About 6 months ago, I went out with a guy. While it was a pleasant evening, there wasn’t a romantic spark. However, we had things in common. He brought a great book of Dita Von Teese photos that we looked through over cocktails. The next morning I awoke to a Friend Request on Facebook. I didn’t really think about it and clicked Accept. Then I looked at his page. Lots and lots of photo with him with da ladies. Okay. Whatever. Innocuous enough. Had I been interested in pursuing anything (or should he have been interested) I probably would have filed away the fact that he was friends with a lot of women. For me, it’s a Yellow Flag.  Nothing huge. But something to be aware of.

We traded a few emails here and there over the late winter. Then nothing. We weren’t friends, really. He popped in to my head yesterday and I realized I hadn’t heard from him in months. So I unfriended him. I doubt he’ll even notice.

This got me to thinking, or at least wondering, how people handle the whole Facebook deal once you’ve broken up with someone. My rule of thumb, mostly for privacy reasons, is that I don’t ever maintain contact with men in my life (past or present) on FB or Twitter. The upshot of that is that I never have to defriend them, nor do I have to see photos of their new girlfriends. I also don’t want them being kept up to date about what’s going on in my life. Frankly, the idea of someone I was involved with “checking up” on me makes me uneasy. Like they want to know if I’m happy or unhappy. If we ended things well, then it’s a sweet gesture. But if we didn’t? Then their interest bothers me and makes me feel monitored.  I’ve received those friend requests from guys from my past and I wonder, “Okay. What prompted THIS?” (Usually, it’s just that they imported their email address in to that stupid friend finder thing.  )

My friend J. was telling me a story the other night about how she stays Facebook friends with most of her exes. She likes to keep up with what they’re doing. Then I spoke to my friend K. (a female) and she said, “What’s the point? It’s done. Move on. Why torture yourself?”

During a recent conversation with someone else, he divulged that he had customized his settings so that his ex-girlfriend of several months couldn’t see his status updates or certain photos of he and his new girlfriend. Which would make sense if he weren’t uploading new profile photos every couple weeks – which anyone can see – of he and his new girlfriend. Jesus. Just defriend her and be done with it. What’s the point of being friends with someone if you’re going to prevent them from seeing the things that are the main reasons for friending someone in the first place? Isn’t that why you’re “friends?”  I mean..it’s Facebook! It’s stupid, remember? Why all the effort for something so stupid?

A woman once asked me if she should contact her ex and tell him she was defriending him. She said she didn’t want to unfriend him because she was feeling spiteful. They were on good terms. She explained that she didn’t want to be tempted to look at his page or happen to see photos. I told her that emailing him would be a mature way of handling it, and to explain exactly what she had said to me as her reasons for removing him from her friends list . That would probably be better than if he were to go to her page and notice that they were no longer friends. Better to offer an explanation before hand than risk assumptions and misunderstandings.

Finally, there’s the initial friending that gets done. When do you do it? How do you avoid looking too eager? And do you really want to see that person’s history before you really know them? As Vox said in a recent comment, sometimes you come across things you wish you had never seen. Then what?

A male friend recently told me he refused the friend request of a woman he had just begun to date. Since he works in social media, he says he’s really grown to value offline relationships, and Facebook can cloud them.

This is the main reason why I try to avoid this whole step all together. I don’t want to know. Let me decide who you are now. Not who you were last year, or the year before, or in college. I don’t want to be comparing myself to your ex, or wondering who these people are that are responding to your silly updates. I want the chance to get to know you outside of all of this.

It used to be that relationships were three dimensional. Now they’re a fourth one…The Facebook Dimension. The online persona dimension. Blogs and Twitter and Facebook profiles. They become sort of an alter ego. You’re left with wondering who the person you’re dating really is..or was. Or will be with you.

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