How to Cultivate Love in the Age of Digital Dating

Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world.”― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

Love: a simple four-letter word that conjures up a multitude of emotions. For centuries, poets, philosophers, and artists have tried to interpret this most mysterious of human experiences. Yet its depths continue to enthrall and interest us.

Love has often found itself amidst a tempest of change; currently wrestling with the waves of technology, evolving social norms and innovations in healthcare, education by various companies. In today's digital age, love has taken on new dimensions. Where once we relied on chance meetings or the mysteries of chemistry to find our 'soulmate', now we have our pick of potential partners at our fingertips. Apps like Tinder allow us to sample relationships like a vast assortment, picking and choosing possible matches based on the slightest of preferences.

With geo-location technology, we need not restrict ourselves to partners in our immediate vicinity. We are connected to a global village, opening ourselves up to opportune cross-cultural relationships that previous generations could only dream of.

In many ways, technology has immeasurably enriched our romantic possibilities. But has it impacted the quality and essence of love itself? Many philosophers and thinkers worry that our technologically-mediated relationships can never replicate the profundity of love grounded in real human connection.

In his treatise 'In Praise of Love,' the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou sees love as an extraordinary event that upends the statuses quo. For Badiou, love is not reducible to romance, sexuality or pleasure. Rather, it is an earth-shattering encounter between two people that reveals their singularity.

But in the society today, we have played down love into a pursuit of perfection and fantasy. We seek the ideal soul-mate, the missing piece that will complete us, the sort of fairytale romance promoted by sit-coms and rom-coms.

However, love is precisely the opposite. It is not about finding someone who matches all your criteria. It is an unpredictable grace that falls upon two thoroughly ordinary people. When love happens, it acts as an awakening, revealing truths about the lovers that they never knew before. It shatters their old identities and opens them up to new vistas of possibility.

Above all, love is a transformative event because love makes the other emerge as subject, extracting him or her from the anonymous grayness of the undifferentiated. It invites us to push beyond selfish desires into concern for another. Love may begin from attraction but blossoms into mutual transformation.

This conception of love as rupture is far removed from today's model of online dating that delimits one's imagination about self and the world. Swiping right based on a checklist of preferences is unlikely to result in the sort of singular encounter referred earlier. When we treat dating like shopping, we commodify both love and the other person.

Due to commoditization of love, we no longer have the patience for love. We seek instant matches rather than giving relationships time to unfold. With unlimited options served up by algorithms, we are habituated to doubting and comparison shopping for partners.

Even capacity of the technology to bridge distances, connect unlikely partners and forge relationships across borders does not guarantee depth. While digital interfaces excel at highlighted surface commonalities, the patient work of navigating differences relies on regular face-to-face interaction.

Tech enables the illusion of endless choice and instant gratification. But neuroscience shows that true lasting bonds depend on vulnerability, co-created narratives and shared experiences over time. Tinder's promise of a soulmate in your area with a right swipe does not automatically translate into the hard work of building a life together.

Beyond dating apps, our reliance on digital communication itself risks impacting relational intimacy. Technology readily enables connection but often lacks the sensory richness of in-person relating. Ultimately, we risk valuing constant digital contact over the give-and-take of speaking face to face, reading deeply into pauses and silences.

The intrusion of smartphones into private moments chips away at intimacy. Being perpetually distracted during conversations and dates prevents wholehearted presence with the other. We lose the art of gazing into each other's eyes, touched by uniqueness rather than reducing them to yet another profile.

Even long-distance relationships, now made so much more feasible by technology, require recalibration. While visual and auditory connection apps counter physical absence, they also amplify it. The pixelated image heightens yearning for fuller embodiment. Digital relating becomes an endless scene without intervals for processing and anticipation.

This is not to say we must demonize technology. For marginalized groups and far flung partnerships, it provides a vital lifeline. What's needed is mindful integration of the digital – leveraging its upsides while mitigating limitations.

This balance is even more critical as AI encroaches into the realm of companionship and romantic bonding. Initiatives like GPT and AI chatbots in Snapchat aim to ease loneliness and isolation through simulated intimacy. Proponents argue digital care giving is scalable and low-cost.

However, cyber-intimacy also threatens the complex vulnerabilities of human relating. We need to identify the downsides of entrusting emotional needs solely to artificial beloveds, especially for children. Questions abound on whether AI can ever truly replicate the nuances of love emerging through embodied human connection.

Can virtual romance ever inspire personal growth? The rapid advances in engineering emotional AI do not erase a fundamental need for flesh-and-blood relationships. It is precisely the raw humanity of lovers - contradictions, idiosyncrasies and all - that makes space for transmutation into better versions of ourselves. Love is not apathy but an invitation to care deeply.

So perhaps the wise offer will be evaluating our digitally-mediated romances. Beyond just convenience and pleasure, we could reflect on how our relationships open us up to self-transcendence. We can consciously create spaces for vulnerability and meaning-making face-to-face, away from our devices.

Rather than endless comparison online, we could rediscover the grace in commitment. We have an opportunity to integrate technology's gifts while staying grounded in the visceral joy of being fully seen by another flawed mortal.

And if we find a love that shakes up our universe and turns it technicolor, one that whispers into the chambers of our solitary soul and draws forth hints of growth, then we just might get an inkling of what Badiou considers authentic love.