Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Divorce by Facebook

A couple of my friends are having marital problems. I’ll call them Dick and Jane, rather than use their real names. There’s nothing unusual about a couple having marital problems. It happens. What’s unusual about this situation is that it has been playing itself out on Facebook. A few weeks ago, Jane wrote “Some people you think you know let you down.” It wasn’t immediately obvious that she was talking about Dick, but after she wrote about a child crying herself to sleep and there were comments from some of her closer friends, it became much more obvious. There were a few similar posts from Jane over the next few weeks and then there was this simply message, “Jane is now single.” In the context of the other posts, those words were so weighted, so heavy it seemed they might drop from the screen. Weeks passed and there was yet another message, “Dick is now friends with Jane.” And you wonder. Is he really? Are they going to get back together? We can only hope.



It’s the kind of story I might write and perhaps I would, but For the Love of a Devil and And Thy House both dealt with marital problems and I’m not sure I can stand for two more of my characters going through that. I’ve already had some people refuse to read some of my books because they were “too close to home.” So, I suppose I’ll let someone else tell this story, but it’s interesting how technology has changed the world. It used to be that you had to hear this kind of gossip when you went to the story, to church or the barber shop. You were never sure how many hands the information had passed through, but now we can get the information straight from Jane, through we may have to read between the lines. And yeah, if it were handled well, it would make a great story.