Eventually she receives a letter -- which has to be read to her by Pinkerton's pal Sharpless -- informing her that her man is not coming back. He has, as she will later learn, gotten hitched to somebody else.

 

She doesn't buy it but that's not the point. The point is that these days, instead of waiting for three years to find out what was going on, all Butterfly would have to do is check his relationship status on Facebook.

 

B.F. Pinkerton has changed his relationship status to "It's complicated"

B.F. Pinkerton is no longer in a relationship.

B.F. Pinkerton is now in a relationship with Kate

B.F. Pinkerton is now married to Kate Pinkerton  

(Groups: Lieutenant's Softball League, Men with Moustaches. Favorite Quotes: "Where's the beef?")

 

Right? But while today's almost limitless available technology might have saved an isolated, fictional child bride some time and grief, it's also helping contribute to a host of new problems.

 

Because these days, you have so many new and exciting means of communicating to obsess over. Gone are the days of just waiting for a letter or perhaps, the phone to ring.

 

Now you can repeatedly check your voicemail -- both landline and cell -- email, text messages, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, not the mention the object of your interest's Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, looking for any sign that the person is thinking of you… or not.

 

Actually, Cio Cio San is a pretty obsessive character. This probably wouldn't have helped her at all…I don't know what the hell I was thinking with that analogy.

 

In the movie He's Just Not That into You, Drew Barrymore's character complains about getting rejected by seven different technologies, a very true-to-life gripe. And all that rejection is taking its physical and emotional toll.

 

Life Coach Ryan Browning Cassaday and his wife Jessica Cassaday, a clinical psychologist and sex therapist, are co-authors of the book Stop Wondering if You'll Ever Meet Him. They have coined the term 'Modern Female Dating Anxiety.'

 

Jessica says this is "a condition that we are seeing among modern females whereby a woman who can manage stress very easily in other areas of her life reacts to this very localized dating stress and experiences physical, emotional and mental symptoms that cause great distress."

 

Ryan says that they have seen this across different age groups and ethnic backgrounds. "We've had people contact us from Australia, India, Turkey, all over the world, and say they are feeling the same thing. And it's not just women who have these feelings of anxiety. There is a male equivalent – MMDA."

 

Apparently, it's pretty much the same but men are more likely to suffer in silence because they don't have anyone to talk to about these things.

 

Just another buzzword? Surely, to a degree. Lord knows if you can coin a term and make it stick to your name, you'll get into the history books. Pick a term, any term, and somebody coined that. Like "gender role" (John Money), "beatnik" (Herb Caen), "cyberspace" (William Gibson), "McJob" (Douglas Coupland) and "surfing the net" (Jean Armour Polly). But there's probably something to MFDA, too.