
A few weeks ago I dated someone who just didn’t feel as into “dating” as I did. Instead of just saying “that’s it, we’re through” we decided to try to stay good friends, but I knew I’d need a little time to shift back in to thinking of them only as a friend. Unfortunately our online friendship made that shift quite difficult… while I was trying to keep my distance, her day to day updates were still permeating my social sites (like Twitter and Flickr). After one of her updates, in which she wrote about a cute guy she met, I flipped out. All I could wonder was what was so wrong with me that I would remain so un-dateable. Obviously I was just being a very stupid boy. Perhaps the right thing would have been to just cut off all access to this person for a while, but I have so few friends in the city that I really didn’t want to lose another. Our friendship actually began online and I was worried completely “disconnecting” would cause some sort of resentment. That’s when I wrote this tweet and started drawing the sketch above.
After one hell of an emotional collapse caused by her innocent tweet, I did finally “pull back” electronically which has unfortunately seemed to have caused resentment. It really makes me wonder if it’s just ridiculous to let what happens online affect relationships IRL or if it’s something I just need to get used to. I believe online friendships can be just as meaningful as real world ones but may sometimes be harder to navigate. I wonder if my Blue Cross plan covers web2.0 psychiatry?
The painting above was made with my cheap watercolor sets and refers to “hahlo” instead of “twitter” which tends to confuse some people. Hahlo is a site I usually use to twitter from my iPhone.
Leave a Reply