DISCONNECTED TOGETHER: HOW PLASTIC INTIMACY IS STARVING OUR SOULS...
THE HUNGER NOBODY TALKS ABOUT
Moving through today’s world often feels like starving inside an all-you-can-eat restaurant, yet being told you can’t touch the food. Everything is visible. Everything looks good. But none of it is nourishing. That contradiction is the emotional reality many people live with every day.
Seeing endless options only sharpens the hunger. It doesn’t calm it. Knowing that satisfaction is close but unreachable creates a quiet form of torture that weighs on the soul. The craving doesn’t fade—it grows stronger, heavier, and more confusing.
This is the condition of modern intimacy. We are surrounded by connection but rarely experience closeness. We crave deep mental, spiritual, and physical bonding, yet most interactions never reach those depths. They stop at the surface and move on.
We are taught to chase perfection instead of presence. If someone doesn’t appear flawless, we are encouraged to swipe past them rather than sit with them. Real people are treated like replaceable options instead of complex beings worth exploring.
As a result, satisfaction rarely reaches its fullest level. Not because we don’t want connection—but because the systems around us reward distance, masks, and speed instead of patience, vulnerability, and truth.
Technology has given us the ability to project perfection. Filters smooth flaws. Carefully chosen photos create fantasy. Words are edited to sound confident and complete. Attention comes easier when we wear a mask instead of showing a real face.
But connection does not grow from masks. It grows from friction, presence, and imperfection. Real intimacy comes from discovering both the beauty and the flaws in another human being and choosing to engage anyway.
Decades ago, we had no choice but to face each other. Eye contact was unavoidable. Silence was felt. Energy was exchanged in real time. Today, screens buffer emotion. Video calls remove body language. Messages remove tone. Filters remove truth.
Many people now have more intimacy with their phones than with another human being. We hold devices constantly, while real hands go untouched. The body learns isolation even while the mind scrolls endlessly.
This leads to a cycle of instant gratification. There is pleasure without effort. Stimulation without vulnerability. Release without connection. Over time, this drains the desire to pursue real closeness because real intimacy requires risk.
Risk is what technology helps us avoid. Apps promise connection but deliver repetition. Conversations begin strong but stay shallow. We say meaningful words to strangers we barely know, not because we understand them, but because we are desperate to express ourselves.
That desperation is why artificial companionship feels appealing. There is no rejection. No disappointment. No work. Everything can be shaped to preference. But what feels safe is also hollow.
A relationship without resistance creates no growth. Satisfaction built on fantasy has no weight. When nothing is required, nothing is earned. And when nothing is earned, nothing lasts.
Plastic intimacy is like fake plants in a home. They look nice. They require no care. No watering. No patience. Just dusting. But they do not grow. They do not breathe. They do not give life.
The same is happening emotionally. We are offered convenience over commitment. Control over connection. Consumption over contribution. Over time, this clogs our emotional filters and distorts our understanding of what we actually need.
Eventually, we lose touch with ourselves. When real connection appears, we don’t know how to receive it—or what we even have to offer. We’ve practiced detachment for so long that vulnerability feels foreign.
True intimacy requires two people willing to study each other. To learn rhythms. To communicate needs. To give fully without keeping score. It demands presence, patience, and mutual submission to growth.
Modern relationships often fail because people enter them to extract, not invest. Giving becomes minimal while expectations remain high. That imbalance guarantees collapse.
We cannot swipe our way into fulfillment. We cannot download depth. We cannot shortcut closeness. Human beings are not algorithms.
Until we slow down and strip away the excess noise, connection will continue to weaken. When minds drift to digital fantasies instead of the person present, distance grows—even in shared spaces.
This is where society now stands: closer than ever, yet deeply disconnected.
Closing Thoughts…
The hunger we feel is real. It is not weakness. It is a signal calling us back to ourselves and to each other.
Technology is not the enemy, but it was never meant to replace human closeness. It should assist connection, not anesthetize it.
We must relearn how to sit with imperfection, how to stay when it’s easier to leave, and how to invest where growth is possible.
True intimacy requires courage. It asks us to be seen without filters and known without escape routes.
If we choose real connection again, we won’t just heal relationships—we will heal ourselves.
Let me know if you understand where I'm coming from with the perspectives shared in this written expression.
Sincerely,
SCURV