Are You Really in Love if It’s Not on Instagram?
“Look at this.”
My friend stuck her phone under my nose. On it was a picture on Instagram of a couple we both know, a photo of one of them pursing her lips over a frothy cocktail in a dim bar, flash on. Underneath, the caption said something like, “Weekly Love Post #72: Fancy cocktails with bae #mygirlfriendisbetterthanyours #weekiversary #sorryshestaken.”
“Blagahh,” I said, doing my best vomiting noise and pushing the phone away. My friend cackled, delighted by how quickly she was able to irritate me. This couple celebrates their “weekiversary” every week, without skipping. Ever. They have been doing it for 72 weeks, which is about 17 months, which is nearly one and a half years. Make it stop.
It is so early in this couple’s relationship and I’m already exhausted. So are most of our mutual friends. The responses on their weekiversary posts have dropped from dozens of “You two!!” and “Cutest couple ahhhhh!!” comments in the early days of their relationship to just a single comment from one of their moms. A lone tumbleweed of a comment, rolling through the dusty, echoing canyons of Shut Up You Guys National Park.
The members of this couple are nice in real life, and they are in love, and that is wonderful, but they are terrors on social media. The weekiversary posts are just the tip of the frozen-barf iceberg. There are also close, glistening photos of their home-cooked nightly dinners (kissy face #shesakeeper). There are unrelenting, near identical pictures of one of them napping next to a cat (heart-eyes #allmine). The content is nauseating and compelling; an endless highlight reel of two people who are strangely uninterested in keeping private, small joys in their relationship private.
And it’s not just them. I have coupled friends who post daily #whyiloveher pictures with paragraphs dedicated only to their partner (and their 2,000 followers), plus 15 hashtags underneath all that. I know friends in relationships who turn staying in and ordering pizza into a whole thing. It’s not just ordering pizza, it’s OMG best boyfriend ever!!<3<3 Pizza Date Night! Happy Tuesday babe I love you sooo much I couldn’t imagine my life without you! #soinlove.
It creeps me out. Why do people perform their relationships online? Who is it for? I don’t understand the point of regularly writing deeply personal declarations of love, even if it’s platonic friendship love, for thousands of strangers to see. Do people do it to mark territory? To make their person feel good? To show others that someone is worthy of love, but — hold up — you’ve already chosen them?
Our real lives and online lives are merging; they’re starting to feel indistinguishable. Even regular, noncelebrity people cultivate their own brands. Is a relationship real if it’s not flaunted on Instagram? Is the new definition of a commitment-phobe someone who chooses to keep relationships offline?
Then I’m a commitment-phobe. Daily love posts make me want to throw my phone in the street. Public-proposal videos cause me to cover my head and emit feral howling noises. If you have to keep reminding everyone of how happy you are, something’s not right. Happy people don’t need to announce over and over how happy they are. Happy people just … are. Your friends? They know when you’re in a healthy and loving relationship just by seeing you and knowing you. You don’t need to declare it every time you go online. These constant #relationshipgoals posts doth protest too much.
I get especially weirded out by people who seem interested in cultivating “fans” of their relationship. While it’s cute and flattering to have people make comments like “y’all are goals” and “adopt me” on a picture of you and your lover, I think it creates social pressure to stay in relationships that might actually be unhealthy. One of my good friends stayed with her evil ex for more than a year after she knew she needed to leave, worrying about “letting people down.”
She had relationship fans. Lots of them.
“I just feel so stupid,” she told me, in tears. “Everyone thinks we’re perfect. I don’t want to disappoint people.”
Let’s take a step back from that. As my mom would say, “Turn the spotlight off, honey.” Your relationship and/or breakup is not part of the public domain, unless you invite and encourage that. No couple is perfect, and no one knows the private things that happen between the well-edited photos you’ve posted with good lighting on vacation days with your partner. All couples are a mess sometimes. How weird is it to encourage people to envy you as you play the role of someone in a happy relationship?
Look, I’m not a monster. I feel happy and excited when my friends are in loving partnerships. I’m in one, too! And it’s great! I don’t hate all cutesy posts about partners; a few here and there make me coo out loud when I’m lying on the couch scrolling through my social media feeds. “Awww,” I’ll say to the empty room. “Look at them.” And I will tap that “like” button with genuine feeling and search through my emojis for just the right sparkly pink heart and gay rainbow and flame icon.
I love love. Just not, you know, every single time I unlock my phone
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