Publicity....

I've grown up in an era where people explore their sexuality on the profile pictures of their myspace or facebook accounts, in an era where bad nights and alcohol mishaps are forever immortalized in the zeros and ones of computer file, breakups are blasted across pseudo-"newsfeeds" and first sexual encounters start in chat rooms rather than bedrooms.

I sometimes wonder how this has changed the way feel for one another. Is the Internet helping our relationships or hurting them?

As a woman with family and friends strewn around the world I have always been an advocate of the world wide web. I've had every major Internet network profile that has been popular in the last ten years, from ICQ and MSN to LiveJournal, Myspace and Facebook, I have been there and done that.

But when my most recent relationship fell to shreds, I got a little worried about what my forthright Internet use meant to my emotional state. Of course, I did what any vindictive Internet-era girl would do and skipped egging his car to leave nasty comments (well just one comment...posted over and over about 25 times) all over his "wall". And damn...did it ever feel good.

I dreaded removing my relationship status, for so long I was the lucky girl who owned the profile photo of her and her handsome boyfriend kissing before the Eiffel Tower... but a mere month later I was walking wounded in front of my closest friends and almost forgotten acquaintances. Surprisingly instead of the wave expected embarrassment I was touched and consoled by comforting messages of encouragement.
But months later the story is a little different...

I mean, I admit that I still Google even some of my ex-ex-boyfriends. I still look up old crushes from time to time, sneak peeks at their new lives (and sometimes wives). But is it healthy?

I sometimes feel jealous to think that there was an era when breaking up meant that you didn't have to face a glowing green circle showing you that she or he is online. I resent the women who could walk away and have it be done with over and gone...out of sight and out of mind. Women who didn't have to be reminded of the existence of the jawline that made them weak in the knees every time there was a photo update on so-and-so's page.

And while I envy them, I wonder if the Internet provides us the opportunity to make sure that there are indeed no unanswered questions in life... letting us catalogue our "what ifs" into neat contact groups.

I wonder if the safety of being behind a computer screen takes away from our true knowledge and experience of life's relationship moments. Little things like finding out that the boy in science class really has a crush on you... how much of that thrill is lost when its typed in a chat room rather whispered in the flesh? It scares me to think that I may have kids who have Internet sex before they experience the real thing, and how that may change their experience of it.

I suppose the connection of the web has its ups and its downs. While we have more opportunities to connect more than ever, perhaps we are corrupting and taking advantage of the very thing that truly connects us to each other : our ability to feel with one another in the presence of one another.

I guess at the end of the day, while I support the Internet and all its advancements I will forever and above all else advocate experiencing meaningful moments face to face rather than face to screen.