Social Media can be “the one who got away” in your relationship
Why newly married couples should ditch social media(temporarily)
Log out and zone in on your relationship
What if your were asked to take 180 days off social media ?
No facebook. No instagram, No twitter and certainly No TikTok.
What’s your immediate response?
All the reasons you need to stay connected? All the sharing you wouldn’t be able to do? All the latest news you’d miss out on? Fear of what you’ll miss out on?
What if ditching it can save your marriage?
We’ve heard the stories of people re-connecting with their high school/college lover on FaceBook, exchanging messages, catching up and then having an affair.
Years of a marriage destroyed because of a single click of Accept Request.
FAKESTAGRAM
IG is place for humble and outright bragging in the guise of sharing.
People post the most exciting and envy inducing parts of their life.
New Car, latest holiday, New Clothes, 5th date night. Birthday gifts and photoshoots . The highlight reels.
The edited and filtered version of the 15th “felt cute” picture out of 18.
The smiles, the hugs and kiss from a holiday with disagreement, frustration, annoyances and tears.
It’s easy for a young lady to see the things her online friends, school mates and colleagues “enjoying” in their marriage and begin to subconsciously and often directly compare hers.
Begin to stew in dissatisfaction: that she deserves better, her husband is not doing enough. She doesn’t have enough new clothes, date nights to post online.
Compare her husband with what xyz’s hubby is doing for/with her.
Directly try to compete and create her own #RelationshipGoals so everyone else knows she too has a good life.
Regina George, Mean Heather Girls high school drama.
Instagram creates a lot more problems in relationships and causes more anxiety, depression, dis-satisfaction, FOMO than we are willing to admit.
Jealously, Insecurity, Distrust, Competition, Pettiness, the delusion that there is Better waiting out there
In her book The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown writes
“We don’t compare our houses to the mansions across town; we compare our yard to the yards on our block. When we compare, we want to be the best or have the best of our group.
The comparison mandate becomes this crushing paradox of “fit in and stand out!” It’s not cultivate self-acceptance, belonging, and authenticity; it’s be just like everyone else, but better.”
My recommendation:
If you get off instagram feeling some kind of way this is a clue you need to detox, go cold turkey and as the kids say, touch some grass
If your source of income is not dependent on Instagram. You can do without it for some weeks and enjoy Year 1 of your marriage, or any year for that matter.
TWITTER GENDER WARS
Twitter is the place most gender wars are fought. Militant (Fe)Misandrists and Militia MGTOWs constantly throwing shade, launching projectiles at each other.
One neighbour called it “Twitter children of Anger”
And it doesn’t matter what country. Its the same regardless of ethnicity, racial demographic and nationality.
Women constantly putting down their spouse to go viral and get sympathy from the male bashers and man haters.
Manosphere pointing out examples of how women are only loyal to their feelings and Olympian Monkey Branching skills.
It’s easy to keep seeing all that and get paranoid about the opposite gender and look for signs in your spouse.
Read malicious meaning into everything they do.
People are so desperate to go viral these days they bring every little disagreement, disappoinment, misunderstanding to clown their spouse “look at what i have to put up with” on twitter to gain sympathy.
All this early in the marriage plants poisonous seeds that take roots and grow alongside everything else till so intertwined it’s impossible to remove without causing severe pain.
CONCLUSION
Social Media is a gift and a curse. Human nature tends to lean more to the curse side.Like when a genie grants EVERYONE their wish and it create anarchy.
There are couples who spend hours in the same room, not talking to each other but staring at their phones, looking at the lives of strangers and getting depressed or agitated.
The time taken off spending hours doom scrolling and voyeuring on the lives of others could be spent on each other (cliche, i know)
Listening to positive and balanced relationship podcasts. Key world balanced. I recommend The Stronger Marriage Podcast with Trey & Lea
Reading books to help understand each other better and have smoother communication.
Doing fun activities together which are not technology reliant.
A compromise would be to have a Private couples account, accessible on each other’s phone.
That way any activity is visible to both; likes, comments, DMs, requests etc.
It creates a level of accountability which takes away the distrust, insecurity, jealousy which causes many couples to fight.
In his book Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport states
“Being less available over text, in other words, has a way of paradoxically strengthening your relationship even while making you (slightly) less available to those you care about. This point is crucial because many people fear that their relationships will suffer if they downgrade this form of lightweight connection. I want to reassure you that it will instead strengthen the relationships you care most about. You can be the one person in their life who actually talks to them on a regular basis, forming a deeper, more nuanced relationship than any number of exclamation points and bitmapped emojis can provide.”
When a Computer Scientist recommends less screen time. You know its serious
What way do you think social media recreates problems in relationship? Leave a comment.
