I had Carol make up a fictional AITA post for me to answer…. Let’s see how I do.
Title: AITA for getting upset over my girlfriend’s social media habits?
Post:
Hey Reddit, I’m in a bit of a weird spot and could use some judgment.
So, my girlfriend “Liz” and I have been together for about a year. Things are great when we’re together, but there’s this one thing that’s been bugging me: her social media presence.
Liz is pretty active on Instagram and Twitter, and she’s always posting about her life, which I think is cool. But, here’s the kicker—she never posts about us. Like, ever. No pictures of us together, no relationship status update, nothing. It’s like I don’t exist in her online world.
I’ve brought it up to her, and she says she likes to keep her relationship private, which I can understand to a point. But it feels off to me, especially since she’s so open about every other aspect of her life. It makes me wonder if she’s hiding our relationship or if she’s not as serious about us as I am.
I got pretty upset the last time we talked about it, and now things are tense. AITA for being upset that my girlfriend doesn’t acknowledge our relationship on social media?
Oh, fictional person. I’m so sorry this is happening to you even though you are not real.
I have the exact opposite problem, which is that when I include my friends in my online world, I only matter when I praise them. As in, the writing is good because they look good. The writing is bad because they look bad. There has only been one exception in this case, Supergrover, who said that she gets something out of my work whether I paint her in a bad light or not. The rest of my friends sincerely wish that I would portray them as angels all of the time…. that even if they grossly mistreat me, it doesn’t matter in the slightest because the fact that I wrote about them cancels it out. That I told someone what you did that hurt me absolves you of any wrongdoing.
So, the fact that you’re not being included and you want to be is all kinds of weird for me. I do not have this problem. However, I can empathize. Supergrover doesn’t have a blog, but if she did, I’d be mad if everyone was in it but me. That I hadn’t made enough of an impact to rate.
The most important thing for you to know is why you want to be on her social media. If you’re feeling left out and you express that, what are you going to do if nothing changes?
What are the consequences?
How long are you going to take the pattern of being left out, believing that she’s a “private person,” if she has other friends plastered all over Insta without you.
People do not say what they mean.
You might want to start doing your own social media thing that’s different from hers so that you are including her in your world. See if it feels natural to you before you criticize her. Maybe she’s telling the truth. Maybe she wants to break up with you and won’t tell you.
Either way, the time to move is when you receive no answer and no change for longer than you’re comfortable.
You need to say “you are hurting my feelings by excluding me,” and be prepared for a conversation you didn’t think was going to end the way it did. Standing up for yourself often looks like earth shattering fear. If she doesn’t want to share pics with you on social media, you can’t make her. You can only decide how long you’re comfortable being hidden away.
Feeling like a secret.
Stories That Are All True 