During one of Séb's last dinners here in New York, we were out having dinner with Kitty and João at the ultimate American restaurant chain, Friday's (which is a whole other story in itself) and the topic of Facebook came up. Kitty was telling us that when her and João where first dating, they weren't sure when to change their statuses to "In a relationship" and debating on when is the right time to do it. They, of course asked us at what point did we finally announce our "everlasting love" on Facebook.
Séb and I looked at each other with a chuckle and broke it to them that we were in fact, not "friends" on Facebook. There was silence followed by a look of confusion on both Katie and João's face. How are we not Facebook friends? Absurdity!
João who knows me better than he knows Séb felt comfortable to jokingly ask me what I was hiding from my boyfriend. "Nothing," I told him, "I'm not hiding anything. I just don't think we need to add each other on Facebook if we talk everyday on Skype or better, in real life." Séb who only uses Facebook to promote his blog has never been concerned about our Facebook non-status and jumped in and told them that it was never addressed it because it never mattered. "So you're both shady!" João said while taking a swig of his Corona. "Honey, they're an artsy couple, the don't care about that kind of stuff!" Kitty said to him, trying to justify our perceived stance against social media with our love of indie rock and street art. "Ok, I'm not artsy," I said while popping a waffle fry into my mouth, "Beyoncé's "Video Phone" is one of my favorite songs and you know that." I said trying to defend us and that we weren't elitist assholes who were too good to add each other on Facebook. We were in Friday's for pete's sake!
The thing is that I've been down this road before and ended up regretting it. I accepted Monsieur Flâneur's request (something I had initially resisted), a person that I thought I would be spending the rest of my life with and it ended up being a mess when we broke up. If you remember, I had avoided Facebook like the Champs-Élysées in June because I was terrified that I was going to wake up one morning and see that he had changed his status to single, something that would have ripped my heart out at the time - especially before my first sip of coffee. To this day I'm constantly reminded of my former life because I'm still friends with his brother, his cousins, his best friends from high school and his customers from his restaurant where our Facebook friendships are the pink elephant on our news feed.
I intend on keeping Facebook and Twitter at a distance with Séb for the time being. Should we take our relationship to the next level, we can revisit this, but for now, I'd like to keep this part of our lives a mystery.
I'm really curious about all of your opinions on this. Does withholding your Facebook "friendship" with your partner communicate a lack of trust in your relationship and the future?
