I Hope We Can Still Be Facebook Friends.

If there is one thing I know about myself, it is this: I love Facebook. Yes, I could pretend to be non chalent about it by not inviting anyone to be my friend (“I only accept friends. If you want to be my friend, you have to ask me. I won’t degrade myself to go looking for them.”) Only having a bare bones profile (Really? You’re happy with only putting up your birthday and the city you live in? Don’t you at least want to say where you went to college?), or the worst – not putting up a profile picture (I’m sorry, I know you think it makes you look so cool and above it all, but really that question mark, or now phallic looking outline, makes you look uncool.)

Here is what I love to do on Facebook: See what the the mean girls from high school are up to – they’re fat now, find out people’s relationship status – because an engagement is never official until both partners change their relationship status, check out wedding pictures – it’s like you were there!, and most importantly…”check in” on my exes.

Now don’t get me wrong, when I break up with someone, I try to end all communication, at least for the time being. However, thanks to the internets – these people never really do go away, often much to our chagrin. They sign into GChat – I think I might have tried to hide under my desk the first time this happened, as if he could see me through the computer, and through the Facebook newsfeed, we see that, no, these boys have not died or stopped existing, but rather are still very much alive and going about their day.

At first, it’s painful. Wait, he’s now friends with whom? Who is that girl? Am I cuter than her? Oh, whew, she’s married. The first pretty single girl facebook friend is devestating – you just imagine the two of them the morning after a hook up wearing white terrycloth bathrobes, having breakfast in bed, gazing into one another’s eyes, and Facebook friending each other. He might even propose right there. Even worse, the first picture of him and a mystery female. “Oh my gosh! He’s smiling and has his arm around her! That’s it, they’re getting married, they’re in love. Oh wait, that’s his married coworker. Nevermind.” Soon enough, with time, it starts to get funny – “Ha, he looks terrible. What a lame status update.” Before you know it, there’s acceptance and you stop looking at all.

That’s where I was earlier this summer. I broke up with a guy in December after dating for six months. Since then, I had moved on, and really wasn’t thinking much about the guy until I got a gchat from a friend (yes, they are Facebook friends – in this era of technology, a sign that a relationship is moving forward is when your friends become Facebook friends with the guy you’re dating. If he initiates the Facebook friendship, it’s practically official).

“Um, I think you should check out Mark’s facebook page. He has new pictures up.”

“Oh, this should be good.”

I’m not sure what I was expecting – really, just bar pics from the weekend before. Instead, I find this:

Yes, that's his cat. Tucked into his bed.

Wait, really? His cat? Not just a pic of his cat with his mom or something, but by herself, tucked into bed, presumably by him? I’m assuming the cat didn’t get all snug as a bug in a rug in bed by herself. I should have known there was something wrong when on our second date, I saw he owned “Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s Soul” and he didn’t apologize for it, but just said his mother gave it to him. (Well, then hide it until she visits. I don’t know about you, but I definitely judge people by the libraries they keep.) There were other freaky cat pics, in addition to candids of him with females that my friend described as “asian hookers.” I have to agree.

So in the end, I thank Facebook for making me realize that there’s always a reason things don’t work out. My father passed away when I was in high school, and since then I often find that relationships with guys end unexpectantly or suddenly the guy isn’t the person I thought he was. I always imagine the ghost of my father, protecting me from making any longer lasting mistakes, taking the guy by the shirt collar, throwing him on the doorstep, and saying, “You! Out!” (This is actually incredibly out of character for my father, not so much the confrontational type – definitely would have just made fun of him to death to my face – “That guy? Really?”, but the image provides me comfort somehow.) In this case, I think he saved me once again from a very sad road of me having to explain myself to my friends, “I mean, so he likes his cat. It’s okay that he tucks her into bed, right? It’s just like someone playing fetch with a dog in the park, right?” Good thing, the internets, or more specifically Facebook profiles, don’t lie.