“I didn’t know you two were dating, he never posts about you? ”
-- Was a text message I received from a peer.
“He never posts about you.” Rung in my head over and over again as I thought about it. I crept through my friends' pages and found that their boyfriends posted about them all the time. I had never noticed whether or not he did, or even really seemed to care. It didn’t cross my mind that it might have mattered until someone said it did. I referred back to my boyfriend's page and there wasn’t a single thing about me.
With #realtionshipgoals trending, pictures of cute couples filled my feed. The systematic response of anxiety began to build. “Why doesn’t he post about me?” “Why can’t we look like that couple?” “Her boyfriend must love her so much if he is willing to publicly announce he loves her.” My brain began to boil. I too desired the recognition.
But then, I thought, why did it matter? If social media didn’t exist this fear wouldn’t exist. 50 years ago people didn’t post pictures on social networks, with hashtags like #love #realgoals #hotcouple while they anticipated the likes and comments to begin flowing in, “omg you guys are so cute.” My boyfriend doesn’t like sharing his personal life on social media, which is and should be entirely up to him. Him not posting about me 24/7 doesn’t mean he doesn’t love me or appreciate me, and definitely should not be considered a socially unacceptable mistake just because for whatever reason the norm in our generation is making our entire lives public. Just because it’s now a thing to share your relationship with the public doesn’t mean you have to and shouldn't be the determining factor of how happy you guys "seem."
I completely understand the appreciation and admiration if someone you like makes a post about you. It feels good, there’s no denying that. But that’s what scares me the most. If nowadays the main way to show appreciation for your significant other is just posting a picture and you are perfectly content with that, our generation is doomed.
How Social Media Influences A Relationship
As much or little as we want to argue the subject, it’s no mystery that social media is a large part of our generation. Of course, many other issues and personal struggles cause relationships to fall apart, but social media is one of the main reasons our generations dating and relationships are so messed up. It gives us false expectations of what a relationship needs to be, it takes away from the privacy, more often than not we jump to conclusions seeing suspicious tweets as we lurk their pages and instead of focusing on the good in our relationships, we always compare ours to others.
As we're busy competing over social media, trying to make our lives look the most full and happy, hash-tagging our pictures and sharing every bit of our personal lives we forget that anyone can take a picture smiling on the beach with their bf or gf, but deep down not be happy. We focus too much on the exterior of our relationship in the public eye instead of fixing the foundations we lack in private and building up a strong relationship.
The Negative Stigma Of Twitter
Anytime I post a tweet even relatively negative, or what could be considered suggestive, my phone gets blown up “What’s wrong, did you and your boyfriend break up?”
“I’m so done”
Posted at 6:12 pm
2 Retweets
8 Favorites
The automatic assumption that this tweet pertains directly to my relationship is outrageous. But because subtweeting exists I cannot tweet ANYTHING that could be seen as even merely suggestive without someone thinking it means something entirely different. Twitter has become one of the main places to secretly send subliminal messages about your ex or boo thang. Honestly, I tweeted “I’m so done” because I was just angry I couldn’t get the pickle jar open and gave up. So now you have the outside population, your friends, your family and probably your significant other thinking you're pissed at them for tweeting ‘I'm so done” when really you're just crying on the floor about wanting pickles.
It’s actually sad that this happens because I like sharing things on social media, but it’s the pain in the you-know-what every time someone assumes something else. I mean I have literally had someone start a rumor that my ex and I were back together all because I had tweeted some lyrics from my favorite song.
Nothing Is Private And We Jump To Conclusions
Social media allows for you to view each other’s top searches, see who’s pictures everyone has been liking, what people tweet, who you follow, who follows you back, and what kind of things everyone is sharing. I’m not going to lie, I’ve been a victim of this one. I've creeped my boyfriend to see who's stuff he was liking, and been concerned it was another girls. That automatic ability to view everything he or she is doing online creates instant unrest in your mind. “Why is she liking that guy's tweets” or “why does he like this girl's pictures.” Anxiety about this issue causes it to eat away at you and allow fights to slip into your threshold of problems. It creates problems that were never even really there. Think about it, maybe she's liking those tweets because she relates to them, maybe he's liking that girl's picture because that’s his friend, or he went to school with her. And the second you accuse them of an alternative motive for these actions, you lose trust. Just because someone is liking your boyfriend or girlfriend's Instagram picture does not mean they’re seeing each other behind your back. It doesn't mean they're falling in love, cheating on you, want you to be more like that person or bored of you. When we see two people connect on social media, we often jump to conclusions even though in reality, it’s unlikely that they ever even speak.
I can see how sometimes this can be upsetting but you need to look at the bigger picture and realize, that girl's picture he just liked is 3 millions miles away, that picture is a low-quality pixel capture of a human he will probably never meet and guess what, he isn't cuddling her right now, no, he's cuddling you.
We Never Learned To Live In The Moment
As a teenager who grew up during the height of technology and social media, I encountered overlooking a large part of my adolescent years because of my time spent behind a screen. Nowadays kids are receiving cell phones, tablets and laptops at much younger ages and therefore have earlier access to social media. We grew up using social media, and generations after us continue to do so. It has become a large part of our daily lives and sometimes it can get in the way.
When was the last time you shut off your phone to spend time with your boyfriend or girlfriend? Even just keeping it in your pocket when you're together? Whether sitting down and eating at a restaurant or just watching a movie, people are sitting on their phones and scrolling through their social media feeds rather than appreciating the time they’re spending with the person they love.
You miss rare moments while sitting behind a screen. You miss holding hands with your so called "love of my life" as posted on Instagram captioning every picture. You miss the glances that could be exchanged if it weren't for the large apple logo standing between you and your girlfriend. As we scroll down the news feed, play our Facebook games, and post about our SO's rather than talk to them, we miss living in the moment.
Our Expectations Have Become Unrealistic
With constant access to view others lives and relationships, we can easily become jealous. Especially when 90% of the posts are showing off their "perfect" boyfriends and girlfriends. The “relationship goals” posts of boys buying their girlfriends expensive jewelry, and leaving chocolate at their doorstep are misleading people to expect unrealistic things out of their relationship. No relationship is ever perfect all of the time, but the accounts that always post pictures and videos of the cute things some people do for their significant other make us believe the opposite. #boyfriendgoals is tagged with a picture of a teddy bear, Victoria's Secret bags and roses, it's like instant jealousy if your boyfriend doesn't do this for you. While ranting to him about not getting enough presents you seem to forget he always pays for dinner, he always texts you back right away, he holds the door for you, gives you his jacket, always brings you your favorite candy even when you didn't ask, did in fact buy you roses last Valentine's Day, and holds you every night. These things that he does for you are his way of showing you he loves you. These things some girl you don't even know, who claims in every post that her boyfriend is perfect (only because he showers her with gifts) may not have. You don't know if behind closed doors she's actually crying because he never texts her back. We stop being thankful for the people we have in our lives, we forget to be grateful for what they do and instead want them to be even more than that.
