My Boyfriend’s Popularity On Social Media Ruined Us

Offline, my boyfriend was amazing. Online, it was another story. Here are 14 reasons why his obsession with his internet persona and popularity ended up ruining our relationship.

1. He was obsessed with adding tons of friends. He kept adding friends and followers on his social media accounts. There’d be 10 or more people added to his lists on a daily basis—and what was troubling was that most of them were hot women in those fake-looking profile pictures. Ugh.
2. His wall was a circus. His Facebook wall always had so much traffic. I’d log onto the social media site to post something to his wall and see that so many other people were chatting to him already. Many were women and I started to worry about who they were and how he knew them.
3. He connected with everyone. And I mean everyone. He’d chat to someone at a party after meeting them five minutes earlier and he’d be following them on Twitter by the next morning. It was crazy! I knew he was a nice guy and people gravitated towards him but this just felt like too much.
4. He never deleted his exes. When I asked him about the people (mostly women) he was adding on his social media accounts, he’d say they were friends, people he’d met online because of joint hobbies, or he’d say that they were his ex-girlfriends. Ugh. He was friends with all of his exes and they chatted all the time on social media. Double ugh.
5. He cared about “likes” too much. I started to see that he cared a little too much about what people on his social media accounts thought of him. If he posted a selfie, for example, he’d worry if no one “liked” it. It was clear that he wasn’t as confident as he initially seemed to be around me. The guy had insecurities and it bugged me that he was letting his online life affect him so much.
6. He was tagged all the time. I saw my boyfriend getting tagged in loads of pictures on social media by his friends and it was weird to watch this whole other life of his play out on the screen. I’d flick through the images and see him having a blast with his friends but it just felt like I was being left out.
7. I got a case of the greens. Many studies have found that social media sites can cause jealousy in relationships and it was happening to me! I was starting to feel like he had a whole other life of which I was only seeing snippets on Facebook. I hated it when I wasn’t with him because I worried about who he was chatting to, meeting, and taking pictures with.
8. He became a phubbing king. He was so interested in what his friends were saying on social media that he never went anywhere without his phone—even the bathroom! He sometimes ignored me during dinner because he was too focused on his screen, and once he typed on his phone throughout an entire movie we were supposed to be watching together.
9. His online life destroyed our quality time. I’d ask him what he was doing by casually saying, “What are you up to?” He’d tell me he was chatting to so-and-so about whatever, or someone had contacted him and they were going to go snowboarding next week. Whatever. So much for our quality time together. I sometimes felt like I had to log onto social media to chat to him—that was the only way to get his attention for a decent amount of time!
10. I started to feel like a loser. After a while of dating Mr. Popularity, it started to have some weird side effects. I felt like my self-esteem was being battered daily. I started to compare my popularity (or lack thereof) with my boyfriend’s. It didn’t help that whenever I met one of his friends in person, they’d say things like, “Wow, your boyfriend’s so great. I hope you know how lucky you are.”
11. I thought he was ashamed to be with me. My insecurities escalated when I realized that my boyfriend never posted couple pictures of us on Instagram but he was always snapped with his friends or acquaintances. What was wrong with me? Clearly I had serious issues with his online personality and behavior. It was screwing me up and ruining my relationship!
12. Or maybe it was revealing what my boyfriend was really like. From fearing my boyfriend was ashamed to be seen with me online, I started to feel embarrassed about him. The thing is, he was posting selfies of himself all the time, even uploading those stupid and arrogant gym selfies. Was he so needy he had to keep showing off to everyone on his list? Was he so insecure that he needed to be loved by everyone? Was this the guy I was really dating?
13. He was fun online but not so much offline. He was becoming irritating to me in real life. I just couldn’t stop feeling pissed off about how he was always online with his nose in his phone and how he was pushing me away without even realizing it.
14. I know I was insecure, but… It felt like more than that. It felt like he didn’t care about me. He didn’t think about what I was feeling when he was spending all his time on his phone in my presence. It didn’t feel like he was there with me spiritually or mentally. He was always looking for the next big “like” or notification that he had to hurry to check, not giving a damn about how he was plugging out of our relationship. What an a-hole.