Letter Never Sent

I recently found out one of my friends is getting a divorce. They’ve been married about five years and have kids. I don’t know all the details of the situation and I don’t care to know. I’m a big believer in the idea that “it takes two to tango”. In other words, no matter what the circumstances, both people in a relationship bear equal responsibility for what happens. The good and the bad. That doesn’t mean if someone is being abused or mistreated that they’re responsible for that behavior against them. On the other hand, when someone is being mistreated it is often not the first occasion or indication of such negative behavior. We teach people how we want to be treated. That sounds like a Dr. Phil-ism, but I think it’s true. On some level, if you let people treat you like crap, that is acceptable to you. You either think that’s what you deserve, or you even want to be mistreated. Anyway, I don’t believe that there’s a good guy or a bad guy in any relationship. It’s almost always the case that each party is equally responsible.

That being said, this friend’s wife met a guy on Myspace. They started emailing and contacting each other and the result is that she’s leaving my friend for this guy she barely knows. According to my friend, this guy found his wife by contacting one of her friends who is also married with children. He was looking for single women with children and found her “by mistake”. So, this friend put him in touch with my friend’s wife and they went from there, and now they’re getting divorced. It’s a big mess and it bothers me.

What kind of world do we live in where random strangers can sort through thousands of people to find someone who meets certain characteristics? Is that something we really want to participate in? I don’t think Myspace is a haven for pedophiles and sexual predators, but there is something creepy about the whole thing. A bunch of human beings on computers who distill down their personality to what bands they like, and other loose touchstones like what sports teams they root for, or what TV shows they like. Maybe I just don’t get the social network thing. I’m fairly asocial. I do think it would be naive to assume that it’s an entirely positive thing. It smacks too much of unreality, or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it just lays bare the whole grasping social equation, the desire for human contact, because we can only be ourselves when we’re reflected in others.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 6th, 2006 at 11:34 am and is filed under General, Psychology, Society. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.