Love at Your Fingertips 

While channel surfing one night, Lana chanced upon a popular TV program that allows viewers to chat with each other via text messages sent through mobile phones. One such message on the chat room came from a guy looking for female textmates. “I was extremely bored at that time,” Lana says, “so I decided to text him using the number posted on the screen. He replied and he said that he was glad I responded to his ‘call’.”

Lana is just one of the millions of Filipino youth facilitating relationships through the use of text messaging. Known locally as “texting,” this service costs considerably less in the Philippines than placing a phone call, making it extremely popular here. As more people like Lana explore text messaging as a means of initiating contact with potential partners, texting technology has evolved beyond just facilitating communication between family and friends. In this country tagged as the “texting capital of the world,” it can be inferred that a large portion of text messages sent through the network are within the context of initiating or maintaining a romantic relationship.

As Philippine culture embraces texting technology, the traditional ways of pursuing romantic relationships have been shaken up. In her book Love in the Time of Ina Morata, Amaryllis Torres explains that in the Philippines, romance is still seen as leading to marriage, a prerequisite before the relationship is consummated for procreation. Pagliligawan, or courtship, initiates this process. It is a custom of affection usually performed by a heterosexual pair. In this tradition the man makes the first move and is "employed" under the supervision of his girlfriend's parents and even her entire family. Though urbanization has gradually loosened this control of the family, autonomous practices such as dating are still initiated through some form of courtship.

Gendered relationships, the pursuer and the pursued

Traditional expectations place the woman as the passive recipient of attention in the courtship process, rather than as the one who actively seeks a mate. But in the era of mobile-mediated communication, a shift in gender roles has taken place, as typified by Lana’s active participation in chat TV. For Jackie, boredom led her to come up with random digits and experiment with looking for a textmate. “I came up with a cell phone number, one that I’ve never heard of. So, I sent a message to that number. I just asked the receiver of the owner of that number if he wanted to be textmates with me. The person replied,” Jackie says.

According to Torres, the “Maria Clara syndrome characterized by subterfuge and the repression of feelings of physical attraction for a man, which was the social prescription in nineteenth century Philippines,” is still considered by traditional parents to be appropriate courtship behavior. However, today's modern women use texting technology to empower themselves to be more active in seeking their romantic partners. They clearly symbolize a new era, where “repressive” customs are abandoned.

Because of the anonymity provided by virtual chat rooms, gay men like Arbee have also taken advantage of this environment in searching for a potential romantic partner. Arbee relates, “I was texting a different guy then thru chat TV. That guy forwarded my number instead to this guy Mike, who started exchanging SMS [short message service] with me. Mike is my boyfriend now since then.” Developing relationships through texting maintains discreetness and avoids the stigma involved in pursuing these relations in a more social setting.

Parents, subversion, and integration

Another practice that defines courtship in the Philippines involves the familial influence on the choice of potential mates for the youth. Because of the custom of reverence for the family and deference to the elderly, oftentimes parents influence, if not dictate, their children’s choice of romantic partners. Through texting, however, the youth have found a way of evading parental authority. Texting allows for depth in the courtship stage, an efficient way to exchange a variety of important, intimate, and personal topics and feelings. “The mobile phone screen is able to create a private space that even if you are far from each other physically, the virtual space created by that technology is apparent,” Arnel explains. “No one can hear you say those things or no one else can read them, assuming that it is not allowed to be read or seen by others.”

Creating codes and special languages complements the privacy of texting technology. RJ proposed one scenario: “When we started dating, sometimes I tell her that I want to talk to her on the phone, and she tells me she can’t because she’s RBM, right beside mom.” Interestingly, some people take another step to guard their privacy by meticulously coding each other’s names and messages. “We use numeric codes just to be sure that we’re talking to the right person. Those numbers are usually placed in the beginning or the end of the message,” Dina explains.

Traditionally, the male must gain the favor of his girlfriend's parents during courtship, by panunuyo, or "winning over the family". In this practice, a young woman’s parents gauge the seriousness of the suitor's intention by the quality of his efforts in helping out around their house, such as working in the fields. Although this is no longer widely practiced in contemporary society, a suitor is still expected to visit his girlfriend at her home and go out of his way to please her family.

Texting has altered this process. When youth engage in nonstop texting, families start to notice a change in their behavior. “People become curious. They want to know the person I text with every minute of every day. I guess people can tell when a person’s in love, even when it has only developed through texting,” Clara relates. Moreover, the couple interacts with each other's family and friends through texting without necessarily having the opportunity to meet in person. Pauline says her boyfriend has never actually met her family but he has become a “virtual acquaintance” to her mother and sister. She says, “My older sister used to get texts from him before to ask where I am, and my mom stole his number from my phone ‘just in case’.”

Sustaining the connection

Texting answers the need for a sustained connection necessary to increase and maintain intimacy, but it has also made couples more dependent on each other. “It became a habit,” Emmy explains. Partners text each other as often as they can and have a compulsion to keep the communication constantly moving. One respondent attributed this to the “unwritten rule of texting.” Clara elaborates, “Once a person has texted you, you have to reply. If you don’t reply, the person will automatically think you ignored him or her on purpose. So you have to reply no matter what, even when you really have nothing to say.”

Since most of the couples initiating a romantic relationship do not have the luxury to meet up in person or talk over the phone regularly, the frequency of texting becomes a distinct indication of their seriousness about the relationship. “To commit is to be there for the person, 24/7. Texting helps in achieving that despite of the barriers in time and distance,” Von explains.

Texting also gives people a way to comfortably relay important and intimate thoughts. Some confess that they exchange sexual messages with their partners. But mostly, the text exchanges consist of romantic messages expressing feelings that many find difficult to say in person. “For example, through text we can say ‘I love you’ to each other. Aside from that, I could tell her about my problems that I could not say face to face,” Richard shares.

Overcoming obstacles

Texting’s convenient nature links partners who may not otherwise form a relationship because of geographic separation. Richard uses texting to contact his partner “because we are far from each other, especially if she goes home to the province. Texting is the fastest, cheapest, and convenient way for us to communicate.” Though there are other avenues to communicate with their partners, such as face-to-face encounters, voice phone calls, email, chatting, and even snail mail, texting still remains a preferred mode of communication. Jake explains that “sometimes phone conversations are too taxing and you can’t exactly chat on the phone while working. Texting is easy to do, and can be done even during meetings.”

Texting technology is also an effective and popular tool during courtship because it offers opportunities for free exchange with fewer chances of embarrassment. RJ feels comfortable sharing intimate messages via texting because he has less fear of outright rejection. “In a face-to-face conversation, you would tend to hold back some feelings or thoughts. Personally, I consider anonymity as a very important element in the development of our relationship. I am not really the aggressive, frank type of guy, so I tend to hold back in telling her intimate things face to face,” he explains.

Redefining courtship in a modern society

In his essay entitled “Heidegger, Habermas and the Mobile Phone,” George Myerson presents a philosophical view that mobile communication replaces the need to live in a world experienced and interpreted by our own identities and meanings. This suggests that because present society alters the more traditional experience of courtship through the appropriation of mobile technology, it foregoes the opportunities for experienced, deeper intimacy. Because of new technologies, the dynamics of relationships are now reduced into managing these networks at an accelerated pace, without having real closeness.

In a study of mobiles and the Internet as technologies of mediation, 50% of the young respondents (aged 14-23) used the cell phone, Internet chatting, and social networking websites such as Friendster.com to expand their circle of relationships. In the modern age, initiating romance with potential partners need not be done only through face-to-face contact. This seems particularly true in the Philippines. There are 35 million cell phones compared to 4 million subscribed landlines, 20 million TV sets, and an only 8% Internet penetration rate (as Internet connection is also dependent on landlines), indicating that mobile communication is both accessible and economical. Texting’s mobile, private, and autonomous form of communication also makes it ideal for creating romantic relationships.

Although texting may cause uncertainty and misunderstanding between exchanging partners due to the reduction in interpersonal cues, namely visual and aural signals, a number of people express optimism about texting technology’s capacity to bridge the gap between expressing real and virtual emotions. Some claim smiley faces and sad faces made using punctuation marks add warmth and depth to text messages. As new technologies enable people to use their mobile phones for chatting, mobile Internet, and image and audio file creation, it may be possible that the experience of the real is supplemented, and in some cases even supplanted, by the virtual.

The fact that romantic relationships formed through courtship-texting can develop to a higher level of intimacy goes to show that this new pattern in relationships is an existing and expanding reality. Use of texting technology during courtship, and use of texting as an extension of their selves, are changing and redefining traditional expressions of love. New customs are developing to adjust to the growing complexities of the information age. The emancipatory contributions of texting technology to the mutuality and inclusiveness of gender, as well as to a more conscientious and autonomous way of choosing one’s love, are realized. The immediacy and frequency of contact do not necessarily diminish the relationship into a rushed and superficial intimacy; rather, it provides the opportunity for increased self-revelation, which is an indication of the desire for emotional connection and human closeness.

Names have been changed

Randy Solis is a Communication Arts Instructor at the Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. He has recently presented the full paper on SMS and courtship in the Philippines during the Mobile Media 2007 International Conference at the University of Sydney, Australia.