Isn’t there something inherently sad about an individual who needs to seek and gain their sense of self-worth through “talking” in cyberspace with complete strangers that they have never met, who do not know you and all your circumstances and attendant “baggage”, past and present?
From my limited observation, most bloggers seem to write a lot about very little at all. Cheap titillation, for the consumption (they think) of the masses but, in actuality, by very few. Do we really care what they thought and ate when they got up in the morning? Many blogs are like a cyber version of Big Brother.
As commentators, one might think that fellow bloggers can be truly “objective” in their amateur “counsel”, but they do not have to give a balanced view.
They may be keen to flatter you, tell you only nice things and pat you electronically on the back, possibly motivated by trying to remain your “friend” after all. If you do not like their comments you can edit them or completely remove them from your blog (as my wife has done with some of mine).
So your blog grows legs, can become self-fulfilling – a mirror, and your reflection within it you come to believe: “Mirror, mirror, on the wall…………”
It is so easy to get sucked into a vacuum world (even I am starting to see how) and to be and react in a way you would not in the real world “outside”. I’d like to think (somewhat arrogantly perhaps) that by pouring out my feelings here, if not to preserve my own sanity, that I might at least help someone else in a similar situation, whose partner is spending an inordinate amount of private time on the Internet, realise what might be going on. My wife does not know what a Pandora's Box she has opened.
My wife's blog started off life as one thing (the part that I was allowed to see at the beginning), grew enormous legs and morphed into a commentary on our real lives (suitably spun to serve the emerging “plot”) – which was not for my eyes whilst being written - and is in danger, now that it has run out of steam and “purpose”, of turning into nothing but the cheap titillation variety.
I know that my wife can write much, much better, as evidenced by the three books she has written and for which she felt very disappointed with no publishing deal. Had she managed to get a deal for one of these, her sense of self-worth would have reached the sky and probably we would not be where we are now. Instead, grasping at straws, she thought: “Right, what sells? Sex? I shall write about a sex topic, adultery as it is so topical, and do it on-line so that I can prove that people will read it”.
I had my misgivings, but little did I know that she would want to research it quite as “in depth” or that the fall-out for us as a couple, as a family, would be so catastrophic. It would certainly be contrary to Mrs Wife’s “plot” for us to now stay together, however forgiving of her I might be.
Very sadly, my wife’s sense of self was severely damaged long before I came along; starting way back in her childhood. Her extreme neediness, for attention, for admiration, for flattery, is not her fault. However irritating she can be at times (as I can also no doubt be to her), in my real world I still feel great love and affection for her, and regret.
Certainly my own childhood and upbringing had a big bearing on how I am today. However, I know who I am. I have known for quite some time. I am not perfect, but by and large I am happy with who I am. I do not need to look for a different image in a mirror, mine or anyone else’s.
I suspect that many of those that read my wife’s blog (not her “friends” necessarily) are people that the real Mrs Wife would run a mile from in real life. They are not of my world, thank God. However cynically I view it, I have realised that it is easy to let her blog, and the faceless few, take up valuable headspace needed for my own survival. To allow her continuing posts and their (in the main) dull reactions far more importance and effect than can possibly be justified in my respectable, intelligent and “unexciting”, but responsible life.
Isn’t this what she has let happen to herself, when she should have been taking better care of her reality?
For my part, I need to focus on other things in life, on real people, my children especially, not myself. Certainly not on “strangers”.
