Social Media and Your Marriage – How To Do It Right
Welcome to part-two of Maggie Reye’s “Electronics Policy for Your Marriage” posts.
If you’ve visited Happy Wives Club often over the years, you know we love Maggie Reyes of ModernMarried.com around these parts.
Her practical and transparent posts are just one of the reasons. Enjoy.
Until tomorrow…make it a great day!
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In our last episode, ahem, blog post, we talked about setting up some guidelines for using electronics at home.
Before we dive into the deep blue waters of what to share and what not to share on social media, let’s look at some positive ways we can use electronics to connect with our honeys shall we?
First of all, let’s recognize that electronics – phones, tablets, computers etc are just tools. We can use them for good or for bad.
Texting is one of my favorite ways to stay connected to my hubby throughout the day when we are both busy and working.
Texting is a way of saying, “I am thinking about you. I love you. Let’s stay connected.”
My husband and I text once a day usually during lunch time. We are both busy and don’t want texting to be intrusive, just a loving reminder that we are in this together.
Webcams can be so useful if one of you is travelling. My favorite webcam story comes from a friend of mine who makes dinner then turns on the webcam and has dinner with her family hundreds of miles away. Whenever we travel for work, we webcam and it makes being away a lot easier.
One of my favorite things to see on the Happy Wives Club Facebook Page is husbands and wives tagging each other in posts or sharing on each other’s time lines. Facebook can be super romantic and loving and kind and we have evidence of that every day on the HWC page.
That being said – we have all heard stories of over sharing on social media or someone connecting with a friend from high school who should have stayed in the past. We all know that person who was bad news then and is likely to be worse news now.
So now that we know those stories, we can totally create our own personal Facebook (or other media) sharing and friending rules to keep us both happy and married.
Here are some examples:
>The way we make it work at my house is that the hubby has veto power whenever I want to share something personal.
>I tell him what I am sharing about and that includes him in the experience. It builds trust between the two of us for him to know, he is my first priority. It also builds connection as he gives his opinion and ideas over what to share.
>This will be different for every couple and each communication style, so I would recommend experimenting with this but it’s a great way to use social media to connect with each other first and then with your more extended friends, family and followers.
>I have a personal rule that has nothing to do with my husband and everything to do with my personal code of ethics, that I would never friend anyone who could potentially harm my relationship in anyway.
>If I have big news – the hubby is told first. Later I share it with my friends online. This is so huge because it’s how you connect every day that matters and how you share online or offline is really how you are prioritizing your life. So telling the hubby first, is not just about social sharing, it’s about prioritizing our marriage over all other relationships.
>Sometimes I also pause before I share something and ask myself “Whose story is this to tell?” If it’s my story, cool beans, but if it isn’t, I ask for permission, as in “Hey hubsicle, what you said just now was hilarious, can I post it so my friends can laugh too?”
Social media changes daily, we are all learning how to manage it in our lives. We would love to know if you have tried something that worked really well for your relationship so we can add it to our marriage tool box.
YOUR TURN: What you are doing right with social media and your marriage? Why is it working for you?
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Maggie Reyes
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