Friend or Un-Friend

On Facebook, as in real-life, it is sometimes necessary to Un-Friend someone.

It happens. Occasionally, a friend who you thought you knew turns out to be someone you didn’t expect them to be.

In life it’s a bit harder to Un-Friend someone, but my question is: Why do people do it?

I guess there are probably times when you Friended them, or they Friended you and it was too soon in the relationship to be Friends…

Now that you feel like you know them better, you don’t like really like them anymore. Or maybe it’s an ex-boyfriend, (which I found out today you are supposed to Un-friend immediately-oops). 

I am sure there are tons of reasons for Un-friending somebody but I wonder if it happens because some people are concerned with having as many friends as possible, regardless of who they are or if they share similar interests and beliefs. 

Then they end up with Friends they don’t really know or even like...

(Correct me if I am wrong, if I say you are my ‘Friend’ doesn’t that mean that I have to at least like you?)

Anyways…..

I’m left to assume they must be striving for Friend quantity rather than Friend quality.

Maybe it’s about some people choosing to act differently when you first start talking to them.

You meet someone new, or it’s someone you knew in the past and are meeting them again; the conversation seems nice, they seem nice but then you talk a few more times after that and the more you get to know them they seem to change…

You eventually wonder who this person is. 

Usually, it’s not them changing, it’s the Real Them….it just took them a while to come out.

If that happens, no worries, FB makes it as easy to Un-Friend them, as it was to Friend them.

Just go to your Friends list, click edit friends and all of your ‘friends’ will be laid out in front of you (who are all completely unaware of what you are about to do- by the way)

Then, by clicking the little blue X next to their name you officially ‘remove’ them as your Friend

Now - they no longer exist.

Well, that is not entirely true. They do exist, just not in your FB World.

Honestly, I’d have to say that my  #1 reason to Un-Friend someone on FB (yes, I have done this) is because they do not sensor what they post and are either too crude or too judgmental and I don’t think that my friends and family would appreciate the lack of respect.

My wall is not for them to post their insulting or cruel thoughts. (Yes, Freedom of Speech, I get it, but really? It's just not neccessary.)

So, if you all of a sudden are no longer my Friend on FB -I guess you'll know why;)

*To all of my True Friends: 

I am blessed to know you and I know you are genuine and I respect you for being yourself. I appreciate you! (And sorry for any icky stuff you had to endure on my wall written by disrespectful Friends – that sounds like an oxy-moron..)

**A note to my future-potential-Un-Friends: If you Un-friend me or plan on Un-friending me in the near future, I would like to say thank you! 

I would rather you be honest and Un-friend me than pretend to Friend (like) me.

 

Truly,

Amber

More than Love

I went to the library a couple of weeks ago for some encouragement and insight on relationships.

I picked out an audio book called Rescue Your Love Life, by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend.

I have to admit, at first I felt like seemed too severe. I knew that my significant other and I had things we needed to work on, but were we really in that much trouble?

Both of us are from divorced parents, and both of us are divorced as well, so we have some baggage and try often to work things out together as best as possible. We usually do okay, but I felt like we needed something else.

I noticed the subtitle:  Change Those Dumb Attitudes & Behaviors That Will Sink Your Marriage.

I was a bit embarrassed to check this out, wondering if my relationship really needed to be rescued from sinking. And if it did, why in the world were we even together?

The  audio book was clearly meant for the married couple, but I got it anyhow, hoping it would have something amazing to teach us.

 We are not married, but we are living together raising my three children. We are in this for the long haul, so we really needed some insight into how we could be in love more often, and learn how to communicate better.

We listened to the cd’s separately while still having problems, and it didn’t seem to change things.

Then I took my significant other’s advice and we listened to them together on our extended car ride this weekend.  

It was a great idea! We learned a lot and had many opportunities to talk about what we were listening to and how it related to us and the issues in our own relationship.

We learned in many situations it’s as simple as dumb thinking which can totally ruin the chance to grow as a couple, and rob us of moments of understanding more about each other. And we were relieved to realize that a lot of what we are experiencing is not only normal for most couples at this stage, but it is also an important part of the next step of growing in love. Wow! We also didn’t realize that it’s okay to go through this time and that, if handled with care, it will actually take us to the next level of our relationship and build a stronger love.

At the end of most segments on the cd’s they had something called ‘Check it out’. They’re examples of ‘if the shoe was on the other foot’ situations and how would we feel if it were us? It shared other people’s stories and the solutions, as well as related bible verses.

I’m so glad we got the audio book even though the title seemed too serious and was actually meant for married couples. In listening to these, we learned so much and sooner than later!

We are also reading I Promise by Dr. Gary Smalley, and it too explains that these difficult stages are the crucial moments of the two of us to be real with each other and grow closer as we work on our differences and use them to compliment our life together.

Married or not- at this point, we care deeply about our relationship as many married and unmarried couples do.

We are deepening our love relationship already, just by changing our thinking.

I shouldn’t be surprised, since isn’t that where fixing things begins?  With ourselves?

While listening to these cd’s  we were in awe of how much of this seemed like common sense and seemed so easy to do, but until pointed out, we never considered. The Love of My Life put it like this: these books help us see and understand minor problems and differences in thinking that would severely affect  an otherwise good relationship.

Between this set of cds and the book I promise by, we are realizing that we are at a wonderful stage. We are seeing each other for who we are. We’ve learned that this is a great place for us to be right now. They say that we will bring out the worst in each other and that it’s okay and actually healthy at this point. And that we need to work these things out and go through it , and as long as we are open, communicative, loving and fair when disagreeing and listening, we are and will be okay.

And we are okay, we are better now than we were  in the very beginning of our relationship! And we have actually had many strides we’ve made along the way that we accomplished on our own, and that we can be proud of. Now we are looking forward to many more with the tips in these books.

In the end, I learned that it was more about me that needed fixing than with him, and he learned there was more for him to work on than me. ;) Basically we learned a lot about the amount of control we had on each other, none.

As for our relationship, our goal is to have a strong bond over the long term, and realize how much work the relationship requires. Because even when you have as much in common and as much love as we do, we are human, we are not perfect and need a hand sometimes.

We found so much understanding of what we are going through to be a normal phase of a relationship which will go long term if we omit our stinking thinking, work a little harder to listen to each other more and give, give give.

And at the end of the day, we loved the fact that we can look at each other and know, without a doubt, that we are both committed to do whatever it takes to meet half way and work together to better our relationship, no matter what it takes.

And to confirm the common myth about relationships:

You need way more than just love, you need a lot of elbow grease;)