#NerdsUnite: Social Media + Dating - When does it turn obsessive?

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Jen. She's a graphic designer by day and a serial monogamist by night that lives across the pond in the UK. She's currently in a relationship of 8 years, and her dating record prior had been puddle jumps from 3 months here ... to 3 months there. These are her thoughts on life, love, and all things nerd. Hit it Jen!! </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Jen Randall

“Oh look, that guy I went on a date with just checked in to the restaurant down the street on Foursquare, do you think it would be too much if I went down and pretended I go there all the time?”

Don’t pretend like you’ve never done it.

When dating we obsess.  Over everything.  “Ohmygod he didn’t call me today but he did text me 3 times but do you think that means he doesn’t like me, I mean, he posted on Britney’s Facebook wall and not mine, what does that mean?”

Sitting at your desk at work, smartphone half hidden by paperwork so you can see it but the rest of the office can’t, anxiously waiting for a :::beep::: or a little flash of light.  You went on a second date last night and you like the guy/girl so now the obsessing shall begin:

• Looking at your cell phone approximately every 2.37 minutes because s/he said s/he’d call

• Force refreshing your emails...because s/he might’ve emailed!?

• Checking your call history at least half an hour...because your cell phone was in your bag and the banana you took for lunch might’ve answered it by mistake

• Longingly staring at your cell phone and willing something to appear...and when it does it’s a badly typed text from your mum telling you you’re laundry is ready to be collected.

• Checking Twitter because this is the 21st century and who wouldn’t tweet you to make a date!?

• Calling your voicemail at home in case he left a voicemail there.

• Logging into Facebook to see if s/he’s online and if s/he is then why isn’t s/he contacting you!?

• Refresh your Facebook to see if s/he’s created and event inviting you on a date.

• Checking his Facebook profile to see if there’s been any activity.

• Checking Foursquare to see if s/he’s checked in locally

• You hit desperation point (mirage in the desert style) and so check Instagram, Flickr, WhatsApp, Google+ and Last.fm to see if you can get any clues of what s/he’s been up to or where s/he is.

• And my personal favourite...texting a ‘friend’ but ‘accidentally’ sending it to him/her and then quickly following it up with a “ohmygodimsosorry that was meant for my friend but I sent it to you by mistake” text...we know it wasn’t a mistake....and so does your mate...and then to make it worse you have to repeat all of the above for at least another 3 weeks if s/he doesn’t reply.

• Then after 3 weeks of obsessing you check obituary's and call hospitals to make sure s/he didn’t die - those first 2 dates were really special to you!

As well as obsessing we plan and we over-think.  I’m definitely not just talking about girls either.  In my experience, and I’m talking about my guy friends here, guys seem to over think stuff like the ‘3-day rule’ (i.e. not calling too soon) because they don’t want to seem too keen or desperate or whatever.  GUYS!  Just call her!  You’re making the obsession worse and if you’re not careful the most awesome girl in with world is going to come off as a complete psychopath because YOU’RE MAKING HER CRAZY.

The solution to obsessing is over-dating.  Did your mum ever tell you there are plenty more fish in the sea? Well, what she should really have told you was “there are plenty of fish in the sea so make sure you (non-exclusively) date a salmon, trout, sea bass and red snapper all at the same time...and if you have enough energy you could try a rainbow trout, mackerel and halibut as well”.  See, mum’s are wise (but really that was my idea, not my mum’s, I don’t even think she’s ever told me there are more fish in the sea, Dad took charge of dating advice and it was generally summed up by “don’t date; boys smell and are weird”).

So ladies and gents, it’s simple, make date plans for 6 out of 7 days and :::heypresto::: you have too many dates on your mind to even think about whether you’re being called post-date!

#thatisall

Click here to follow Jen on Twitter!

#NerdsUnite: Facebook + Your Relationship (To update your relationship status? or not? That is the question!)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Jen. She's a graphic designer by day and a serial monogamist by night that lives across the pond in the UK. She's currently in a relationship of 8 years, and her dating record prior had been puddle jumps from 3 months here ... to 3 months there. These are her thoughts on life, love, and all things nerd. Hit it Jen!! </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Jen Randall

Facebook + Your Relationship

Ok, so there isn’t really any etiquette for when to add someone to Facebook....do you do it pre-date, post 1st date, post 2nd date, once you’ve established you’re dating exclusively??  Facebook really is complicated!  Answers on a postcard.

So this (super hot and awesome) girl I know recently started to question her boyfriend’s feelings for her on the basis that he never ‘likes’ her Facebook statuses, doesn’t comment on her wall and always untags photos.  When I suggested that maybe she was being a little bit ridiculous she honestly could not see where I was coming from.  She was so wrapped up in what other people were seeing on his / her Facebook profiles that she seemed to forget that she actually lives with this guy and so Facebook should really be irrelevant – in other words who cares whether he ‘likes’ your status because I’m pretty sure he’s going to ‘like’ you when he gets home.

“Ohmygod he just liked that b*tches facebook status...that MUST mean he’s cheating on me and I need to contact Dick Van Dyke (in his Diagnosis Murder days) and find a Facebook hacker and ohmygod my life is over and I HATE HIM.”

Weirdly, changing your Facebook status should be a mutual decision, but ask yourself this, do you feel like “can we change our Facebook statuses” is a conversation you feel like your grown-up life warrants?  Really?  By no means am I saying I’ve never done this, though obviously my status has been the same for 8 years, but it just seems like a real high school thing to be doing.  Facebook defines relationships well (and by “well” I mean “hideously badly”).  When you have an argument with your significant other and s/he immediately changes his/her status to “it’s complicated”, it’s probably time you change yours to “single”.  

Facebook + The Break-up

Facebook has turned into an all-singing all-dancing electronic record of your dating history, which might be great for some people, but for others, I am implicating myself here, it’s a disaster.  From the guy who committed an armed robbery shortly after we broke up (and was featured in the news news), to the guy who has questionable photos of me from when I was 17, then there’s the guy who was incarcerated in a mental health facility shortly after we broke up, I’m not saying I was the cause....but they do say “if the cap fits wear it”, don’t forget the guy who’s virginity I took but didn’t realise, and the guy who I abandoned mid-coitus...who happens to be the same guy I only ‘dated’ because his bestfriend broke up with me to go back to his ex-girlfriend...and really my dating history only gets worse but also more entertaining.  But I am still linked to all of those people through Facebook (not all of them directly, but indirectly through friends, they are still visable), this makes moving on kind of hard or it would do if I didn’t have the emotions of a dry fish when it came to past relationships.

Breaking up with someone is difficult enough, being broken up with is obviously worse, but when you’re doing it in front of 600+ of your nearest and dearest (hahah) friends (and 600+ of your girlfriend/boyfriends friends) the hurt is multiplied to ridiculous levels.  The point at which you break up is hard, but the removal of that Facebook status is harder because then come all the questions and people you haven’t heard from in 10 years sending you messages asking what happened and “did he cheat on you” and “who did you sleep with” and “we knew you’d mess it up”.  Then worst of all is the moving on.  Who cares that you got in there first and are already flaunting your shit around all the clubs and on all the dating sites you can think that your ex might see, whilst simultaneously tagging hundreds of photos of you with other random guys.....your ex just posted a photo....s/he is holding hands with someone....and it’s not you.

:::heart breaks:::

The worst example of this I’ve seen recently is a guy my boyfriend knows.  He’s approximately 23 or 24, he got married 2 years ago and had a baby about 12-18 months ago.  Everyone knew that he was cheating on his wife (it feels so weird to call someone a wife at that age!), but no-one said anything.  Then oneday he told his friends that he had left his wife and child, no more than 2 weeks later he had changed his status from “married” to “in a relationship” and changed his profile picture from one of him and his child to a MySpace style photo of him and his new girlfriend (a classy iPhone, from above, in bed, head-only shot edited with Photoshop for iPhone so the edges were blurred and it looked all dreamy and yes I just said it looked “dreamy”).  Obviously when this happened the first thing I did was check to see if he had de-friended his wife.  He hadn’t.

The moral of this fragmented story is....change to Google+, you’re boyfriend/girlfriend most likely hasn’t had an invite yet.

#thatisall

Click here to follow Jen on Twitter!