illustration by Jesse Kuhn
My husband’s a historian. He knows the dangers of stray information.
He’s also big on privacy (he closes the blinds just to have breakfast) and modesty (“Babe! The window’s open!”).
He’s not much for self-expression, either. He refuses every quiz I ask him to take (“But don’t you want to know what kind of poet [or marine animal, or kitchen appliance] you’d be?”). His Fiat’s bumper is virgin chrome; his T-shirts are all solid colors.
Facebook isn’t happening.
“Look, hon!” I call from my computer. “Kathy is having an anniversary, and she just posted a note on her page saying she’s the luckiest woman on earth, and her husband wrote that he loved her from the depths of his soul—”
I hear faint gagging sounds.
Forced into subtlety, I suggest Andrew help me pick photos of the dog to post. He promptly censors every shot that shows Buddy’s…er…manhood. These aren’t ready-for-action shots, they’re belly-scratching shots. But Andrew deems them a violation of Buddy’s privacy.
For Andrew, privacy’s a form of respect. He lives thoughtfully and deliberately, and he guards his life—his thoughts, tastes, moods, photos, where he goes, who his friends are, what he’s reading or watching at the moment, and what interests or angers or amuses him—from prying eyes.
There’s not much left for Facebook.
Once, early on, Andrew had me “go on Facebook” to show him somebody’s page. We started at mine, and he saw somebody he recognized under “Friends.”
“Who else is on here?” he asked, sounding almost outraged. I scrolled through. He watched silently. When I reached the end, he looked at me like I had a double life in Sri Lanka. “I only know maybe 10 of them!”
“Well, honey, they’re people I know from work, or high school…”
He nodded, but the crowd’s intrusion seemed to disconcert him. It was as though I’d brought them all into our home, into our marriage.
Which, in a way, I suppose I had.
Suddenly I was telling him things he didn’t know about his former boss and making social plans with people who used to be primarily his friends. And what was emerging was the basic difference between us. He’s a historian; he records what’s important and instructive for future generations. I’m a journalist; I record…anything. The dark messy potential that so horrifies my husband—like the young woman who learned about her parents’ divorce when she saw her mom’s change in “Relationship Status”—strikes me as story material. I like intimacy—whether it’s a quick conversation with a checkout clerk or my best friend who’s baring her soul. Andrew will relay some cliffhanger news flash about a friend and then answer my rapid-fire questions with a shrug: “I didn’t think it was my place to ask.”
In his world, there is such a thing as TMI.
So I decided to share (just a bit of) our dilemma on Facebook.
Diana Aitchison Schmitt, a former Post-Dispatch reporter, zapped an instant reply: “Mike and I are that couple. We’re opposites. He’s as reserved as an English gent. I’m NYC honest. As a journalist who’s asked murderers to recant and the kidnapped to talk about feelings, I figure I owe it to be as frank as the folks in my stories. This does, however, require a formal forum for which Mike and I delicately negotiate—like, every day!”
I felt consoled and less alone (and wasn’t that Facebook’s ultimate role?). But consolation turned to envy when music critic Steve Pick wrote, “Then there’s me and Cat, who have been known to flirt shamelessly in public on Facebook. Usually when I’m at work and she’s at home, but sometimes when we’re sitting next to each other on the couch.”
I read that one aloud at home.
It was fun, though, seeing how love could coexist with fierce disagreement. Joe Merlone, a surveyor who’s engaged to photographer Jennifer Silverberg, readily admitted “how neurotic I am when it comes to divulging any identifying information on this. And Jenn just throws it all out there for anyone to see. Did you notice I have the wrong birthday listed on my home page? I’m a complete freak about it.”
Improv actor and teacher Ed Reggi wrote, “Lord, Jeannette, I think my spouse (yes, thanks to Iowa we are legally married) Scott must cringe every time I send something out to my Twitter or Facebook feed. Although Scott [a social worker] likes to consider his life very techno public, he still is very much The Donna Reed Show compared to my Sex and the City style of using social networking tools.”
Joe Master, chair of the English department at Ursuline Academy, wrote, “We are not big status updaters so we don’t need to negotiate that. I don’t really check friend lists, so I don’t know if any former boyfriends or girlfriends show up. And I am not a big quiz taker, so she will never know what type of shoe I am, or what famous Hollywood bitch I am, although she could probably guess both.”
Sally Master, a librarian, was the reluctant one: “I think it’s interesting that a generation after the actual year 1984, we are embracing services and products like Facebook and OnStar that have the capacity to let everyone know where we are and what we’re doing at all times,” she wrote. “Having said that, I post more than Joe, because he uses it more for keeping up with people, whereas I see it as a way to scatter a little whimsy into people’s lives: photos, videos, funny observations, art, etc. So I was glad to hear that I haven’t embarrassed him...yet.”
Lawyer Geri Dreiling broke the question down:
“Photos—Pat posts terrible photos of me. Christmas morning when we’re opening gifts, awful photos taken with his iPhone. Now it’s like a federal judge confirmation. He names a candidate, and I’m the Senate—I have to give my consent before something goes up.”
“Comments—Pat puts up comments that, from time to time, make me cringe. I ignore.”
“Friending our kids’ friends—Pat friends our son’s friends. Only a couple of kids are my friends, and they’ve been almost a part of our household forever.”
“Bottom line—I pretty much ignore him on Facebook.”
The ignored husband, lawyer Pat Kiernan, sent a rebuttal:
“Photos—I had no clue that Geri would get upset about a picture of her in her bathrobe and slippers on Christmas morning. So we came up with the process Geri described above. However, I would describe it more of as a veto power. In addition, if I think she’s objecting for a silly reason and objectively looks pretty in a photo (not subjectively, because I think she looks pretty in every photo—even the Xmas ones), then I post it without her knowing it.”
“Comments—I mainly do it to unleash my Irish, juvenile sense of humor, which has been pent up too long over my 17-year career as a lawyer. Geri is of German descent, the Volga German strain at that, which means she finds nothing funny except the occasional person who is comically hurt in a farming accident.”
“Friending our kids’ friends—Geri is a good person and trusts our kids with their privacy. As a former prosecutor, I trust no one.”
He does avoid friending Dreiling’s friends, though: “I do that to give her space and allow her to feel free to bitch to them about me (which I know she does).”
“Bottom line—I pretty much ignore her on Facebook.”
The deciding factor isn’t gender—straight white males seem to be only slightly warier than the rest of us—and it’s not introversion vs. extroversion, exactly. It’s how open or cautious you are; whether you like things fluid or compartmentalized; whether everybody’s a potential friend or a suspicious stranger. And some of it’s occupational, I’m convinced. Kathie Opel works at an ad agency; she’s been on Facebook for years. Her husband’s an investment advisor, watchful of privacy. “I tell him every time one of his friends joins,” she says, “and we all tease him that he’ll be the last holdout.”
No, he won’t. I’m sleeping with the last holdout.
