Cyber Perving

I'm working from home today. And let me tell you that this requires a tremendous amount of discipline, something I seem to be lacking a lot of this blazing hot Monday.

I was thinking about how much time I spend online as a result of my job. The short answer to that is I spend a solid 6 to 8 hours a day on the web trawling for information, researching, reinventing and of course prying into things that should normally be left alone. Let's face it. The world wide web is a black hole of information. And when you spend three quarters of your professional life trying to seek answers and solutions to your clients' never-ending list of issues, it's only natural that your curiosity spills over and you start digging around for things that don't really concern work at all. It doesn't help that you have social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter that works on the premise of being well, nosy. No one logs into Facebook thinking, "Okay, I'm going to log in and not look at what my friends are up to." Bullshit. We thrive on perving, prying and poking around in our neighbours' backyards all the time. What is the point of status updates and news feeds then? Here's the truth - We want to know.

So having had my lunch and considering the fact that my boss has been relatively silent today, I decided to carry out some cyber-research on Spooner. I've known him for a little less than a month now and we've hung out enough times to know that we like each other's company. I have also over the course of a month managed to find out where he lives, where he works, what he does for a living, got some details about parents, upbringing, past girlfriends, close friends, and gained some insight into his quirks. Good progress? Yes. Alas, it doesn't stop there.

The problem with meeting a new person is this. You have no choice but to take everything they say (and do) to you at face value. Maybe it's just me and my cynical personality that is so inclined to take everything with a pinch of salt. I attribute this to the plain and simple fact that I never trust people easily. I reckon this was a trait that reared its head aggressively after my first serious boyfriend cheated on me repeatedly over three years. The day I walked away from that relationship it felt like someone had ripped my heart out of my chest and I was a complete wreck for a solid six months after. Now, all this happened almost ten years ago and I have gotten over it and I don't want to take an axe to the guy's head anymore. I also know that I have managed to deal with some of it as I have had other semi-serious and some quite serious relationships after. Unfortunately, practice does not make perfect in all scenarios.

My ex and I both have FB accounts. Ironically, during the course of our relationship, we never added each other. Why? I think we didn't see it as necessary because we had been together for that long and it made sense that we could at least have some degree of privacy to our individual selves. Well, that's the politically correct answer. Here's the uncensored version. We didn't add each other on FB because we both has issues with each other's friends. There were people on either party's list that we didn't like and secondly, we didn't want any of our 'friends' blurting out something that the other person wasn't meant to know. And thirdly, we both knew that if we read something posted by someone on each other's wall and we didn't like it, it'd become an issue of contention that would probably lead to a fight. So much for trusting each other eh?

So here's the thing. Spooner over the past couple of weeks has been indirectly dropping hints about us adding each other on FB. The first time he subtly brought up the subject of things like FB and Twitter and asked if I used them. I nonchalantly replied that yes, I do have them and use them but mostly for work reasons. (This IS true.) The second time was on Saturday when we were having drinks before dinner and the topic of ex-partners had come up. I asked him to describe the exes, in terms of physical appearance. His answer, "Well, you can look at it in my FB pics." My reply? Astounding silence.

Sorry, I'm just not ready to take that step. I admit I have tried to search for him online and on FB and have been returned with like 500 people with the same name. There goes that idea. I suppose on his part, he must be pretty open about most things if he is willing to let me into his network. On the other hand, as a friend said, perhaps he just wants to get a proper snoop around my FB page and profile because there's a lot of historical content there and people tend to self-censor a lot in real life. Personally, I am leaning towards the latter explanation.

There is also the other part that freaks me out. He keeps wanting to introduce me to his friends and in turn meet mine. I don't have any qualms about this apart from the fact, that again, I don't trust him enough to want to let him into my circle of friends. My friends, the close few that I have, and my colleagues are my biggest security blankets. I fall back on them every time something fucks up. Letting him get close to these people and allowing him to question, scrutinize and form opinions about them is for me, very personal. He might as well be doing that to me. (I know this works both ways because he in turn, will be questioned, scrutinized and judged too.) But, I'm not ready. I simply don't trust him, yet. Oh and yes, there's also the fact that I am morbidly insecure and am partly waiting for him to give me the flick because my brain says, 'Here's a guy in his thirties, single, no children in the closet, unmarried, with a decent job, a sense of humour and even guess what, he's reasonably good-looking. What is wrong with this picture? And why does he want you in it?'

Paranoid? Yes. Hard on myself? Very much so. This is purely me putting on my full suit of defence. In the event that he turns out to be a royal fuckwit and I give him the boot or vice versa, I would not feel so bad about it because he would not have met my friends and secondly, there would be no embarrassing 'Need to Delete off FB' dilemmas either. So let's see if he sticks around for a few more months and I can bring myself to begrudgingly offer a few more ounces of my trust. Until then, I'm going to stick with just taking things at face value.