I share my deepest, darkest secrets online for a living. In other words, I am a lifestyle blogger. About two years ago, I wrote very publicly about an intimate relationship. With the rise of relationships/sexuality content on the platform I used, I figured there was no harm in blogging about my latest love. Amore inspires the heck out of most authors — myself included — and readers eat lovey-dovey literature up. This topic is a classic win-win for the creator and the consumers. RELATED: The 12 Online Dating Mistakes You Keep Making Over And Over Since time immemorial, artists of all varieties have expressed their affections through their work. From poets to painters to musicians, their greatest muse is their beloved. We consider luring eyes onto our work by incorporating sex to be a modern problem, but love stories are a tale as old as time. At first, blogging about my Boo and I seemed to enhance the infatuation experience. I began keeping a public chronicle during the honeymoon stage. My posts at the time reflected the pie-in-the-sky, rosy view through which I viewed the relationship. As it always does, the passage of time allowed the cracks in the bond to show. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to blog about the fall from grace when my readers were interested in hearing about a slice of enamored heaven. The story I told to the public became the story I told myself. I gaslit myself about budding blemishes in the once impeccable union. It’s normal to ignore early writing on the wall. Since there was so much at stake, though, I found it more tempting to preserve the illusion of an ideal. As any blogger knows, readers enjoy reliability. They like the certainty of consistent topics, tone, and storylines from their favorite online journals. When a writer deviates from the established pattern, it can throw regular readers for a loop and spark a sense of betrayal in the audience. After all, they visited your site expecting a certain kind of content. Once you stop delivering on that expectation, things can change between the reader and the writer. This dynamic put pressure on me to maintain the status quo online even if the IRL situation began to crumble. Unfortunately, I was powerless to change the facts of the story I was telling. This was not a Harlequin novel; it was real life. While I avoided detailing the messy bits of the downfall for the sake of myself and the other party, my radio silence on the subject probably tipped some readers off that my fairytale romance hit a reality check. When I could no longer keep up the facade, I realized I had fallen in love with a mostly true tale that was also incomplete. As the relationship grew rocky, I wrestled with whether or not I would ever write about love again. I felt like a failure, a hypocrite, and most of all, like a fraud. No one tells you that relationship writers, like all humans, are prone to imperfect interactions and heartbreak. I had to find that out the hard way and now I’m writing about it to spare a few folks the same fate if I can. RELATED: 7 Most Common Self-Sabotaging Behaviors In Online Dating I support my former self writing about relationships and sexuality because it taught me some crucial lessons. For one, sharing relationships on social media should not be taken lightly. Content creators should make some key considerations before posting about their love life. For example, who gets to control the narrative if you break up? How can life, in all its messiness, fit into one single, cohesive, all-inclusive story? The simple answer is, it cannot. Also, how will you feel about total strangers feeling entitled to judge and give unsolicited advice about your relationship? Trust me, they will talk. Some folks read articles about relationships to rain on some lovebirds’ parade. Finally, think about whether you are comfortable relinquishing all privacy in the romance department. As they say, what you post on the internet stays there forever. Even if you pen all good things about something or someone, you never know how that will hit you five years from now or ten years from now. It is a heck of a lot easier to go public with something than it is to regain privacy. It took me a long time to come back to blogging because the act of writing reminded me of what I lost. I had to wait until some wounds healed before I could clack away on the keyboard without tearing up. That is another con that relationship bloggers forget to mention. I’ll never fall in love again or write about my love life again online. From now on, I keep what happens behind closed doors sacred. The hassle and the heartache outweigh any benefits. Nor is faking it to the world. Real love can be blissful and fun, but it frequently drains and bores those who entertain it. That’s the simple fact of the matter. At this stage in my career, I refuse to contribute to the harmful fairytale “happily ever after” narrative or make someone think that I have it all together because I show them the most polished, perfect parts of my intimate relationships. My business is my business. I’ll take a hard pass on inviting strangers to stick their noses in the good, the bad, or the ugly. As far as my readers are concerned, I am single and satisfied with my current state. Or maybe I secretly coupled up. The world will never know. I am perfectly content with that. RELATED: The 13 Absolute Worst Online Dating Sites For Finding Love Maya Strong is a professional writer who has spent the last six years blogging about relationships, LGBTQIA+, mental health, lifestyle, and cultural commentary online.
