BY: KEZIA ROYER-BURKETT
Hi, I’m Kezia and the writer of this new section Love, Likes, and Shares in the Six. This column is a space where I share my love experiences and thoughts and you the readers can send in your questions, thoughts, and stories about love, relationships, sex, dating, etc. and I will do my best to answer all the questions. I consider myself a conscious entrepreneur, my qualifications consist of being the Founder and President of a registered charity, I have recently completed an honours BA in Communications and Multimedia, and I am a single parent to a beautiful boy and have been single and dating for almost eighteen years. This column is meant to represent and create a space of no judgment, where opportunities to see a different perspective and share your perspective on topics related to love, relationships, dating, etc. I ask that all correspondence be profanity-free and take into consideration the vision of love for this section. I look forward to reading and sharing with the Toronto Caribbean Newspaper Community.
To launch this new section I recently wrote a blog about whether to delete pictures from past relationships from your social media accounts. Email me at Kezia@carib101.com with your questions, stories, and opinions about whether photos from past relationships should be deleted from social media accounts after a break-up and enjoy the read!
To Delete or Not to Delete that is the Question?!?!
The topic of whether to delete or not delete pictures from your personal social media account after a breakup has come up plenty of times in many different social circles over the past ten or so years. It has been thirteen years since the big social media tycoon Facebook was made public. When Facebook was at its peak of popularity everyone on my friend’s list was checking what the beloved “Relationship Status” was on other people’s page. Relationship Status on Facebook was exactly that, a cultural symbol of status and the popular relationship statuses on Facebook was: “Single,” “In a Relationship” and “It’s Complicated.” To my unfortunate dismay, a majority of my relationship statuses were “It’s Complicated” and “Single.” Now that Social Media and the online social world has grown exponentially, people have been asking the tough question of whether to delete pictures of your ex after a breakup or not. Some say deleting all the pictures is like eliminating good memories you had in your life, like removing a part of you; and others say it is necessary to erase all traces of your ex after a breakup to assist in the healing and moving on process.
Some people go as far as saying there is a timeline or certain circumstances that warrant deleting or keeping the pictures of your ex on your social media account. For example, if you and your ex-broke up and are still friends, then it is ok to keep the pictures on your social media account after a breakup? Some people say you can keep pictures of your ex on your social media until you have a new partner, but as soon as you have a new person that you are dating all pictures of your ex should be deleted from all social media accounts.
I have not had pictures of anyone that I have dated in the past seven to eight years on my social media account for this very reason. I don’t want to be stuck in the dreaded position of whether to delete pictures and seem petty or not. Another reason I have not posted any pictures of anyone I have dated in over seven years is that I have not been in a long-term serious relationship for over seven years. The last boyfriend I publically announced and changed my Facebook status for and put pictures of us online was when I was twenty-four years old and when I eventually had to change my social media presence because of a man I knew instantly he would be the last boyfriend I shared my online presence with.
I have heard stories and seen scenarios of people that start dating someone new, and after a couple of days or weeks of dating, they start posting pictures of the new person they are dating on social media. Then when the inevitable breakup takes place the person who posted all the relationship pictures are stuck revealing to the world that yet again they are unsuccessful in maintaining a relationship. In my Kevin Hart voice *the way my pride is set up, I just can’t let everyone know I suck at relationships. To be honest, I haven’t been successful at relationships and I’m not willing to share aspects of my life that I can’t control the perception of, due to my controlling tendencies.
