I am an oversharer, I don’t have a problem admitting that. However, that is not always in my best interest. At some point in February I started seeing someone, then in March when it became official, I had no problem telling pretty much everyone, including my blog. The internet, however, now has made that relationship forever.
I never made it Facebook official (because if people want to know my business read my blog), but I did say that I was going to write about it here. I never did, because I ended things before that could have happened. So it has brought me to the question of when is the right time to put your relationship online?
The thing about the internet, and it’s the thing everyone’s parents, teachers, and professors say: “It’s there forever” so when you want to forget about a relationship it’s still there. You can delete all the pictures, the Facebook posts and whatever else you posted online, but it doesn’t change that people still saw it. People will ask you what happened, and you will have to face the questions.
I’d like to think that there’s this magic number. For me, it’s really whatever I feel like, after I tell everyone I care about first. However, I totally see the benefits of waiting a few months. Sometimes I feel like the longer you wait or the more online the relationship is it can be harder when it ends. I can’t imagine ending a year long relationship and having to delete all of that off the internet, or facing those memories after that.
I think it also comes down to how much you put on the internet too. For example, I had one picture and a line in a blog post. I think he might have posted on my Facebook wall once or twice, but our relationship was not really that public. I think the ending would’ve been different if we had a million pictures on Instagram and Facebook or something like that. The internet encapsulates every aspect of a relationship that you’re willing to share about it and then when it’s over you have to deal with that aftermath.
In the future, I honestly think I wouldn’t change anything about it. I think that if a relationship lasts more than three months, I’ll probably put it on Facebook. However, it’s really not all up to me because I’m not that kind of person. I’m just an open book, a few pictures here and there, a sentence in a blog post and an introduction after a while. I don’t think that I’ll say I have plans to introduce him because who know if that’ll happen.
The internet has this weird way of preserving everything that happens in life which is not only great but kind of scary/annoying sometimes. It’s also a personal thing that everyone can decide to share or not share in the world.
What’s the magic number? When do you put your relationship on the internet?
Mary Rose Jaskiewicz 
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