I just don’t get it! Why are people so insecure? This latest Facebook drama doesn’t really bother me because the “friend” I no longer have is one with whom I wasn’t superbly close. But, it still makes me question why women are so insecure and makes me wonder, are men like this, too?
During my trip home to visit my family for the holidays, I decided to also spend a few days visiting with my friends in Minneapolis. I was there over the weekend so my “going-out” friends and I went out on the Saturday night that I was in town. I took one-on-one pictures with all of my friends who were out that night. But, the pictures were on my digital camera so I couldn’t instantly upload them to Facebook as is the trendy thing to do while out and about.
When we moved on from my little karaoke dive bar to the newest club that had just opened up in Minneapolis, I left my camera in the car and only had my smartphone with me. At the club, we ran into the boyfriend of one of my acquaintance friends. G had seen my guy friend on the dance floor and invited us to join them at their VIP table. This didn’t seem odd to me at all since we’ve all hung out plenty of times. In hindsight, I realize I’ve never hung out with G without my “friend”, M before. And even when we’ve all hung out, I haven’t had a ton of conversation with G without M. Hmmmm…interesting observations in hindsight, right?
But, these are things I don’t think about or take notice of in other relationships because I’m not this way. In fact, I’m exactly the opposite. I believe there should be enough trust within my romantic relationship AND my friendships that my (non-existent) boyfriend can enjoy an evening out with my friends or his friends who are women without it causing an issue for me. Apparently, I need to constantly remind myself that not everyone thinks this way. Or, maybe, as another friend has stated, “It’s only because you’re hot!” Ummm, I don’t know. So the logic here is that it wouldn’t be an issue for me to hang out with men if I were unattractive? Really, ladies? Just because I’m unattached doesn’t mean that I’m after every guy out there!
So here’s what happened. G and I took a picture together and I posted it up on Facebook with this caption, “M, your boyfriend is taking care of me tonight. Thanks!” M was tagged in the picture. I purposely tagged her so she would know what a cool boyfriend she had – that he had bought me a drink when he ran into me and our (hers and mine) mutual friends. However, M was in Miami visiting her family for the holidays and when she saw this picture, she was not amused. She sent me this email via Facebook.
“Great, but could you please take this down? I don’t think it’s appropriate!”
When I saw this message, I was a little alarmed that someone, who I thought was a friend, thought that a friendly picture of me with her boyfriend was inappropriate. Regardless, I took down the picture via my phone. The issue with all of the new Facebook options is that I couldn’t tell if I had really deleted it or if I had somehow just hidden it from my timeline. And, while I was on holiday, I didn’t have the time or internet access to check it on my laptop. So, I waited until I got home to Brooklyn before I responded to her.
“Hi M,
To me, it’s nothing more than a friendly picture. But, I did take it down when I saw your message the other day. Hope you’re well and happy new year!
S”
After I sent the message to her, I noticed that we were no longer Facebook friends. Then, I thought, “Oops! Had I accidentally purged her when I was doing some online cleanup after I moved to New York?” After racking my brain for a few minutes, I’m convinced that she un-friended me. Just before Christmas, I still recalled seeing her status updates in my news feed and any conscious Facebook friend purging on my part had taken place several months earlier.
Aha! So, it wasn’t me who accidentally deleted someone on Facebook! But actually then, it was me because I’m the one who apparently had done something “inappropriate” and I had been penalized for it. Ugh. Really? Are the women in our society so insecure that I’m only able to be friends with men who are unattached? And also, shouldn’t there be some element of trust within friendships? She is after all, slightly more than an acquaintance friend, but not quite a friend, friend.
Here’s what I mean by this. We share a decent-sized friend group. While living in Minneapolis, I’ve always been invited to her gatherings and vice versa. But, I don’t recall a time when we’ve spent one-on-one time to together outside of our group outings. I think we’ve always meant to, but we were already seeing each other about every few weeks from mutual friend outings and were catching up that way. So from this perspective, we weren’t super-tight, but we definitely knew each other well enough for her to put more trust in me than this. It is extremely insulting to have been accused of being inappropriate when I’ve been overly appropriate! Unbeknownst to her, I spent the short time at the club with her boyfriend counseling him about how to improve their relationship even going so far as to suggest that it might be a good idea for them to seek professional counseling together to work out some of their differences in life expectations. Seriously.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time I’ve been the victim of some other woman’s unwarranted insecurities. From these experiences, I’ve deduced that I am only allowed to be friends with women and gay men. I can’t be friends with attached men because their women are afraid I might have other intentions or that they can’t trust their boyfriend to not want me. And, I can’t be friends with single men because they ALL want me. Yes, I am being a bit facetious in this last paragraph. But sadly, there is a bit of truth to this. *sighs*
it is sad that society has converted love into possession… the more trivial our society becomes the more insecure