The Dreaded “Ex” Friend Request

Anyone with a Facebook account, Twitter account, or any other social media profile knows it. Anyone with one or more of these things might fear it. The bottom line is that sooner or later, someone that you do not like – possibly hate, possibly despite – is going to request to be your friend, or will follow your updates, after Googling your name. (WTF are they doing Googling your name?!) It might be that guy/girl – usually an ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend or ex-friend.

So what the heck is a gal supposed to do? I mean seriously. If you are not friends in “real life”, do you really want to be “friends” on Facebook? If things ended relatively amicably (you know, without broken windows or fireworks hidden underneath the drivers seat) but you aren’t too keen on reuniting, you may not want to connect. But decling the request seems pretty negative – possibly confrontational, even if they aren’t direclty notified that you refused. You could ignore it entirely, of course, which feels slightly less guilty but passive aggressive at the same time.

If things did not end amicably, and you ran through the streets after the breakup (romantic or otherwise) cursing his/her name to anyone you could catch and calling them in as a petty thief to the police station (both because grand theft auto is harder to fake and because you have morals, dammit), it may feel really, really good to click that decline or block button. Hell, if it’s an option you might go with Block & Report Spam! Kick it up a notch!

The problem with denying or ignoring the request (if approval is needed), or not following back (on Twitter or FriendFeed, for example) is this: You don’t get to snoop.

That’s what Facebook is really for, right? Being friends with your exs. Checking out thier drunk photos, relationship status, favorite songs. Whether you’re reminiscing, seething with hatred or simply curious, I think the bottom line is that you were once intimately connected with these people. It’s hard not to wonder what their life is like now. Ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends, ex-friends…you once knew so much about their every day doings. What they had for lunch, movies they’d seen, troubles they were going through, joy they experienced. There’s probably some fabulously logical explanation for wanting to know all of that information even when you don’t want a relationship with the person anymore, but I’ve never even taken Psych 101, so the best I’ve got is this: It’s human nature.

So for me? Yeah, I friend my exes, mostly. If the relationship was amicable enough. Those who hurt me badly I can’t. I won’t.

The other day I was on Facebook going through the photos of an ex-boyfriend — my “Favorite Mistake”. We dated probably four or five different times – he was my first boyfriend ever, and we still hooked up a few times in college. We were great friends, and attracted to each other, but horrible as a couple. And eventually, he was horrible as a friend, too. I finally got sick of it and stopped talking to him, but I’d spent nearly 10 years knowing him. I couldn’t help looking through those pictures. And when I found one of him rock climbing, posing by the cliff, I remembered a time that we had done the same – with his parents, because we were in middle school, HA – and I left a sappy message.

Naturally, the photos linked on his Photos Of _____ area on Facebook weren’t all posted by him, though, so I accidentally left my sappy message on a mutual friend’s photo album. Awesome.