Divorce in the internet age: It’s complicated

To move on after a relationship ends, you need to be able to forget. But how can you when the internet has such a long memory?

Author Nathan Bransford, who is both writer and blogger, went through a painful divorce when writing his first book.  He found out that even if you try to forget about the “bad” things that happened in marriage, this is made very difficult . Being a blogger as well as an author, Bransford is on the net many times. This makes his life a public place and he has had a difficult time dealing with the fact that information on the internet does not die but is kept alive by those who still want to read it. As much as Bransford wanted to forget about some things in his personal life,  the internet kept him from doing so.

Bransford’s wife started a blog on their personal life, which seemed innocent at first, but spiraled out of control after the divorce. Bransford got “tips” from readers on how to get back on his wife so he even had to change his relationship status on the blog.

Moreover, after Bransford included his now ex-wife on Gmail, he was not able to remove her from Gmail so he is still confronted with her on the net. Bransford has come to the conclusion that internet has a memory that will last forever, showing you photos and stories that you wanted to delete; your personal life has gone. There is one benefit though, if you want to start a new relationship, you do not have to tell about your private life, because it is already public anyway.

Independent.co.uk/Sunday 1^st of May 2012

Reaction

I think this is an example of abuse of social media. Although I realize that the author and his wife started blogging first, I do not think many people realize what others can do with it. In this case, being a writer as well, Bransford has suffered from the fact that it is hard not having a personal life and everybody trying to interfere with your private life when you weren’t asking for it.  Maybe this is prize you have to pay for making your life personal. It is one of the reasons why I do not have face book or twitter or anything like it. I do not want people to have a look at my personal life, nor do I want to look at anyone’s personal life on the internet. If people want me to know something about them, they can tell me in person. I realize that might be old fashioned, but I have seen too many things getting out of control, words getting misinterpreted,  so I pick up the phone if I want to speak to my friends.