Is Your Relationship Faux-Real? Low Key Love May Just Be Better Love

May 11th, 2012

I’ve always been a private person. Mostly so, when it comes to my relationships. I’ll give bits and pieces, on occasion, but you’ll never catch me flooding your notifications and timelines with sappy stories, inside jokes, and constant name changes. I’ve just never been the one to expose all of my business or express my every emotion via a tweet, ‘gram, or facebook status.

I cherish the moments I share with a person that no one else can share with them. I’m a lover in every ounce of the word, so it’s the things like his facial expressions, emotions, gestures, and the small things that makes him smile (and frown) that I honor in being able to know and understand. Afterall, a person doesn’t usually reach that level of comfort with another person until a level of respect and/or trust has been stumbled upon. So why give the world all of that in which I have been awarded? Lack of privacy, thanks to social media, is the reason why so many things are falling a part as we speak. So I prefer to consume myself with my relationships without the world’s assistance – after all, the number of likes are not a poll for whether or not my relationship is valid.

Sharing doses of our lives online is fun, at least it used to be, but things get tricky when we start to second guess our realities. Because we are constantly desiring what society has deemed as “the best” because we are constantly being fed what is deemed “like”-worthy and what will help us gain more notoriety on the web. So we can sometimes fall into a trap of distorting our truths in an attempt to match the Internet’s Picture-Perfect representation of what won’t be bashed, judged or ostracized. And as a result of wanting to fit in, we can find ourselves reinventing ourselves over and over again in hopes of keeping up with the people we idolized and the relationships we fantasize of having not realizing that those people and relationships are doing the same.

So much focus on our social presence makes me wonder, “If I’m putting my relationship out there constantly, are the problems that later come up in my relationship a result of genuine concerns or a result of ideas and opinions that have come about as a result of our online marketing being off?”

I don’t want my views of my relationship to be distorted because I’ve become so obsessed with the distortion.

Another one of my biggest fear of going hard in the relationship-marketing paint is my relationship failing and all of my excessive efforts to show the world that “I’m his wifey” biting me in the butt. We all know at least 10 Serial-Wifeys who constantly boast about their “perfect” relationship with their ‘Hubbies’ (of the year). Serial-Wifeys who start a new relationship as soon as the last ones has end. And we all know there’s just nothing appealing and/or admirable about that.

Sometimes we don’t realize it but, Promoting your Man, is just that — a promotion. While you’re building the hype, you’re also attracting customers. You’ve now shared the fact that he’s limited edition and without even realizing it you’re building up a clientele – a waiting list of women who are willing to sell their souls for a bite of him. And while you’re behind that computer screen adding that < and 3 to the end of that status, she's giving her all trying to prove that she can be for him what is absent in his life. If your man is strong enough, he won't break under the pressure but you can only build a strong man and a strong relationship by investing in the two and realizing that your stock isn’t with Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Now I’m not saying that you can’t let the world know that you are, in fact, happy. But I do believe that more focus should be put on making sure your man knows how you feel about him through actions and not via status updates. And it’s also important to make sure that he is happy too. Because while you’re sitting there advertising, someone else may be test driving. Is low-key love the best love? For me, no. But it sure is better love. One that is built on a different foundation. Two people working together to stand on top of the world and not two people working together to constantly please and keep up with it. A relationship between two people is a relationship between two people. And it’s been said by your mama ‘nem for hundreds of years: when you bring others into it, you are welcoming an opportunity for what you have to be destroyed. Let’s spend more time living the dream and less time selling it. Put down the keyboard and stop writing your fairy tale. I’d hate for the clock to strike 12 on the greatness that lies before you.

Kimberly
Creator of From A Wildflower