Saturday, June 27, 2015

Loving Your Spouse on Social Media: 3 Do's & 5 Don'ts

I wear my heart on my face. (My sleeve is reserved for my kids' boogies and cheese doodle schmutz.) What I mean is, I'm pretty good at buttoning my lip when I'd rather not share what's on my heart—but it doesn't take a detective to glance at my expressions and gather what's under the surface.

My husband, Chris, is especially skilled at seeing straight through my cellophane poker face. If you were a fly on the wall during my nightly scroll through social media, you'd get the picture.

Now and again, Chris glances up from his iPad and rolls his eyes. "What is it now?"

"Nothing," I reply. But the flare of my nostrils tells a different story. I'm either smelling a sour mozzarella ball or I've encountered something disturbing on Facebook.

With no fermenting formaggio in sight, he leans over to peek at my screen. "Oh, that's some close-up."

"What do you mean? I think it's a very nice picture of her," I defend. "Okay, maybe it's a tad too close, that's all. It just caught me off guard because her nose looks bigger than usual. I mean, not that she has a big nose! I should talk! I just mean, we don't usually see her so close that we notice her mustache hairs. I mean, it's great that her mustache hairs aren't ordinarily that noticeable. I have to use bleach for mine, plus a tweezer for my eyebrows. She, on the other hand, hardly has any eyebrows. Which, isn't a bad thing, really. Just an observation—"

That's a slightly exaggerated account of a very real struggle I have with sharing an honest opinion. If I don't have anything nice to say, I don't say anything at all... not intentionally, anyway.

Sometimes, though, the disturbing sight on social media goes much deeper than a poorly chosen profile pic. As I thumb through status updates, I occasionally come across posts and comments from my married friends that I wish I hadn't seen.

Marital squabbles used to happen behind closed doors, but social media has changed all that. (Granted, if you grew up in New York or really any American city, you've been privy to domestic arguments wafting out the windows and into the streets along with the smell of ethnic foods and clothes softener, but that's all part of urban charm. Moving on.)

I'm not sure what it is about social media that dulls our ability to discern right from wrong, but I'm concerned. I can't hide my scrunched face behind the screen of my smartphone any longer, so here it is: a list of 3 things that loving couples do on social media, followed by a list of 5 things they don't do.