How Much of Your Personal Life Do You Disclose on Facebook?
The New York Times had an interesting piece about kids today and how they use Facebook as a tool to air their relationship dirty laundry. The article talks about two soon-to-be-married 22 year olds who have a nasty little habit of embarrassing themselves with childish Facebook tiffs and melodramatic status updates. The two also frequently change their relationship statuses from “engaged” to “It’s complicated.” They laugh off all these theatrics and assure the paper they still plan to marry this May. Mazel Tov!
The Times is in awe of this phenomenon, partially due to the fact we all know the type. Each one of us has a stormy duo nestled in our Facebook friend list whose schizophrenic statuses make our newsfeed feel like a social networking soap opera (which is why we used that handy and oh-so-brilliant ‘hide’ feature). The Times seems to think this might be harmful to relationships and may signify a degradation of the sanctity of marriage:
‘From the Victorian era through the 1950s, marriage was viewed as the source of all safety from a predatory world,’ said Michael Vincent Miller, a psychologist and the author of the book Intimate Terrorism: The Crisis of Love in an Age of Disillusion. Striving for that ideal, he said, meant keeping your disagreements private, ‘to keep a public face of harmony.’
But as the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s ushered in a new openness among married couples, ‘that ideal of marriage began to pass away,’ he said. Soon, the idea that lovers should present a united front at all times came to seem quaint or even naïve, particularly to a generation raised on Oprah and Jerry Springer.
Today, popular representations of marriage tend toward ‘two very self-protective egos at war with one another,’ Mr. Miller said, ‘each wanting vindication and to be right by showing that the other is wrong.’
Should your hubby’s inability to take out the garbage (or satisfy you emotionally) be something everyone on Facebook knows? Is there any benefit to oversharing? Like in the case of the new show The Marriage Ref where marital fights are weighed like court cases, does it truly take a village to raise a relationship?
While we don’t think public mudslinging makes relationships stronger, we won’t blame it for why they crumble either. This is the era of Too Much Information. People blog about their one-night stands like they do the weather, we double-click on panty-less celebrity shots, and thanks to the tabloid magazine industry we know all about Tiger Woods’ affinity for hair-pulling and spanking. We’ve grown desensitized, and maybe even a little bored, of these details (see the “hide” feature reference above)
However, the real story here is our culture’s narcissism. To blast personal details willingly (and even proudly) doesn’t say so much about the actual relationship as it does in our assumption that the world (or our 400 Facebook friends) cares.
Melissa Noble is a freelance writer and blogger who lives in Brooklyn. She is unhealthfully drawn to anything bright, shiny, glossy and celebrity-laden. She enjoys writing and advising about relationships because as Woody Allen said in Annie Hall (her favorite movie): those who can’t do teach. (But she won’t be teaching gym anytime soon.)
This article appears with the permission of YourTango. YourTango is a digital media company dedicated to love and relationships.
