codex dating: for all the lovesick girls (and boys)

I want to dedicate a Thought to something important: dating in our modern age. First, I will discuss what I think lies at the root of many problems. Then, we will move through the Five Beats of a Heart and see what the Codex can teach us about building a relationship that is actually alive.

Dating Apps and Social Media: A Crimson Game You’re Bound to Lose

We all kind of know — or feel — that social media are not healthy. It all started so innocently. I remember the days of Facebook, Twitter, MSN... I feel old... Back then, social media did not have the scale they have now. The goal was to promote social connection. Well, that quickly went awry.

Humans are extremely social animals. We might be the most social species, depending on your definition. We need contact with other members of our group. Social isolation has profound effects on our minds, but also on our bodies.

In the Codex, the Elemental of social interaction is mostly Eye-1 (E3), but it also has a strong Eye-2 component (E7). Eye-1 is signalling: the exchange of words, imagery, and information. Eye-2 describes how relationships form from those Eye-1 exchanges. One shows; the other connects.

Crimson realised the gold mine it had struck with digital social media, and obviously, it was quickly capitalised. The apps know how important E3 is. They know how much you want to be seen, to be liked, and to be talked about. Their algorithms were not built to serve you, despite calling them “For You” pages. They were built to serve the interests of the owners of the app.

They do not really care about you. They care about your data, your engagement, and your addiction to E3.

Dating apps are not that different from other social media. They do not care whether you meet the love of your life. They care about their image and capital. They want to keep you on the platform and paying, despite calling the app “meant to be deleted”. Honestly, no investor would put money into something designed to stop making money.

Aside from the Stone-extraction mechanisms embedded in such apps — who has not considered paying, just to see? — something even more damaging is happening: the suffocation of Eye-1.

Eye-1 Flooded, Eye-1 Suffocated

Eye-1 is meant to see difference. It is meant to find you fitting matches. You do not need the algorithm; your brain runs its own algorithm. But social media hijacks this process. You see unrealistic representations of beautiful people constantly. With AI, this has become much worse. Everything is hyper-Eye-1 on social media, and obviously, you feel ugly.

Eye-1 is flooded with imagery, but suffocated as an organ of perception. You see more faces than any human before you, yet become worse at actually seeing a face. The endless stream gives you the illusion of sharper judgement while slowly training you to discard people before they have had the chance to become real.

In the Middle Ages, Eye-1 worked differently. You probably lived in a village. Let us say it was a large village: perhaps one thousand inhabitants. That was kind of it. Those were the people you spent your Life with. Those were the faces you saw. Maybe there was a beautiful girl from the village next-door, a handsome passing bard, or perhaps you were rich enough to travel. But most people stayed within the village neighbourhood for their entire lives.

Attractiveness and Eye-1 are relative principles. If you have fewer faces to compare yourself to, you are less likely to compare yourself negatively. And because you are surrounded by a much smaller pool of faces, you are more likely to learn and appreciate their unique beauty. You notice how someone smiles when they are embarrassed. You notice how another person becomes more beautiful when they speak. You learn a face through Time instead of judging it in half a second.

Nowadays, you see a constant stream of perfection. No wonder you feel like shit.

The same goes for dating. A smaller pool did not mean fewer chances of finding someone, provided the pool was healthily balanced. It meant you could not be so fussy and did not have the illusion — and pressure — of endless choice. Endless choice does not necessarily create better choices. Often, it only teaches you to keep looking, even when something good is already standing in front of you.

I do not think social media or dating apps are inherently bad. If you have read my Thoughts, you will know the answer: we need more Sapphire Social Media. Apps that are not built on addiction and unhealthy levels of engagement. Yet the problem is not only that healthier alternatives barely exist. The problem is also that we keep returning to the platforms that distort us.

Most social apps fuck up your Eye-1 by design.

Pseudo-Pathology Language

Now, I want to move to a worrying consequence of the Eye-1 suffocation happening under your nose. What happens when Eye-1 starts dominating everything? What happens when the Flower takes a disproportionate amount of space in your brain?

Everything becomes superficial. Shallow labels begin to hide a real person. The image becomes more important than the content. You build a whole world of ideas around what Life must look like. Even if you know the perfect Eye-1 Life Instagram sells you is fake, you still begin to organise your world around it.

What Kim Kardashian says becomes a life motto, while Kim’s main qualification is essentially being successfully social. You start living in an airy world filled with loose ideas that mostly sound pretty.

And then... Smooth City we get... E3 catalyses E7.

Eye-1 creates the image. Eye-2 turns that image into a social expectation. The expectation becomes Smoothness. This is damaging for relationships, and dating especially, because Smoothness asks you to hide your E4 and E5. Meanwhile, E4 and E5 are essential in a healthy relationship.

In other words, you conform.

And in a recent trend, those who do not conform — well, we make them sick. We call them “love bombers”, “trauma dumpers”, “co-dependents”, “toxic”... All of these may point to real psychological syndromes, but in reality, most of the terms are used carelessly for everything and anything that does not fit our norm.

This is so unhealthy. Because what happens? Everyone learns to become smooth.

Nobody expresses Water or Fire anymore. Nobody speaks their mind or expresses their emotions. Nobody takes a risk, because if you do, you are sick — because that is what some B-type celebrity told you to watch out for on Instagram. Every awkward confession becomes a warning sign. Every strong emotion becomes a diagnosis. Every imperfect attempt at closeness becomes evidence that you should run.

So, how on Earth are you going to meet the love of your life?

Everybody is just looking at images. As soon as they “catch feelings”, they become scared and think they have become sick because that is what Smooth City tells them. Being in love is about the least Smooth state you could find yourself in. You become irrational, a bit confused, a bit feverish.

But that is actually normal. That is what it feels like to like someone. You are not sick.

Feeling nervous before a date means you are perfectly normal. Wanting to gradually expose your vulnerabilities is what you should do if you want to find a partner who respects — and maybe even heals — them. The answer is not to become less alive. The answer is to learn what a living relationship needs.

The Five Beats of a Heart

Dating begins with imagery, but a relationship cannot survive as an image. Profiles, labels, attraction, and first impressions may open the door, but they cannot build what comes after. For that, the Codex gives us the Five Beats of a Heart.

These are not five boxes that you complete and abandon one after another. They are five Beats that gradually begin to move together. The earlier Beats support the later ones, and a weakness in one can destabilise all the others.

Stop Bullshit Dating

Stop treating profiles as people. Stop confusing endless choice with freedom. Stop diagnosing every strong feeling. Stop pretending that caring less makes you more desirable. Stop searching for an image so perfect that no living person could ever survive comparison with it.

Do not ask only whether someone fits your image. Ask whether you can share a Name. Ask whether Trust is being built. Ask whether your Flowers stimulate each other. Ask what your Rivers are becoming together. Ask whether the Beast makes you stronger or damages your Stone.

Dating apps want you to remain at the level of the image. Smooth City wants you calm enough never to embarrass yourself. Pseudo-pathology language wants every emotional risk pre-labelled and safely avoided.

But Love is not an image. It is not Smooth. It is not the absence of nervousness, confusion, or vulnerability.

It Beats.

Final Notes

Voilà! That was all for today, friends. This should be good food for Thought.

⚠️ If you open your Third Eye, you will see that none of these Rules are “hard rules”. They are “perfect” guidelines for a messy human reality. You can change the Rules of the Beats I present here, but it is at your own risk...