Rewind to a day ago, and pick any time of the day. Most likely I was on Facebook. Not because there is really much to do on there, but because my job is slow a lot of the time, and so I would often toggle between different groups and news feeds trying to find something interesting. Mostly I would come up empty. But what it took me a while to realize is that I was literally coming up empty. Facebook was a drain on me, emotionally and psychologically. It was a drain on my relationship and I didn't even realize it.
There was always something on Facebook that was going to bother me or piss me off or make me jealous, or make me some sort of emotion that would normally not have a whole lot of space in my life. However, these emotions were increasingly taking up a lot of space in my life, way more than is healthy for anyone.
The source of most of my frustrations came from things I saw posted on my boyfriend's page and messages between us (or lack thereof). We have, for the most part, not been very public about our relationship in terms of posting every selfie and movie night/date night etc. Which is perfectly fine; our lives are private and we like it that way. But I had a thing about wanting to post a profile picture of us together, because I thought it would be nice. He let me eventually, after I gave up a night of watching my favorite chick flick. But that wasn't really what bothered me. As we got into this fall semester, he stayed very busy with a close group of friends going to hackathons and getting into his major. That's awesome, right? Of course it is. When people started freely posting pictures of him and tagging him, it became less awesome. The guy who told me he wanted to keep his Facebook mostly professional suddenly had a plethora of photos of him, looking ridiculous, in pillow fights, wearing monkey beanies over his face, etc. The most recent one, posted the day I quit Facebook, was a picture of him and his best friend, captioned by his other friend who implied they were gay together. I was furious, to say the least. Sitting at work, positively fuming. Why? Because I basically had to fill out an application before I could get a picture of us posted to Facebook, and here was his friend, casually snapping a picture of him, tagging him in it, and joking around that he was gay. About as unprofessional as you can get.
What. The. Fudge.
It took me a while to return to my rational self, but I eventually got there. It was a joke, one, and two, is he really going to be able to tell all of his friends not to post pictures of him on Facebook? No. He can't control his friends like that. And when I ask him about posting a picture, it is out of a respect for something we mutually agreed upon. We are in a relationship, the kind of sanctuary between two people where you can ask for things and agree on things and not have to worry about that trust being violated.
Beyond the pictures fiasco, it was also very hard for me to see him getting on and offline, often "seeing" my messages, or not seeing them and not responding for a day or more. To me, he was online...so where the hell was my response, right? But here's the thing; yeah he may be on and offline, but maybe he's not in a position to answer me. What Facebook messaging does by telling you when someone is online is create a false sense of knowing. I think I know what he is doing: he is on Facebook. But maybe he is on Facebook out of boredom while at lunch with people. He's not going to strike up a conversation with me then. Maybe he turned his laptop on to do something else; he almost always has Facebook open in one of ten or more tabs, so he probably didn't even check the tab before moving on. Do you always respond every time you see a message? I don't, simply because sometimes it's not the best time for me, or I know the person well enough to know that if I respond now I might get caught in a long conversation that I don't have time for. Or, I simply forget.
Facebook turned me into a jealous, distrustful person, a version of me who wasn't really me at all. I didn't like her; she made me unhappy. She made me dissatisfied in my relationship for all the wrong reasons. She made me create drama where there shouldn't be any. She was well on her way to slowly destroying what is an amazing relationship. Every post, every message, every little green dot, was a match just waiting to be lit.
Because what is social media, really? Is it a way to communicate with people? Rarely. It is more a way to watch people, to pretend we know about people. It is a way to filter what people know about us, to create an image that may or may not be an honest representation of our true selves. So there we are, sitting on our computers or our phones, watching people and thinking that we know all, when in reality we only know what they show us. In reality we know little to nothing of the reality of their lives, but yet we base so much off of this false knowledge. I frequently allowed myself to get upset because he was online and didn't respond to my message, I allowed myself to be jealous because he "allowed" his friends to post whatever they wanted. I allowed myself to make emotional choices based on shaky knowledge. So I quit. I decided I would rather know less because in the case of losing all that social media "knowledge," I would probably end up knowing more. Knowing, without a doubt, exactly all the things I know to be true in my relationship. I am loved, I am important, I am desired. My boyfriend is someone I can trust and rely on. But also that I am one part of many parts of a very busy person's life. That the other things he does with his life should not be my focus, but that what I have with him is to be cherished.
As a side note...there were a few other reasons I decided to give it up. I now will spend less time browsing through Facebook on my phone when I get home from work and more time paying attention to my dog. I will use less cell phone data :P. I also will probably spend a lot less money on nail polish...but that, my friends, is a whole other story. ;)
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