The Trouble with Facebook

Just when you think humans can't complicate romantic relationships anymore, social networking sites come along and add a whole new twist to the game.

I'll tell you all about it. But first...how about some self-promotional stuff including this week's headLINES

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A Pair of Singles with Dawn Dumont appears in ed Magazine. Current article is here.

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Where was I? Oh yeah, Facebook and its penchant for causing romantic complications.

A friend of mine told me about a pretty nasty breakup where the unhappy couple's friends became unwilling spectators for a scathing wall-to-wall exchange.

A comic I know met a couple of women after a show one night and for a joke, announced on Facebook that he was engaged to one of them. The resulting fallout...not pretty.

Josey Vogels latest column focused on her jealousy after seeing a message on her honey's wall from an ex.

Those of us in I'm-seeing-other-people-and-I'm-okay-with-you-doing-the-same phases find ourselves put to the test. It's one thing to know in theory that the person you're spending time with is seeing others--it's quite another to see the Others pictures and comments.

A couple days ago I noticed my ex- had changed her status from single to in a relationship.

It stung.

It shouldn't have. I know we did the right thing by breaking up and that a relationship with her would be unworkable for countless reasons (Okay, not countless. Probably only six or seven, but as differences go, they're pretty irreconcilable). I'm content with my current relationship status. And I WANT my ex- to be happy--and not in the saying-I-want-her-to-be-happy-through-gritted-teeth-in-a-passive-agressive-martyr sense either. I enjoyed our time together and learned a lot about myself and we parted on decent terms. As far as failed relationships goes, that's the most you can ask for.

But my heart doesn't really care that much about all that bullshit I just wrote. It's going to feel what it's going to feel when it's going to feel it. That's just the way it goes.

Funny thing. I've been writing about dating and relationships for nearly a year now. Sometimes I think I have a decent understanding about how they work and other times I think I know even less than when I started. That's what keeps me coming back, I guess.

And if things go badly, I can always blame Facebook.