[Nas]

I wanted to share this because I've seen a few posts lately on the topic of seeing things posted on social media.

My SIL is in the midst of what I think I can safely categorize as one mother of an MLC, with all the hideous, disgusting and selfish behavior that goes with it. I don't write about it here because honestly, it's my brother's story to tell, I am there for him when he needs to talk but it's a very complicated family history.

My brother has the support of her extremely huge, close family (as much as they can - they are after all her family) and her mother currently is fighting stage 4 cancer (diagnosed 3 years ago).

SIL wanted to take her mother out for her birthday and her mother said flat out, "I'm going to have to take a pass. All you've been doing is lying to [her H, my brother] and I can't be a hypocrite and sit across from you."
After she said this, SIL called my brother screaming and saying that "it might be my mother's last birthday and she doesn't want to spend it with me because of YOU!" And then a whole bunch of WTF drama went down, as you all can imagine, all caused by her. (It's truly weird how her rage amplifies the more he remains calm. It was the same with my former H, but still strange to see.)

It was messy and ugly. BUT on social media, her post was an over the top happy birthday to her mother/best friend/rock/the most amazing woman she's ever known who she loves so much, etc, etc, and so many likes and heart emojis and comments from people about how beautiful her message was. Nobody who commented or "liked" this post has any idea that SIL's mother would not even have lunch with her because she's so disappointed and upset by her.  It just really exemplifies that NOTHING you see on social media tells the whole story or even close to it.

I thought this might help to share, especially for newbies who are still fighting the urge to "take a peek" or "look for clues of the affair falling apart" or any other reason for looking at posts.

It DOES NOT help.  It IS NOT reality.  You cannot assess anything from it. All it will do is cause monkey braining and more pain. Take a social media break, deactivate your accounts. Don't look. Tell everyone you know not to look or share what they see with you. If they respect you, they won't. I cut off communication with several gossipy drama lovers who insisted on sharing unrequested information with me after I specifically asked them not to (but honestly, it should go without saying).

Anyway, just thought it might help to see an example of Facebook v. Reality and maybe this can be a thread where people share similar examples, stories etc to serve as a reminder that nothing is what it appears and our own lives are the ones that deserve our focus and attention.

[Dragonfly33]

Thank you for sharing this Nas. I‘m one of those who thinks that my xh is very happy now by the looks of his social media account and the OW. OW is always posting a video of them together all lovey dovey. And it does affect me still. There are just days when I miss my h so much and I just want to see how he is doing. Looks like he’s found his way and it’s so unfair when I feel very lost still. I haven’t really found my footing yet. So yeah you are right about not checking social media

[Treasur]

What a useful story, Nas. (Although I am sorry that your family is having to experience this kind of s$it....even with one’s own experience of WTF, you still have moments of observing this kind of behaviour and thinking that it would sound crazy in a book or film, I think.)

I shut down a lot of my social media post BD as well as changing a lot of my contact details bc of threats/stalking/being ‘spied’ on etc. I missed nothing from not seeing what my xh was doing or vice versa. I am very slowly and judiciously deciding which social media I engage with now, both for friends who like FB and in my professional life. I haven’t found I miss it much tbh and I post very little - no selfies from me lol. I tend to message people directly now or chat on the phone. Writ large, I think we have some brewing social hiccups from developing the habits of curating and photographing our lives instead of living them in the moment tbh.....and some of the experience of younger folks is a bit worrisome when you listen to them talk about the role social media plays in their lives vs RL connections.

A chum of mine - who is a pretty regular poster on FB usually - has been ill with Covid and after effects since mid December so not posting much. She bumped into a local chum was said ‘gosh, I didn’t know you were ill....you should have said so on FB so we could have helped out, we just presumed you were busy doing lots of nice things which is why we hadn’t seen you’. But my chum said to me, ‘well, you only post cheerful things on FB, don’t you, no one shares saying they feel rotten or are worried about the hike in their mortgage or that they had a miserable Christmas’ 

[marvin4242]

Thanks Nas great post and thread. Must read for everyone. Only thing I want to add is to underscore that people in MLC are constantly lying to themselves and others, trying to create a fake "happiness" and purpose to what is a very conflicted, painful and confused state. So add that to the stuff you pointed out about social media being nothing more than an "ad" and completely not realistic and you have a double whammy.

If the saying is "don't believe anything they say and only half of what they do" when it comes to social media is just reduces down to "believe none of it."

[Dragonfly33]

Thanks Nas great post and thread. Must read for everyone. Only thing I want to add is to underscore that people in MLC are constantly lying to themselves and others, trying to create a fake "happiness" and purpose to what is a very conflicted, painful and confused state.

If the saying is "don't believe anything they say and only half of what they do" when it comes to social media is just reduces down to "believe none of it."

I don’t know why but this made me feel validated Marvin.

[Nas]

I missed nothing from not seeing what my xh was doing or vice versa.

Same.  I got off social media a few years ago because, unrelated to my former H or MLC, a very unwelcome monster from my childhood was trying to contact me via direct messages. Because the truth is that no matter what privacy settings you use, you’re pretty much always findable on social media.
But in the early days after BD (and even before but I didn’t recognize it because… Well, why would I, it was all foreign to me until BD) my former H’s OW and one of her friends had already started some shenanigans and even though my page was locked down and “private” they still were able to let me know in different ways that they were in fact stalking and invading my online spaces.

The interesting thing with seeing my brother deal with this after having been through it myself is comparing the different ways that we handle(d) certain things based on our different upbringings (and yes, we are the same age and lived in the same house with the same family but had drastically different upbringings.) And the different ways that social media plays into it given that he has children and I didn’t. I can completely understand hesitating to delete social media when you have children on it that you need to monitor. Or if that’s the only way that you can connect to other school parents or get alerted to school issues etc.

My brother has not deleted my sister-in-law from social media specifically because he wants to be able to see what she posts about his kids. And because he wants to keep things as normal as possible for the kids, one of whom is also old enough to be on social media now. I think it must be an added layer of stress, to have an MLC spouse posting about your children, seeing posts on social media involving your children and viewing or “liking” it as an observer instead of an active participant. He told me his lawyer suggested writing something into the separation agreement explicitly addressing posting on social, including being explicit about privacy settings. I don’t know the specifics or all the dos and don’ts that would be involved but I can imagine there some I can’t even think of given that I am not a parent.

Anyway that’s a bit of a digression from why I started this thread. As Marvin said, MLCers, leavers, cheaters, walk away spouses, they are all lying to themselves, constructing a shaky, false “happiness” and trying to convince themselves as well as the rest of the world when they post things.  Since we can’t see inside their minds, we don’t know the exact motive or what’s really going on. You can look at posts on social media and construct all kinds of narratives, but that’s all they are, narratives constructed by the viewer. It’s not the truth, far from it.

🎶 https://youtu.be/xJeWySiuq1I

[UrsaMajor]

They don't call it FakeBook for no reason....