Comment by zer8k | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zer8k | Hacker News Reader

> Smartphones have caused more upheaval than anything I’ve seen in my career.

I don't know if I believe this _totally_. However, I can attest to the fact my relationship has more-or-less been permanently damaged by social media.

I am not a person who really wants to spend a ton of money traveling, extravagant outings, whatever. I will go out for a nice dinner and drinks, etc. I am not a miser. It's just not me to do those things - maybe because I never had them growing up. I much prefer going outdoors. I am not a prolific consumer which is what my wife has suddenly become.

For a decade none of this was ever a problem. Around the time instagram really took the world by storm I was constantly hearing about other relationships. Her friends, etc and how their lives are better than ours. This bled into other aspects of our relationship where it seems like I am constantly being judged against some standard that shifted under my feet. Perhaps it's because we are approaching middle age and it's dawning on her she probably settled - tough break.

A lot of this has stopped after a ton of work but the damage is done. I despise the modern internet because by the transitive property of social media it has damaged my self-esteem.

It is no surprise to me divorces are back on the menu. I don't think anyone can be happy in this environment if they're so deeply connected to the internet. It's a mixture of everything. Tinder, facebook, instagram, etc. "Flight risk" is probably the most succinct way I'd describe the situation. It's an extension of the political situation we face today. Relationships are so atomized along so many different parameters that it's impossible to find your commonalities.

I recognize some of this behavior with my girlfriend, at times.

My girlfriend is Thai and she has a Thai fried who got married with an English guy (about 10 years older than me). Also I know several retirees near my with Thai wives and they all do quite well on their pensions.

So while I as a “younger” guy (41 years old) still work a lot, she sees photos on social media of the retirees travelling. Or the English guy buying expensive gifts for his girlfriend.

We’re not in the same position, but by Thai standards we are still very well off. We don’t have the time to travel (our 6 year old daughter needs to go to school and I am not rich). But where many families here in Thailand are struggling with perhaps 25.000 THB per month (on 2 incomes) and still have to pay rents, loans and/or mortgages, I provide my girlfriend with at least 50.000 THB per month and we don’t have any debt. And I make quite a bit more still, but I need some money for investing, birthday gifts, car insurance, pay school terms for our daughter, rent a room in the city for work, etcetera.

We also got a farm on a nice plot of land (5000 m2) and 2 houses and a swimming pool. In the eyes of most villagers we are rich.

At times I wish my girlfriend would look less at social media. Doesn’t see what she thinks she is missing out on and sees what she actually got and how well she is doing compared to most people around us.

It's an automated version of The Whispers ... 'is he really the best you can get' , 'are you getting what you deserve' etc.

Feels like my decision to not get into social media seems like a better and better choice as time goes on.

I mean OK you can argue that this is social media, but I mean Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. with personal profiles and all the photos and videos and such.

I really only just used sites like Slashdot, Reddit, and HN.

From your own description, you blaming instagram, social media, instead of the obvious is really interesting.

What's the obvious?

incompatibility?

Sometimes people meet when young and don’t know better and get lucky with the match.

Sometimes they end up with someone who never understood them and still wants them to be something else.

OP is probably #2.

I'd say you're probably right. Except it went from having things in common to what it is now. I can identify the exact bifurcation point and it is when "lifestyle" social media became popular. At that point I feel like the world became far more hedonistic.

Once you get the ear worm that the grass is always greener you don't appreciate what you have in front of you. I'm not necessarily saying you're wrong but we did start out with significantly more compatibility than I think you're implying. It was only when comparison became the norm that we grew more distant. She wants the ability to brag to her friends and the internet.

Maybe she was always this way. Maybe she wasn't. It certainly was not obvious to me. People change and perhaps I have too. Some of it I think is escapism from the banality of life.

I’m trying to say something slightly more nuanced than compatible/incompatible, although with the “still” I guess I was reaching back into the past.

It is the difference between social compatibility and value compatibility, I think. If you were in the same cultural group and didn’t communicate values, then you were compatible at the moment. When social media came along if you both shared your value perspective you both might have responded as you did (or, if you shared her perspective, as she did). Instead it split your sociocultural compatibility along a value axis.

The best way I’ve found to communicate this in a straightforward way is as being seen/understood, which is when your partner understands and appreciates who you are and why you’ve done something, most importantly when you don’t want to do something.

edit to say: I made it sound like it’s too late, but I didn’t mean to. For social people, social media is more necessary and they can be more effective in it. It sounds like your partner is more social than you. They probably value the network more than they resent it because of this, and are probably feeling the reduction in offline opportunities for socializing. If so, this is likely functioning at an evolutionary level for them. If you found a way where you could see some positive aspect of their network and engage with that, it might alleviate their attempts to get you to engage with the materialistic aspects.

It also might not, but something like this is probably worth a try.

Care to elaborate?

Sure. Assuming GPs description is accurate (which is for sure an assumption) the problem is their partner is a abusive and toxic individual. Tons of people use social media without going on to emotionally abuse their partner.

The fact that they dissociate and excuse their partner’s abusive mentality is whats interesting to me. And given the post voting, it seems like a lot of HN is quick to do so too.

I’m not sure what the obvious is here, but my takeaway was that OP’s story is quite similar to the plot of Madame Bovary, so it’s only a novel problem in the literary sense.

I can understand what you are saying but I can actually draw a straight line from cause to effect here. The relationship was swell prior to that and started falling apart after. It may be hard to believe if you are a person who is over-connected yourself. Maybe she never really liked me or something. She also never made any effort to leave. We had a lot in common and enjoyed our company. As someone who places no stock in the modern social media mess it came to me as a shock when the comparisons started occurring weekly, then daily, then several times a day. At one point I could do almost nothing right. People don't flip like this overnight and when she is literally SHOWING me her reel of all the fun her friends are having it seems to be social media.

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