Social media can be a wonderful thing. It allows you keep in touch with people you realistically wouldn’t be able to by following their lives through pictures and a series of status updates.
But part of those updates could include seeing your exes who have sometimes moved on to having spectacular, wonderful relationships, getting married and having babies while you’re still single.
Which is why I like to call them social media jerks.
Social media can be a crackpot of public love only in front of a camera of fake happiness and narcissistic intentions.
I say this because I speak from experience.
At the age of 27, most of the guys I’ve had serious relationships with are now in other serious, long-term committed relationships. Three of these men have babies and the other two are still with the girls they found right after they were with me. One of which was sleazy enough to meet his now girlfriend while he was dating me.
Punch in the face, right?
If ripping my heart out wasn’t enough, plastering these long-lasting happy relationships all over social media is enough to make you start wondering the “what if’s.”
But instead of feeling sorry for myself, I feel liberated.
When I see these updates, I sometimes imagine what my life would’ve been like if I was each of those women. Three of them impregnated before marriage, only one of them has actually gotten hitched and that was immediately after getting pregnant within three months of knowing each other and having a shotgun wedding.
Classy.
Then I flash back to other questionable relationships like an overly-sensitive pathological liar or the 25-year-old still living with his mother who doesn’t think for himself.
Many couples use social media as a means of trying to prove something that doesn’t exist.
I’ve read profiles and posts of women saying they’re waiting for their husband, being patient and waiting for their Prince Charming to sweep them off their feet into marriage and 2.5 kids.
Sure, it probably creeps into the mind of every woman from time to time but it’s not something you should be tweeting, instagraming and pinning the world about.
And they’re not the only ones.
Everyone posts the, “Hey look at me doing this really cool or fun thing while you’re sitting on your couch!” picture. Or they post one of those super long posts of every encounter they have with their boyfriend about how lucky and amazing they feel to have them.
You see the pictures and statuses and you’re like, “Man, my life sucks. I wish I was that happy.” And then you get all emo, cry and listen to Mariah Carey then decide to watch The Goonies & eat ice cream for the rest of the night.
Stop it!
When people are REALLY happy, and having a real, genuine, loving relationship…you’re not going to see it all over the internet.
There are times when you just want to keep a moment something special just between you two. The only reason they go to post something is to either show off, try to make someone jealous or to even try to convince themselves that they have this majestical life. (Yea, just made that word up.)
You can’t compare your life to someone else’s social media life.
Picture this: still single while everyone else is going off and re-writing The Notebook doesn’t make you a loser, doesn’t mean you’re running out of time or that you’re doing something wrong.
Ok, maybe some of you might need to do some soul searching, but if you’re anything like me where you KNOW you’ve been good to the men in your life and you’ve kinda been pooped on one after the other, you’re in your prime right now.
I know for myself, it’s not that I have a problem with finding someone. The easiest thing for me is to find someone that wants to date me. But, that’s not JUST what I want.
I want something that was missing from these guys who dated me in the past. Something that none of them had and still don’t have.
The major attribute is respect. Respect for me, respect for the people around them, even respect for themselves.
And based off my past experiences, I know there’s gotta be something better, and instead of wallowing in self pity about being alone, I have all his freedom to go on any path I want and no illegitimate children to try to raise on my own.
Although I’m not always in high spirits about being single, and seeing picturesque happy couples on social media doesn’t help, I know my worth and I know I’m not waiting in vain
