship and engagement than I did in the twenty two years before.  While Matt and I dated and were engaged, I bought my first new car, got my first teaching job, moved to Austin, Texas (yeehaw!), completed several DIY projects (a few from Pinterest), adopted a cat, and honestly forgot about the tattoo I got a few years ago.  I did more things on Vanessa's list after I was dating or engaged to my now-husband than before!  Because I was and am part of a healthy relationship with a man who supports my growth as a person and encourages me to do fulfilling things.

So, in honor of Vanessa's list, I've compiled my own list of thirteen things to do when you get engaged at twenty three, followed by a list of ten reasons why marrying young is awesome:

13 Things to Do When You Get Engaged at 23

1. Complete some kind of pre-marriage counseling or preparation, even if it's just in the form of reading a book about the sacrament.  You'll learn more about yourself and your spouse, and hopefully you'll talk about the sticky topics that tend to be avoided during the joyous engagement.  (Can you say 'student loans'?)

2.  Take a trip.  A day trip to a different city, a weekend getaway, or a full-blown vacation.  Take some kind of trip, just you and your fiance, and celebrate your engagement in a special way that you'll never forget.  Matt and I went to the Great Smokey Mountains and Dollywood.  It was gorgeous and refreshing.

3.  Find at least one television show you and your fiance have in common.  Matt and I don't generally agree on much in the way of television.  But we both LOVE 'Downton Abbey' and 'Once Upon a Time,' and we have a standing date to watch new episodes together.

4.  Clean out your closets together, both literally and figuratively.  You're going to have to merge your lives together.  You might as well get rid of all the clutter you don't need anymore.

5.  Adopt a pet (or a plant) together.  Learn to split responsibilities and nurture something together.

6.  Teach each other something.  Matt tried to teach me to drive a standard.  I could do it if I absolutely had to, but I leave that up to him and appreciate him all the more for it.  And after a stressful afternoon attempting to learn, we went on a fun date (during which he drove) to take my mind off of it.

7.  Find a couple you'd like to emulate in certain ways.  Become friends with a couple who embody important aspects of married life.  Find a couple who models the kind of marriage you would like to have and take that couple's advice.

8.  Massage each other's feet.  Seriously, you build a log of trust in someone when you're letting them rub your feet.

9.  Go on regular dates.  Engagement and marriage doesn't mean that you stop wooing and attempting to impress your significant other.  Even after you're living together, get ready separately and go out for some fun.

10.  Learn to cook your honey's favorite meal.  If Mr. Wonderful's favorite meal is his mother's meatloaf, spend an afternoon learning her recipe.  (Also a great opportunity to bond with your mother-in-law.)  Or if he's like Matt, whose favorite food is a hot dog, find the best hot dog place in town.

11.  Write love letters to each other to be read on your wedding day.  Half an hour before our ceremony started, Matt and I stood on opposite sides of a door and read letters the other had written for us.  I reread that letter several times the minutes leading up to me walking down the aisle, and his very special words will probably always been inscribed in my brain.

12.  Plan your wedding with your future spouse's input.  Bring your Pinterest wedding board to the table, but be open to his opinion; it is his wedding, too!  And you might discover that mixing his style with yours introduces you to an entirely new style.  For Matt and me, we discovered art deco, which became the underlying theme of our wedding!

13.  Plan your dream home.  If you're engaged at twenty three, as newlyweds, you're probably going to living in a less-than-stellar apartment or rental house.  It probably won't be what you imagined your first house to be like, but it will be yours to turn into the perfect home for you and your new spouse.  But while you're turning that little one bedroom on the second floor with no elevator into your cozy newlywed nest, you can dream and plan you ideal family home together!  It gives you something to look forward to and an incentive to save money (perhaps by cooking more instead of eating out five days a week?).

10 Reasons Why Marrying Young is Awesome!

1.  You get to grow up together.  When you marry as an older adult, both parties are pretty stuck in their ways.  When you get married young, you get to grow up and into real adulthood together.  You're more flexible because you're probably still trying to figure out how to be a grownup.  You're less likely to be dedicated to certain ways of folding towels or managing money, and decisions are up for discussion.  In stead of one spouse resigning to doing something they other spouse's way, y'all can find a way that works for both of you.

2.  You feel less pressure to immediately begin your family.  Marrying young means that you have many, many fertile years ahead of you to plan and create your family.  I know that marrying as a older person doesn't mean that one has to begin having children immediately, but it is true that a woman's fertility decreases as she ages and there is definitely more pressure to quickly begin a family when one marries later in life.

3.  Upgrades feel like Christmas day.  There's a good chance that if you're marrying young, you don't have a bunch of really awesome stuff.  You're probably living on and with furniture from college or hand-me-downs from family and friends.  It is probably not new, and if it is, it was probably pretty cheap.  So when you make a purchase of a new piece of furniture or are given something nicer than what you currently have, it feels like a major success.  (I'm still waiting on this, as Matt and I have only purchased two pieces of furniture thus far, a bookshelf and kitchen cart from IKEA.  One day, though, we'll have a big beautiful headboard!)

4.  You get to accomplish things together.  Whether it's putting together your giant IKEA bookshelf or graduating from college or landing your first big job, when you marry young, you have someone who is always there when you do something great, and you have more great things to celebrate in a longer marriage! 

5.  You're out of the dating scene.  It's hard enough to make friends after college (no built-in acquaintances or pre-planned social interactions), but dating is even tougher.  When you marry young, you loose the pressure of finding a date to a friend's wedding (you'll go to a lot of weddings) or figuring out how long you have to be dating someone before you bring them home to meet your parents.  (One day I'll post about the hilarious way Matt first met my mother.)

6.  You're used to being broke.  When you marry young, you're probably accustomed to pinching pennies and not having enough money to order anything not on the dollar menu.  So you probably won't expect to have a lot of extra income as newlyweds trying to pay rent and car insurance and grocery bills.  

7.  Having a baby may be an easier transition.  It won't be easy, by any means, but it may be a little less crazy when you're used to the craziness of young married life, going to school or working crazy hours or not getting enough sleep or having no money for fun things.  When my best friend and her husband had their son, her husband was in school and working two jobs, and they lived off of only his income.  But they're wonderful parents who seemed to transition into parenthood seamlessly.  (I know it wasn't effortless, but they made it look great!)

8.  You really learn to depend on each other.  Sure, you'll both have your own friends and family who will support you, but the younger you get married, the more years you have for those friendships to dwindle.  If you get married while you're still in college, there's a good chance that after graduation, those college friendships won't be so prominent in your life for one reason or another.  But your spouse will be a constant, and during your marriage, you'll see many friends go in and out of your lives.  You have an entire life to form and maintain the best friendship you'll ever have.

9.  You get to experience more anniversaries together.  My grandparents celebrated their fiftieth anniversary, and they're both only in their early to mid seventies.  When you marry young, you're giving yourself more opportunity to reach those milestone anniversaries.  

10.  You know the world's against you.  When you marry young, you know that the statistics say that a huge portion of young marriages don't last, and you're more hell-bent than ever to make it work.  You're probably still a stubborn teenager or young adult, and you don't want the world telling you what to do or what will happen to you.  So you'll be more inclined to ensure that your marriage is not part of the majority that fail.

So you see, marrying young isn't a life prison sentence.  It's not a requirement that you transition from fun young adult to boring married person.  No where in your vows will it say that you have to stop going out on the town or must immediately begin a family (although, you can if you want.  It is YOUR marriage, after all!)  Being married only doubles your fun and joy because you're able to share those good times with someone.  And it divides your sorrow, because you've got someone to help you carry the burden of hard times.  Getting married means stating that you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, and when you marry young, you have more of the rest of your life ahead of you!