Last night, on our way home from work, we were listening to the radio when some commercial came on for a local company. The name of the company was also the last name of a guy that I dated back in University so I couldn’t help but wonder how he was doing. We hadn’t really seen each other since we stopped dating so I had no idea what he had been up to for the past decade. In this day and age, the first obvious place to look was facebook and sure enough, there he was, skydiving in his profile picture!!
Needless to say that it was a lot of fun catching up on his life in recent years. It’s equally hard to believe that this was a guy I met at a restaurant one day who ended up bringing me a dozen roses…a guy that I had to write theories of communications papers with and whose phone calls gave me butterflies. Now, here I was looking at pictures of his daughter (who, might I add, is among the most stunning little girls that I’ve ever seen!) and sharing stories of our weddings. My, how we’ve grown!
Catching up with him kind of made me think of how similar facebook is to the real world of dating in some ways; it’s our social resume for the new generation! Kind of like when he and I first started dating, facebook is about showing our best side to the world; it’s a tally of our best pictures, golden moments, glowing achievements and of course, visual proof of our social acceptance in the world (the more “friends” the better, right?). I was hesitant to join facebook for a long time…but it just kept calling me over and over again! Even though I said no, I felt the need to give it a chance…after all, persistence is flattering!
The beginning of my relationship with facebook was just like any new relationship; countless hours spent together at night learning all about each other… weeks go by and you realized that you haven’t done your laundry or spoken to any of your family. Eventually, you discover that you’re knee deep in lust and the addiction is intoxicating. Before long you find that you can’t go more than a couple of hours without getting your fix!!! Now here we are, two years later and still going strong!!!! Or is it? Many relationships look prettier from the outside and it’s certainly easy to make life appear delightful through the eyes of our daily status!
It took me a little while to figure it out but my relationship with facebook provided a rather false sense of connection. It turns out that facebook was a bit of a player!! “It’s complicated” as they would say but to be fair, who doesn’t love getting two hundred birthday wishes on your wall?!?! It wasn’t until one day when my seemingly innocent status got used as a reason to create drama that I realized I needed to break up with facebook to some extent. The same way my old flame and I hadn’t really worked out in the end, I found that facebook and I needed to talk. “It’s not you…it’s me”, I said! Of course I was lured by its memories of days gone by and endless possibilities. The seduction of so many pictures and a wall full of validation is hard to resist…but it was time! So I did the great purge…the cleansing of my social circle from 300+ “friends” to the 50 people that would understand that “you’re sweet like candy to my soul” is really a nod to Dave Matthews and a not a secret invitation to run away to Mexico with me! Parting ways is never easy…especially when you’ve had as much fun as we have, so I’ve agreed to still have a date or two. We even spent a good twenty minutes together before work this morning! What can I say…attraction is hard to get over sometimes!
So I guess you could say that facebook and I are still seeing each other from time to time, but we’re not exclusive! In fact, I’ve even gone back to using my hotmail account more often, sending snail mail every now and then, and {dare I say it} visiting face to face!!!
But I’ve been very clear that in no way does this constitute cheating on my part!
Needless to say that it was a lot of fun catching up on his life in recent years. It’s equally hard to believe that this was a guy I met at a restaurant one day who ended up bringing me a dozen roses…a guy that I had to write theories of communications papers with and whose phone calls gave me butterflies. Now, here I was looking at pictures of his daughter (who, might I add, is among the most stunning little girls that I’ve ever seen!) and sharing stories of our weddings. My, how we’ve grown!
Catching up with him kind of made me think of how similar facebook is to the real world of dating in some ways; it’s our social resume for the new generation! Kind of like when he and I first started dating, facebook is about showing our best side to the world; it’s a tally of our best pictures, golden moments, glowing achievements and of course, visual proof of our social acceptance in the world (the more “friends” the better, right?). I was hesitant to join facebook for a long time…but it just kept calling me over and over again! Even though I said no, I felt the need to give it a chance…after all, persistence is flattering!
The beginning of my relationship with facebook was just like any new relationship; countless hours spent together at night learning all about each other… weeks go by and you realized that you haven’t done your laundry or spoken to any of your family. Eventually, you discover that you’re knee deep in lust and the addiction is intoxicating. Before long you find that you can’t go more than a couple of hours without getting your fix!!! Now here we are, two years later and still going strong!!!! Or is it? Many relationships look prettier from the outside and it’s certainly easy to make life appear delightful through the eyes of our daily status!
It took me a little while to figure it out but my relationship with facebook provided a rather false sense of connection. It turns out that facebook was a bit of a player!! “It’s complicated” as they would say but to be fair, who doesn’t love getting two hundred birthday wishes on your wall?!?! It wasn’t until one day when my seemingly innocent status got used as a reason to create drama that I realized I needed to break up with facebook to some extent. The same way my old flame and I hadn’t really worked out in the end, I found that facebook and I needed to talk. “It’s not you…it’s me”, I said! Of course I was lured by its memories of days gone by and endless possibilities. The seduction of so many pictures and a wall full of validation is hard to resist…but it was time! So I did the great purge…the cleansing of my social circle from 300+ “friends” to the 50 people that would understand that “you’re sweet like candy to my soul” is really a nod to Dave Matthews and a not a secret invitation to run away to Mexico with me! Parting ways is never easy…especially when you’ve had as much fun as we have, so I’ve agreed to still have a date or two. We even spent a good twenty minutes together before work this morning! What can I say…attraction is hard to get over sometimes!
So I guess you could say that facebook and I are still seeing each other from time to time, but we’re not exclusive! In fact, I’ve even gone back to using my hotmail account more often, sending snail mail every now and then, and {dare I say it} visiting face to face!!!
But I’ve been very clear that in no way does this constitute cheating on my part!
2 comments:
hahaa...XD
seems i got a long way to go to handle these kinda stuffs.
it is amazing how cyber world turns the aspect of our lives, and how things happens in our life against our expectations..
nice piece Gen, i hope i can still be friend with the one i break up, though i have no one to break up with XD.
ha ha...fear not my friend! I'm sure that there is plenty of relationship drama to be had in your future!!! Women can be pretty reliable for that!!!!!!!
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