10 Ways Social Media Is Ruining Your Relationships

Image via Complex Original

Have all these baneful social media issues finally pulverized your relationship into some sort of heartbroken dust floating around the matrix? This is one of those cliché damned if you do, damned if you don’t situations. Breaking up while being constantly connected through the Internet is hard work. It’s kind of like living with someone. You should give them their Internet space back by unfollowing them on every single social media platform, but then you lose their “friendship” in a way that is all-important these days. You have to re-DTR, (or, re-define the relationship) and explain that to everyone.

Even then, you have to remember what mutual friends you have so you don’t have to see Instagrammed pictures of your ex tongue-wrestling with her rando creeper neighbor you always thought had a thing for her. Breaking up over the Internet is messy business that can not only ruin a possible friendship through hurt feelings and residual jealousy, but start the whole vicious cycle over with the new sexy thing on your arm.

What happens when people stop being real and start being polite? The Internet just becomes this marshmallow-paved Utopia where all the strangers give you candy and all the women look like Photoshopped anime ducks. Way back when, human interaction gave us anxiety before we just reclused it up Grey Gardens style or we sucked it up. Today, even with the fear of being Catfished, you can basically have full-on relationships with people over the Internet. You can engage in sappy, disgusting public demonstrations of affection on your Facebook page (which is basically like all your friends watching you have sex and it’s gross, stop it) and you can do all your sexting through Snapchat. You can tweet at work, Skype on your lunch break, and Vine yourself doing laundry.

There is literally no reason to meet that person in real life other than to maybe have sex which is sad and totally diminishes the importance of the relationship. Unless being emotionally and psychologically detached from the physical importance of being around other human beings is your thing, Patrick Bateman.

If you’ve ever met someone who you were acquainted with online first, you know that generally people are different from their online persona. Chronically depressed people try to act happy all the time; super shy nerd girls chronicle their sexploits in excruciating detail, and loners who feel insecure about their cool factor check-in via Foursquare or Facebook to any place that gives them street cred.

People can create this fantasy version of themselves and if you’re sussing out the potential of a mate, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish between what is real and what bizarre Sex and the City delusion they're playing out.

By definition a “subtweet” is a subliminal tweet, in that it is a passive-aggressive reference to a person without explicitly saying their name. It’s basically a way for people to not own up to their feelings completely while making lame and mysterious statements about certain aspects of their life. So, yes, subtweeting is the Valium of the Internet world.

Have a problem? Just cover it up with some 140 character mental medicine while friends ask “what’s wrong?” as you gleefully ignore them once you got the attention you wanted. Subtweeting is insidious, and if your boo-thang follows you on Twitter, it’s a safe bet that every subtweet you send out in the world is like an abusive or confusing jab in the corazón. You better watch out, or next thing you know, the subtweeting will be about you.

After spending the night, you hop into the shower and your significant other asks if she can use the Internet to “look something up.” Without thinking, you agree. While you are gurgling happily into your Axe Shower Gel, the person you just shared lovey-dovey baby talk with is “accidentally” logging onto your Facebook or Twitter because you forgot to sign yourself out. Whether consciously or unconsciously, she is mentally marking your usual fifteen-minute morning ritual and frantically scouring through all your private messages for any signs of cheating or communication at all with anyone else, ever.

Even a weird exchange with your mom will have her spinning out. Hearing a slam of the computer as you come back to the bedroom feeling all fresh and clean, you’ll be surely greeted by a guilty yet accusatory scowl that will ruin all the positive vibes for the rest of the day and haunt you for weeks to come. Ah, modern love.

You’ve moved on and are ready to date someone new, but there’s one terrorizing caveat: your stalker ex-girlfriend. If you didn’t have the balls to unfollow her and filter your life from her deranged existence, you can pretty much guarantee she is intentionally (and perhaps vindictively) watching every single interaction you have. So, if you’re trying to go to Bonetown with your hot mutual acquaintance, your ex might be planting seeds of dissension between the two of you without you even noticing.

Messaging this girl randomly to distract her attention from you, RSVP’ing to the same event as you both so you feel too awkward to go. Or, just generally making you feel too freaked out to go on the Internet and make this kinky connection possible because she’s poked you one too many times with what you know she wishes was a knife.

Once upon a time, when you were in a fraternity, you went on a hedonistic summer break with your brothers and some homies that could barely hold their Jager. It was all a beautiful beachy blur, but there might have been some group activities that involved mutual puking on strangers, naked wasted girls, and lots of tequila. You weren’t proud of some of your actions, but all the tests came in negative and you’re ready to move on. Except you can’t.

Because one of your supposed friends tagged an incriminating picture of you on Facebook and now you have to explain to your precious princess girlfriend why her seemingly straight-laced knight in shining armor was acting out a scene from a Girls Gone Wild DVD. Good luck with that, and, in the future, make sure you set your Facebook tags so you can approve them first.

You’re dating this really cool girl. You even DTR’d and you don’t mind settling down. It’s too early to tell, but she might be The One. At least that’s what you think until the day you “like” the picture a random hottie acquaintance posts of her sunset dog hike. You probably did it unconsciously, like, "Oh, that’s cool. I like sunsets and dogs and hiking. She looks like she’s having fun. Fun is cool. Let’s support fun." And then The One notices your innocent “like” and starts with the insane twenty questions. Who is that girl? What does she mean to you? Do you want to sleep with her? Why don’t you love me?

Next thing you know, you’re combing through all your friends and hiding the feeds of any cute girl The One might try to spy on to make sure they are protected from her psycho wrath. And worse yet, your diamond of a relationship now appears flawed.

Shocking, but true: In the caveman days, pre-Internet, people would actually connect one-on-one. If you had a dope sandwich or you made good on your fitness pact, you told your friends in person over a beer or a lingering conversation via phone. There was no syncing your fitness app to your Facebook to chart your mediocre pace around the lake or Instagraming pictures of every single gluttonous thing you put in your mouth. If you were sad, you cried and then got over it. If you were pissed off at the government, you raised your blood pressure the good old-fashioned way with an enraged diatribe and maybe some street level activism. Maybe you told a friend, maybe not.

But, if you told them it was generally after a few hours of rational thought instead of passive-aggressively crying for attention through a snarky Tumblr post. And guess what? Not all of your friends knew (or needed to know) what you were up to unless they asked. Putting too much information about yourself on the Internet can ruin relationships because what else is there to talk about after you share every single little part of yourself to everyone you know? Think on that, don't just fire off a quasi-philosophical tweet.

Your new plaything has gone from fun fling to crazy cling wrap in the span of three months and now she’s asking you to DTR. These days, putting a label on love is way more complex than in the black-and-white movie days. As our grandmother said of that time, you were either married or you were single. Until someone “put a ring on it,” you could share your roast beef and buttermilk dinner with whomever you wanted. Attempting to define something and putting that definition out there for the whole world to judge not only adds pressure to a relationship to be more than it is before its time, but also keeps you accountable to all your Internet “friends.”

Once you’ve DTR’d, all the dynamics change, especially the hot no-strings-attached sex. You go from being casual coy Internet buds that playfully winked at each other’s blissed-out status updates to a pair of old lovebirds bound by the words “in a relationship.” There’s a reason why the only relationship status that makes sense for most fledgling relationships is “it’s complicated." That's just how the Internet does when it comes to flesh-and-blood connections.