How Do You Date In A World With Social Media?

Some dates just stick in people's minds. 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, 1929 it's the Stock Market Crash, and in 1964 the Beatles gave us A Hard Days Night. For me, one that always permeates is November 3, 1998. As a bright eyed freshman at the University of Maine I was an 18 year old girl looking to make some changes. After joining the Student Philosophical Society (we sat around smoking clove cigarettes and discussing for hours all the brilliant thoughts that floated around our brains), visiting my first fraternity party (I was invited up to see, I wish I was kidding, one of the brother's "spoon collections"), and navigating the hills and quad in my fantastic late-90's platform heels (heck, at least they weren't stilettos!) I also decided I needed to experience life on my own again. So, after 4 years of dating my high school sweetheart I broke it off in a very tearful and difficult phone call home.

And I haven't been in a serious relationship since.

Whew, there, I typed it. I've only recently started telling people that I've been single for 10 years, and that's partially cause it has not really been important enough for me to calculate. I can't really explain why I've been in relationship lockdown, it just hasn't been a priority for me. I've been more occupied with my career, my friends, my Jimmy Choo's and less with finding that perfect someone. You hear the phrase all the time "As soon as you aren't looking for it you will find it" but I'm definitely proof positive that you at least have to put yourself out there at least a little or else no one knows. That's why I made a radical (for me) decision on this 10th anniversary and committed to putting myself out there and playing the dating game once again.

Then, this past week, I watched in horror as I realized that dating is no longer about boy meets girl and goes to dinner and a movie followed by a stroll on the pier eating ice cream and a kiss on the cheek goodnight. No, in the social media world I happily dive into dating is all about Facebook relationship updates, posting stuff on your blog for the world to see and pick apart and if you're really lucky being part of a growing segment of people getting dumped via text message. Suppose it's better than a Post-It...

Two of my friends who have been together ever since I have known them (for over 5 years) did the unthinkable on their Facebook pages. One took the profile link off his "in a relationship" and the other went from "in a relationship" to "single." Needless to say their feeds went crazy with people shooting off responses with the same horror I mentioned earlier. In fact I was one of the rabid responders distraught over the ending of this adorable relationship. Fortunately for the posters and the postees it was discovered that the two were just trying to unlink themselves, not end their relationship on Facebook.

How horrible, though, if it HAD been a true breakup, to have your social media world speculating and rehashing again and again. Its not like anyone enjoys breakups, let alone having them broadcast. When you open yourself up to the world of social media, though, you are just opening yourself up to this exactly. And when you are 10 years removed from the dating scene and trying to adjust with all this added anxiety its like sticking your toe in the ocean to test the temperature and getting shoved face first into a nasty riptide. That's only being a 4 follower fledgling, I can't even image being blogging royalty and stuck between keeping some things private and having to tell the world the juicy details.

How about you...how do you deal with relationships in the extremely open world of social media?