Is Social Networking Destroying Our Relationships?

We all hate being the third wheel.  The gooseberry.  The unnecessary, and more often than not, unwanted presence during a date disguised as a catch-up, when your “under the thumb” friend can’t bear to be apart from their significant other for longer than 10 seconds.  

You feel awkward, they feel awkward, but nothing is said.

So if we hate third wheeling so much, why do most of us allow one in our relationships permanently?  Omnipresent and inescapable.  Intruding our lives like a big, fat, clumsy burglar, stealing our attention and wreaking havoc with our emotions.  

Who is this third wheel, you ask?  Social media.  Yep, the one thing that brings us all together is ironically tearing more and more relationships apart.  Not even just testing relationships, I mean really tearing them apart, ruthlessly.  

And no, I’m not being melodramatic, for once in my life. Imagine relationships are like cashmere jumpers.  Delicate, they need handling sensitively and respectfully.  They make us feel all warm and safe.  They snag easily, but there’s nothing a touch of good ol’ TLC and a little handiwork can’t fix.  Then there’s social media – the barbed wire fence, to be approached with caution because one wrong move can cause serious damage.  And we all know that cashmere jumpers and barbed wire fences are not exactly a match made in heaven.  

I’m a 23 year-old woman and the only two relationships I’ve ever been in have both been jeopardised, then ultimately ended (quite nastily, in fact, very nastily) all because of social media.  Social media didn’t just break my relationships up.  They literally were destroyed – as in “please never speak to me ever again” destroyed.  And that’s sad, isn’t it?  Not even sad, just plain pathetic. How come you can be so close to someone one moment, then the next you’re cursing the day they were born?  And all because of this fictitious, virtual world that exists because of social media, where we project the very best versions of ourselves to the world, self-censoring the undesirable bits and ugly truths.

Is it really normal for our partners to be lying in bed with us, and instead of whispering sweet nothings into our ears and a spot of cheeky kissing and canoodling, they’re posting “witty” statuses and scrolling through a never-ending virtual stream of monotony?  I’m sorry, but no.  JUST.  NO.  Hello, I’m here!  Lying next to you, with a pair of tits that should be occupying you for hours!  Oh, what was that?  Ah yes, sorry, I forgot about you having your iPhone permanently welded to your hand.  My bad!

And I’ll say it, because you pussies are too scared to – is it really that unreasonable that we’re just a little bit jealous of our boyfriends having access to a goldmine of wank-bank material?  Yes, bash one out to Megan Fox, but now the Internet is allowing us all to strum away to acquaintances, our next-door neighbours and the milkman in various states of undress.  The “bikini-body selfie”, “post-diet selfie” and “gym-wear selfie”.  I’m sure you’re all well acquainted with these displays of brazen narcissism, so I won’t go on.

My pet hates are Instagram and Facebook, and although you’d be reluctant to admit it, a lot of you probably feel the same way too.  Do we really live in a society that’s so shallow and attention-starved that we need to have a “like” button under the photos we upload?  Under “life events”?  I mean, really, come on! 

This is just getting a bit too silly.   A heart button under a photo of fucking beans on toast?  Are we all really so insecure, that we need the click-click-clicking of meaningless virtual approval from friends, admirers and voyeuristic strangers as fodder for our egos to grow and grow?  Are we all really so bloody stupid, that virtual dalliances give us a bigger kick than actual real-life interactions with an actual real-life person who we’re in a real-life relationship with, who we supposedly love? 

Yes.  Yes we are.