By Andrea Nemerson. View more alt.sex columns here. Email your questions to Andrea: andrea@altsexcolumn.com.
Dear Readers:
I recently resurfaced on Facebook after lying low for a year or so. Participating in social media no longer really feels optional — if you want to see people, that’s where they went. I’ve also been fascinated lately by the way the new media are changing our relationships with our own histories. Never before has it been so easy to reconnect with your past, or so hard to escape it. And friending acts as a great leveler: ex-boyfriend = current book-club pal = your best friend in grade school = your mom. You have no idea what kind of person that former girlfriend — the one who eviscerated you in public and left you for dead — really is now, but there she is, posting recipes and kindergarten graduation pix as if nothing ever happened. None of these quasi-connections need feel any realer or more important than the "Which kind of dryer lint are you?" quizzes and exchanges of virtual knickknacks. That moment when her name first pops up in your Facebook e-mail, though, that’s as real as a sucker-punch to the solar plexus, and can feel quite similar. What happens after that is the story. If you’ve got a good Facebook reunion tale, please share it with the class. Here’s the first one:
Dear Andrea:
I Facebooked my high school boyfriend. I received a warm response and an update. He has a wife and kids and a finance career that sounds kind of sleazy. Way back, he was rich and I was from the wrong side of the tracks.
He PM’d me his phone number. I really had no interest in calling him, but I gave him mine, thinking if he really wants to talk to me, he can call. I’m married and have two kids and really didn’t care.
He called twice. I was surprised, but kind of enjoyed the conversations. I think my life now is a lot more interesting than his, and I’m doing just as well as he is. In high school it was always that he was going to go on to great things and I was just going to be a housewife (he told me this once). Now he sounds kind of out-of-control and I am quite satisfied with my life.
Also — he’s cheating on his wife, pretending to be single on online dating sites. Oddly, it sounds like he’s picking up working-class girls, like I was, which is weird for me. He says he doesn’t want a divorce. I told him that sneaking behind his wife’s back is wrong. I told him he should write to you although I doubt he will (and you’d hang him).
I definitely need to break the contact. But, you have no idea how empowering it is to find out I have, on my terms, a BETTER life than he has.
This is sleazy, isn’t it?
Lady Schadenfreude
PS: OMG! When I turned down an invitation to come visit while his wife was out of town, he de-friended me!