Anyone with a Facebook account likely stumbled across the recent Love Your Spouse Challenge where couples shared images and statements of love directed at their partners and encouraged friends and family members to do the same. I participated in the challenge myself and uncovered some interesting (and surprisingly negative views) on this social media tactic along the way.
But why? After all, they are just pictures. Or is there more to it than that?
We all have a real life and what I call a “Facebook Life.” The pictures we post and the stories we tell on Facebook are simply a snapshot in time. It is a moment made up of, at most, 60 seconds, which equates to 0.07% of a day. Think about it; even if you post 10 times, that is not even 1% of your day! Beyond this 1% is the 99% of your day where anything from mundane to hilarious to devastating to incredible happens and we don’t post it all.
Why should we?
Imagine a world in which people posted mostly negative life occurrences. How depressing! Certainly, it helps to know if a family member died [my sympathies are with you], or a friend’s flight was delayed [I’ve been there, and I appreciate the funny way you are coping], or someone spilled coffee, broke their shoe and lost a button on their shirt all before the 9 AM meeting [thanks for giving me a chuckle but that really stinks and I’m glad to know it is not just me]. However, if this is all we heard, how would we get up in the morning? Maybe we’d just stop reading Facebook.
Personally, I enjoy seeing most posts. They help me come up with new vacation ideas or realize a different way to handle a given situation. I even learned the Olympics are on! Don’t get me wrong, there are days that I am envious of those doing something really cool and annoyed at the ones who complain after just having returned from their third vacation of just the summer. Especially when I’ve had 3 date nights in 11 months! Then I realize how lucky I am to come home to a cute, fun baby, an amazing husband, and once a week, take aerial arts so that I can learn crazy stunts.
At the end of the day, life ebbs and flows. My good moment is your bad moment. Your awesome moment is my crappy moment. Sometimes, we can have good and bad moments at the same time.
The Love your Spouse Challenge made me realize that, while my husband and I love our son and want to spend as much time with him as we can, it has been at the sacrifice of each other. We used to prioritize taking time for ourselves as a couple where, at the very least, we would religiously go out on date night every Wednesday. I’m happy to report we are about to take a sunset cruise and a babysitter will be with our awesome son. One topic of conversation already on the list is: “If our life was a blank slate as of today, what would we do, where would we live?” We may realize that what we are doing now is “it”…or not.
Thank you to the friend who ‘challenged’ me to show my love for my spouse on Facebook. It’s time I focus on being a badass wife!
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