“Honey, look what the Johnsons are doing! They are vacationing again. They have so much fun! Why don’t we ever do these things?”
Sound familiar?
Maybe you have heard this, or even said this to your partner in response to someone’s social media post?
If we are to believe what we see on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even Google+, then it is clear that most people we know are having AMAZING lives, right?
We see vacation posts, proclamations of undying love and adorable children pictured everywhere. While all of these things can be fascinating as you are keeping up with long lost friends, ultimately it can leave you feeling as though you are falling short on many fronts. This is especially true when it comes to relationships.
What We See
Facebook and the other social media platforms are filled with stories of romantic gestures, anniversary tributes to long-lived relationships, and declarations of feeling blessed for the amazing lives being lived. We see beautiful selfies of friends that look like they haven’t aged a day, and couples that are at yet another amazing event. It appears that most people, especially couples, are living lives full of nothing but happiness, love, and rewarding events and experiences.
What We Feel
Recently someone told me they were looking at the many postings of a couple that used to be close friends of theirs and found themselves feeling a bit jealous. It seemed by the posts that this couple vacations ALL the time, and is still insanely in love. Her stream was full of kissy-faced selfies proclaiming, “this man! LOVE him,” while his posts showed cute poses of his wife as he declares himself, “the luckiest man alive.” Before long this person was feeling inadequate in their own relationship. They said, “looking at this it would seem that my relationship doesn’t even register on the happiness meter.”
It is not uncommon for these types of posts to leave us with the feeling that we don’t measure up. Feeling like somehow we have failed to meet certain benchmarks along the way, or like our life is drudgery compared to others is an unfortunate result of being too involved in social media.
