Friday, 5 August 2016

Social Media Display of Affection (SMDA): Love or publicity stunt?





Being in love is agreeably one of the best feelings ever. You want to be all over each other, kiss, hold hands, and make goo goo eyes at each other! It’s okay for you to want everyone to see how much you both are crazily in love with each other!
It’s cute to want to ‘break the internet’ with your love because you might just be inspiring some couples in a ‘dry, we-are-just-there, chemistry-less’ relationship to want to spice up things and wake up all those tired bones lying around in their dying relationship.

It’s agreeably oh-so-cute if you post pictures of you and your bae on special occasions like your anniversary, his or her birthday etc. That’s respectable, mature, and interesting. It also has its own little element of surprise. It makes people curious and be like ‘oh, so y’all still together?! How did you do it? What’s your secret?!’
Now, the real questions are; why are you actively involved in SMDA? Are you simply happy and oh-so-in-love or are you feeling insecure? Are you using it to spite anyone? Is SMDA making any great impact in your relationship? How much of SMDA is too much? Does the whole social media users need to know every detail about your relationship?
Public display of affection has been discovered to make some observers feel uncomfortable and/or unhappy if they are not in a relationship. I suppose we can call that jealousy in a sense! That harmless jealousy gradually turns to envy and then that envy automatically turns to hatred (all thanks to your continuous, excessive SMDA) and then they start praying (and sometimes plotting) for you and your bae to break up!
It has also been discovered that people sometimes use SMDA as a possessive tool or as a way of marking their territory whenever insecurity rears its incredibly ugly head in their relationship. So as to get assurances (which don’t last) from people’s comments, they start uploading their loved up pictures online. Trust them ‘kodenu-oju-aye-ni-mon-se amebos’ to post sugar-coated comments like ‘oh, you are so cute together’ comments on the pictures. These comments in turn makes you feel partially reassured that you and your partner are still getting it right! But is that the solution? Why not put SMDA aside and sort things out with your partner? You don’t need social media’s approval that things are great in your relationship, you need your partner’s assurance!
You are going through a rough time with your partner or you both just had a fight and instead of ironing it out with him or her face-to-face, you decided to post about it online! For what exactly? Why? Is it to gain his or her attention or to get sympathy from people? You’d think posting about it will resolve the differences. Sorry sweetheart, it won’t! Not only will the world know that your love life is in a mess (trust some people to rejoice over that!) but your partner is also bound to lose respect for you.
One interestingly funny thing is that, some baes (most especially ladies) believe that if their partner does not upload their pictures and post status updates about them on social media, then they don’t truly love them! There’s this friend of mine who used to nag and whine at her bae that he refused to upload her pictures on his social media handles because he wasn’t really in love and proud of her. The guy would sigh deeply and stare at her as if she was incredibly stupid. Just because your boo doesn’t post your pictures on social media doesn’t mean that he or she does not love you enough.
Now, I’m not saying that social media display of affection is totally bad. All I’m saying is that ‘too much of anything is bad! Know when too much is too much. Know when to leave when the ovation is loudest. The whole social media doesn’t have to know everything about your relationship. That will spoil the fun!
I saw a quote somewhere that says ‘If you want to keep your relationship healthy, keep it away from social media’. The secret is, the more a relationship is secured, the more you will want to keep it private and sacred. 

By Lydia Oladejo


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