Nothing is sacred for blogging exes

As the world of technology continues to expand and information becomes more easily exchanged, the contents of our lives become more and more available to the public. We exchange text messages, emails, instant messages—except for in-person conversations, nearly any of our many forms of communication can be recorded.

For the cases in which we want to talk but can’t find anyone willing to lend an ear (or an eye or a thumb, for that matter), internet moguls blessed us with the invention known as the ‘blog.’ When I was first introduced to the art of blogging (on the first day of the semester, of course, when I excitedly created my blogger account and got my semester project underway), I wondered what exactly kinds of topics one could write about every day to keep the interest of faithful readers. A daily journal? Would suck the fun right out of one of my pastimes, which is telling unsuspecting acquaintances about the ridiculous or downright embarrassing situations I find myself in on any given day. A political commentary? Would be perfect—if I liked politics, or commentaries. An analysis of current events from a social psychological perspective? Brilliant, but that’s besides that point. No, after reading an article in The New York Times a few weeks ago, I discovered the greatest use of virtual blogging memory one could possibly imagine: telling secrets about former romantic partners. For this kind of entertainment, it’s incredible blogger.com is still free.

The Times article told the tragic stories of couples whose relationships collapsed, eventually driving one of the people involved to share their side of the story via the blogosphere. While the majority of the posts are tame and rational, some of them air all the dirty laundry without the slightest hint of reservation. Take the example of Tricia Walsh Smith who, upon being divorced by her husband Philip, broadcast to the world that she had found him hoarding a stash of Viagra, pornography, and condoms despite the fact that they had never had sex.

There’s also Jennifer Neal, who lovingly referred to her husband as DearSweetDave in her daily blog entries. That ended when Dave informed her that their marriage was over. By that afternoon, Jen’s 55,000 daily readers had read all about the other side of an apparently disloyal Dave.

So what is it that causes this? Why did these relationships go down the tubes so quickly? And why was Jen able to look past Dave’s disloyalty for so long?

When we look at close relationships from a social psychological standpoint, we understand that they can fail for a variety of reasons. Perhaps two partners are too dissimilar to get along for an extended period of time. Maybe they just get bored with each other. In Dave’s case—if you believe Jen’s side of it, that is—it seems that he had better options available. The availability of quality alternatives can be a key factor in determining how committed a person is to their relationship. Dave was able to justify breaking his commitment for one of these alternatives.

As relationships deteriorate, one thing that can facilitate this process is a shift in how partners make attributions regarding each other’s behavior. With a relationship-enhancing style of attribution, good behaviors are attributed to the partner’s inner qualities, and bad acts are dismissed as being the result of external factors. If a couple makes the transition to a distress-maintaining style of attribution, they will do just the opposite—attribute the good behaviors to external factors and the bad ones to internal factors. If Jen knew about Dave’s disloyalty before, it is possible that she attributed it to external factors (“it was a bachelor party, it happens”) than internal ones (“he’s a cheater”). It wasn’t till he pulled the plug on the relationship that she made the shift.

In a sense, the relationship-enhancing style of attribution entails making excuses for one’s partner. But this practice can be healthy for relationships. It leads to partners seeing idealized versions of each other, which helps strengthen the couple’s bond. The problem comes when somebody is actually being hurt by the behavior being excused—as Jen surely was in this situation.

These heartbroken bloggers show us just how drastically our opinion of a partner can change when we make adjustments to our ways of thinking about them. They give us some important insight into the dynamics of close relationships, even if the examples are a bit extreme. But extreme or not, I’m playing it safe. When flowers fail, I’m canceling the internet.

Source: The New York Times, 4/18/08