All My Exes Live in Texts
July 22, 2013 7:21 AM   Subscribe

 
I think I see a blurry butt cheek. But then again I think I also see a gigantic fish.
posted by cashman at 7:29 AM on July 22, 2013


Since I was dating the woman fated wife before facebook was launched I see this primarily as an anthropological essay.
posted by shothotbot at 7:32 AM on July 22, 2013


You see ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends on Facebook? That's nothing, children. Wait until you experience the thrilling world of divorce in the age of social media!
posted by entropicamericana at 7:36 AM on July 22, 2013 [20 favorites]


I only wish my Facebook feed was a drama-filled sex buffet like the author describes. Wait, no I don't. I think I'll keep the endless stream of baby pics, pet antics, recipes and home improvements. Even if they painfully remind me of the life I don't yet have. Any day. (No really, any day now).
posted by iamkimiam at 7:38 AM on July 22, 2013 [11 favorites]


And this is why you go strict no-contact. Which, yes, involves removing them from your Facebook, shockingly enough, and not responding to their text messages, and, y'know, moving on. You'd have the same problems with any form of interaction if you insisted on leaving all the avenues of communication open.
posted by Sequence at 7:39 AM on July 22, 2013 [25 favorites]


I still run into my exes the old-fashioned way: in person, fairly constantly.

Because you can negotiate custody of bars, coffee shops, and even neighborhoods. But the mass transit system is joint-custody only :(
posted by like_a_friend at 7:41 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


I wish my exes WOULD just move to Texas. But no. All but two live within 3 miles of me.
posted by like_a_friend at 7:44 AM on July 22, 2013


Social media? Feh. We invite them to our parties and ask them to officiate our commitment ceremonies.
posted by rtha at 7:46 AM on July 22, 2013 [17 favorites]


What's this? There's a downside to living your life out on Facebook? Say it isn't so!
posted by Thorzdad at 7:47 AM on July 22, 2013 [7 favorites]


What on earth is she doing e.g. making facebook friends with new girlfriends of exes? I think she's one of those people who gregariously interacts with people she shouldn't and intentionally seeks out drama.
posted by naju at 7:48 AM on July 22, 2013 [13 favorites]


I was set to scoff, but then I realized three of my exes are good friends of mine that would have, or had already drifted away. That tortured/awesome long distance relationship when I was sixteen is, thanks to the ease of Facebook, a fantastic grown acquaintance who's life and family are doing very well. Then again, I didn't join Facebook until after I got married, so there's that.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:53 AM on July 22, 2013 [2 favorites]


This is pretty much a non-problem if you don't date crazy people.

If only it were easy to discern crazy from non-crazy before the first date.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:56 AM on July 22, 2013


I like to use Facebook to check in at places so my ex knows where not to go with her new man. I find that it's a good system so far.
posted by josher71 at 7:56 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


Whoever could have guessed that recording every detail of your life in full public view could have any negative consequence! It is definitely the most reasonable option to cause yourself a bunch of problems and then whine about them rather than avoid them in the first place! THOSE people are weirdos!
posted by DU at 7:56 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


Wow, I never realized that the boring, unremarkable thing I have been doing for about 25 years now (staying in touch with most of my exes) was in fact exciting and newsworthy.

I hear the younger generation has also invented an entirely new thing called "sex"! No doubt it has something to do with social media.
posted by kyrademon at 8:10 AM on July 22, 2013 [13 favorites]


I employ an out-of-work stand up comedian to craft my romantic tweets. I pay him in Amazon book reviews.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:15 AM on July 22, 2013 [7 favorites]


She writes it as though it's all "out of her control", whereas in reality blocking someone on Facebook is rather trivial - if you don't ever want to see the online presence of your ex again, it's really not that hard to do. You might still catch the occasional snippet here and there, but that's no different than the possibility you might run into them at the supermarket, despite being very careful to not go to the same parties as them.
posted by modernnomad at 8:15 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


Some of the comments so far make it sound like any contact with a person you slept with or dated must intrinsically be soul poison as opposed to a benign distraction. And in the case where her breakup was particularly prolonged and unpleasant, she did actually go to the trouble of blocking her ex on social media. But she also talked about "exes" in the context of casual relationships that ended quietly, or the multi-night-stands that you might remember fondly without ever pursuing further. In real life, you wouldn't necessarily go out of your way to either check in with them or avoid them; it's only with the advent of social media that keeping track of them is so effortless. I don't think that's necessarily bad. I mean, I have Facebook friends that I've slept with and never dated, and seeing them pop up in my feed occasionally might bring up some memories or desires, but it definitely doesn't cause me any kind of serious distress. At most it can be a little disorienting, because as the author mentions, the etiquette around interacting with exes on social media is not particularly well worked out - but on balance, it's mostly pleasant.

(And I also definitely don't think the author is "whining about [her problems]" by ruminating about the positive and negative differences this change makes... yeesh.)
posted by en forme de poire at 8:16 AM on July 22, 2013 [16 favorites]


Lady has a lot of sex.
posted by zscore at 8:17 AM on July 22, 2013


Lady has a lot of sex.

Is that meant to be a headline?
posted by josher71 at 8:18 AM on July 22, 2013 [3 favorites]


Oh please, I've seen people breakup so badly they had to move to different states. I've witnessed Relationship Anihililation Events so large they disturbed normal business operations. I've personally have had to warn people that thier exes where in town lest they accidentally meet and , I dunno, begin Kung fu fighting.

This is why when you mean to break a bone, you do it all the way, no fracture, no crack, clean curs.
posted by The Whelk at 8:19 AM on July 22, 2013 [2 favorites]


Lady has a lot of sex.

Is that meant to be a headline?


Wayne Newton b-side.
posted by A god with hooves, a god with horns at 8:20 AM on July 22, 2013 [2 favorites]


Totally read the title of this post as: All my exes live in Texas!
posted by royalsong at 8:20 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm currently in that fuzzy soft break-up zone where we're meeting up tonight and are either going to get back together or break up and never speak again. The man in question was a high school boyfriend; we broke up in the foyer of our school and spent most of the rest of high school glaring at each other across classrooms and hallways.

We reconnected a decade later and we've been seeing each other as adults. I dread tonight's conversation in part because I ache at the thought of not being with him, but also because facebook on my phone all but assures me I'll spend the rest of the summer looking him up, and wondering what he's thinking. And once the pain subsides, I imagine we'll spend the next few years making snarky comments on each other's status updates, all the while wishing we could navigate ourselves into friendship the way we did senior year.
posted by jenlovesponies at 8:20 AM on July 22, 2013 [4 favorites]


I read the headline as "All my Exes Live in Tents". How to avoid your ex-yurtfriend?
posted by fundip at 8:21 AM on July 22, 2013 [6 favorites]


I only wish my Facebook feed was a drama-filled sex buffet like the author describes. Wait, no I don't. I think I'll keep the endless stream of baby pics, pet antics, recipes and home improvements. Even if they painfully remind me of the life I don't yet have. Any day. (No really, any day now).

As a single dude with no pets, I think I would actually prefer the sex buffet. I'd probably skip the salad though, they leave that shit out all day
posted by en forme de poire at 8:21 AM on July 22, 2013 [2 favorites]


What struck me is this:

But there was a problem. I noticed my ex-boyfriend’s name when I was going to Gchat my boss, who has the same first name. Staring at their names lined up alphabetically, I knew the risk of an accidental message was too great. I had no choice but to block him again.

which I read as "I have to make choices about who I interact with and how due to shitty software design". Why can't you just hide someone's name without blocking them? Order names by frequency of contact?

It's one thing to give your personal and social information to a rapacious third party (that's old news), but it really, really bugs me on a deep level that there's so little control over the interface you have for interacting with that data. There was a brief period where everyone used standalone chat clients, mail clients, etc. and during that time there was a tremendous degree of control over how you viewed your interactions. Web-only interfaces are eating that, and it's a shame.
posted by phooky at 8:22 AM on July 22, 2013 [14 favorites]


Lady has a lot of sex.
Is that meant to be a headline?
Wayne Newton b-side.


Sounds more like something from the Tom Jones oeuvre.
posted by entropicamericana at 8:24 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


Oh please, I've seen people breakup so badly they had to move to different states.

I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe... Jagerbombs on fire in the face of cheaters. I watched dump-texts glitter in the dark in the Tannhäuser Lounge. All those... breakups... will be saved in the cloud, like chats... in... Gmail archives. Time... to tweet...
posted by A god with hooves, a god with horns at 8:25 AM on July 22, 2013 [43 favorites]


You gotta get to the sex buffet early or everything good is gone and everything else is lukewarm and slightly slimy.
posted by The Whelk at 8:26 AM on July 22, 2013 [5 favorites]


Lady has a lot of sex.

What exactly is your point here?
posted by en forme de poire at 8:29 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


I can't understand how anyone has enough free time to obsess over crap like this. Maybe all the dentures clattering about "millennials" have a point.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:38 AM on July 22, 2013 [3 favorites]


Just doing the math, her claim of 36 sexual partners in 11 years. Compared with the "average" American:
The number of sexual partners an individual has had in their lifetime varies widely within a population. A 2007 nationwide survey in the United States found that the median number of female sexual partners reported by men was seven and the median number of male partners reported by women was four.
Not saying she is promiscuous or making a value judgement, but she writes as if her life is normal when it appears to be out of the ordinary in the sense that she has had far many more partners in 11 years than the typical person in a lifetime. Not to say the things she brings up can't happen to someone with 4 partners vs 36. Perhaps once you reach 36 the Facebook ex-partner thing becomes such a drag you write to complain about it. Facebook is a small village of familiarity, not an anonymous big city.
posted by stbalbach at 8:40 AM on July 22, 2013 [2 favorites]


I find the social changes she's talking about very interesting. It's not just exes; a generation is growing up that never fully drifts apart.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:42 AM on July 22, 2013 [3 favorites]


Not that it's important, but those aren't all sexual partners.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:43 AM on July 22, 2013 [2 favorites]


I still run into my exes the old-fashioned way: in person, fairly constantly.

I read that as "prison" and did a double-take. LOL.
posted by Renoroc at 8:51 AM on July 22, 2013 [6 favorites]


Not to say the things she brings up can't happen to someone with 4 partners vs 36.

So why bring it up in the first place? Anyway, I'd be surprised if the number of partners she's had made her a dramatic outlier from other people in her social circle. (And statistically speaking, the number of sexual partners is both high-variance and long-tailed so you need to be very careful about using a single number to assess how "normal" someone is.)
posted by en forme de poire at 8:53 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


Editor: Oh. My God? You should totally? Write a story about how many exes you have! But make it about, I don't know, Facebook? Anyway.

Maureen O'Connor: No, that's a great idea? I'll do it?
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 8:54 AM on July 22, 2013 [14 favorites]


I am seeing examples of this in my own, rather older FB orbit. I think drama inheres in who you connect with, more than how.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 9:04 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


If you read, I don't know, a few lines down you'll see that they aren't all "sexual partners. At all.
posted by windbox at 9:06 AM on July 22, 2013 [4 favorites]


I thought this article was an excellent piece of writing, and I thought the topic was quite relevant. Anyone who is focusing on the number of exes she has (Not sexual partners - exes include people she flirted with for god's sake) is missing the point for two reasons: 1. who the fuck cares how may people a girl has slept with? 2. this is more about facebook than it is about exes.

The story she tells resonates with me because I see my friends from highschool and college the same way she sees her exes - bored interest, but nothing too good or bad. It's a constant source of snooping but not caring.

In my opinion, this article resides wholly in the genre of "Things that Aren't Science Fiction Because They Came True Five Years Ago."
posted by rebent at 9:08 AM on July 22, 2013 [9 favorites]


36 exes? In a row?!
posted by entropicamericana at 9:10 AM on July 22, 2013 [5 favorites]


Of the 36 she says "a few boys I never touched".
posted by stbalbach at 9:11 AM on July 22, 2013


Touched != had sex with. Third base != had sex with, for that matter. (And of course, people may define "sex" differently.)
posted by en forme de poire at 9:19 AM on July 22, 2013


I'm friends with 2/3s of my exes but those are exact numbers, two out of three. No judgement but personally 36 exes would make my head spin and there's no way that I would even be able to remember who was who.

For what it's worth, my wife and I spend a wonderful day on Saturday at my ex-girl-friend's farm, hanging out in the pool and getting chased around by hordes of chickens.
posted by octothorpe at 9:21 AM on July 22, 2013


I agree, this was well-written and enjoyable to read. I didn't expect to like the article half as much as I did. Thanks for sharing!
posted by lizzicide at 9:21 AM on July 22, 2013 [3 favorites]


I am a little put out by the amount of "concern" evinced in this thread over the number of partners the writer has had, sexual or no. WTF?
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 9:21 AM on July 22, 2013 [14 favorites]


I wonder if the real generational divide is her willingness to acknowledge all of those hazy, middle-ground connections as "exes." And honestly, that description really resonated with me:

they can no longer be categorized as “just friends.” These people aren’t ex-boyfriends but they’re ex-something, weighted with enough personal history to make my stomach drop

I have at least 5 or 6 people who are, like, "exes in my mind." I didn't "date" any of them, I didn't even sleep with any of them. There were some makeout sessions, with a few, and a lot of charged conversations. Some of them legitimately and thoroughly broke my heart and left me devastated for long stretches of time.

What do you call someone who had the ability to break your heart into itty bitty pieces, if not an ex?
posted by like_a_friend at 9:22 AM on July 22, 2013 [13 favorites]


I'm atavistic in this regard in that I generally keep mine close IRL, as they say, though all but one are also connected to me via Facebook, twitter, Livejournal, or some similar mechanism. We don't text much, as none of us are fourteen.

Two of my exes live in apartments in the 5 unit building where I live, and one, as of ten years ago, became my landlord and boss-as-building-super. My most recent is my riding buddy, playful antagonist, and occasionally boss on art handling jobs. The biggest heartbreaker lives 2700 miles away, calls me every night, and is a lovely, supportive man, though I prefer to keep a continent as a buffer except for the occasional visit. Of my three casual dating exes, two are friendly Facebook connections, and just one, the British bodybuilding rocket scientist, wants nothing further to do with me and I fully understand why. Sometimes, you just don't get things right.

I wonder sometimes, particularly as I've been in this dating drought for a good five years, if having this network of former intimates is a disincentive to being out and about and open and available. I'm terrible at meeting people, marginally better at dating, and given to inappropriate states of contentment. I've got dogs, people to talk to with a history of penetration, both emotional and physical, and a settled, modestly comfortable existence. Would I be more driven to find a someone if I didn't have an archive of my former someones? It's a tricky question, because I'd hate to give up what has, in fact, been a good thing, but I've been a bit lonesome of late.

I've only had a few times when it was an issue with a potential mate that I know of, and I tend to filter people based on that kind of jealousy.

"Why would you need to stay in touch with an ex?"

"Well, he's just a friend now, and he's a good friend. Besides, the things I liked about him are still true—it's just that we're not meant to be a couple. Is that a problem?"

"Well..."

The oddest part is when I get together with two or three of 'em and my mom for dinner now and then. To me, this just feels like me hanging out with family, but my mom regards this as delightfully modern and cosmopolitan.
posted by sonascope at 9:23 AM on July 22, 2013 [8 favorites]


rebent: "1. who the fuck cares how may people a girl has slept with?"

Speaking only for myself here, gender notwithstanding the number seems really high to me, as someone who is from an earlier generation and got married before the advent of facebook or most social media.

And yeah, it would seem like an equally high number to me if she were male, too. Is it common for people in their 20's to have such a large number of exes, now?
posted by zarq at 9:24 AM on July 22, 2013


I found this article to be an uncommonly well-considered description of the author's relationship to relationships vis-a-vis social media. She does very little (if any) complaining in the piece and makes it clear that her experience is common among her social circle.

I am a few years older than she but — at 31, male, single and with a "number" much lower than her theoretical 36 — feel a lot of resonance with what she wrote.

The various dismissals of this article in this thread bug me.
posted by wemayfreeze at 9:24 AM on July 22, 2013 [7 favorites]


The masochistic, self-indulgent thing with social media is easy to do (though it's far from making us "never break up"). The issue I've had is with one ex who followed me around the internet, following me on Twitter and leaving a bunch of weird comments on the Facebook page of the institution that I ran social media for, and the HS ex who was a liar, borderline emotionally abusive and sexually coercive coming up on social media stuff. His follow showed up in my email when I was in the middle of a tabletop gaming session and my heart stopped; it turned out he was also following my dad, so I had to email my dad to tell him to block him too.

But one of my good friends is also an ex and my partner and I went out for drinks with him when he was in town a few weeks back and I can keep up with the stuff he writes and his Twitter and having him in my life like that enhances it a lot.

Also, a lot of people have a lot of relationships or a lot of sexual partners or whatever, and all this "numbers" talk really feels like borderline slut-shaming to me. Though I guess the whole "oh but what is the ACTUAL number, is that HIGH to you" thing feels like the kind of conversation she keeps having in the article.
posted by NoraReed at 9:26 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm actually good friends with all of my exes (I:e people I've had what an outsider would consider a relationship with) and two of my exes are married to each other ....soo I guess it works differently for some peole?
posted by The Whelk at 9:27 AM on July 22, 2013 [4 favorites]


We don't text much, as none of us are fourteen.

lol @ millennial hate
posted by wemayfreeze at 9:28 AM on July 22, 2013


NoraReed: "Also, a lot of people have a lot of relationships or a lot of sexual partners or whatever, and all this "numbers" talk really feels like borderline slut-shaming to me. Though I guess the whole "oh but what is the ACTUAL number, is that HIGH to you" thing feels like the kind of conversation she keeps having in the article."

Yeah, I'm not slut shaming. At all. Especially since the topic was raised in the article. But the norm seems to have changed drastically since I was single, so I find it rather fascinating.
posted by zarq at 9:29 AM on July 22, 2013


Seriously that anti-texting thing is absurd in 2013. My mom texts. A lot. If it's not your jam, cool, but the dismissal of texting as "for teenagers" is basically a non sequitur.
posted by wemayfreeze at 9:31 AM on July 22, 2013 [2 favorites]


For the concerned: My comment was a Clerks reference. Also, if flirting with somebody makes them an ex, then I'm Wilt Chamberlain.
posted by entropicamericana at 9:32 AM on July 22, 2013


lol @ millennial hate

Not millennial hate at all—I'm not nimble enough to text or rich enough that I want to pay $0.15 out of my own bank account every time some little thing occurs to me or a friend. I think millennials are perfectly lovely, but acknowledging that I'm not one isn't even remotely related to hate.
posted by sonascope at 9:32 AM on July 22, 2013


To clarify further—I pay per message on my plan and my phone has no keyboard. Call it what you like, but you're wrong.
posted by sonascope at 9:35 AM on July 22, 2013


sonascape you said "we don't text because we're not fourteen" not "I don't text because I don't think it's a good value and anyway my phone isn't good for texting." Both perfectly fine reasons to not like texting btw.
posted by wemayfreeze at 9:38 AM on July 22, 2013 [7 favorites]


I find it absolutely bizarre that the comments in this post keep alternating between "how do you have sex with 36 people" and "RTFA, that's not what she's calling an ex." On multiple times. I mean, if you're not going to RTFA, at least RTF mefi comments?

In any circumstance, I thought the article was strangely poignant. It takes one of the age-old aspects of human experience and romance, dealing with the leftover little bits and pieces of a failed romance - and shows how much more self-conscious it can be when the digital world is factored in.
posted by Conspire at 9:41 AM on July 22, 2013 [2 favorites]


Also, if flirting with somebody makes them an ex, then I'm Wilt Chamberlain.

Except that's not what anyone is saying. It's disingenuous to pretend you see no difference between 1) random stranger you flirted with once, and 2) someone you crushed on hard and flirted with in an extended and involved way, but it never took off and now it kind of hurts your heart when you see him/her and part of you knows that when he/she gets married you will cry for three weeks and eat all the ice cream in the city

Or is 2) actually kind of a millennial thing? I find that hard to believe, as it's been like 90% of my romantic life and I am only a millennial by the most generous reckoning of that term.
posted by like_a_friend at 9:42 AM on July 22, 2013 [4 favorites]


sonascape you said "we don't text because we're not fourteen" not "I don't text because I don't think it's a good value and anyway my phone isn't good for texting." Both perfectly fine reasons to not like texting btw.

Except one is a self-effacing and tongue-in-cheek quip and the other would be a bizarrely detailed sidetrack to a note that really has nothing to do with the topic of the rest of my comment or the FPP, as does this strange derail. It's just a peculiar detail to nitpick out of a comment that doesn't have a thing to do with this "millennial hate" you're so concerned about. So, LOL @ overreaction, but seriously.
posted by sonascope at 9:57 AM on July 22, 2013


Oh cool, by this definition I can call that kid who was obsessed with me in college and then got mad when I pointed out that I had a boyfriend and who messages me every three years or so to tell me about his love life an "ex."

Makes me feel better about ignoring his emails, too.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:04 AM on July 22, 2013 [2 favorites]


I actually could believe that there's a cohort of younger women who are much more casual about sexual intimacy than previous generations. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean they're having more "sex." (If you sent a sexy half-naked picture to someone, do they count as your "sexual partner?") And anyway, that discussion is pretty tangential to the main thrust (tee hee) of this article.

(I do wonder if the popularity of Snapchat-esque sexy texts is a demonstration of how the perceived differences between male and female interest in sex may start to decline as sexual behavior gets both safer and less stigmatized for women...)
posted by en forme de poire at 10:05 AM on July 22, 2013


I thought the article was strangely poignant. It takes one of the age-old aspects of human experience and romance, dealing with the leftover little bits and pieces of a failed romance - and shows how much more self-conscious it can be when the digital world is factored in.

also it makes observations on how relationships get fuzzy and the way we connect and relate to people is changing. we cling to old ideas of labels and yet it can be more complicated than that, and the internet gives us a chance to tangle it up even more.
posted by cristinacristinacristina at 10:38 AM on July 22, 2013 [2 favorites]



I am a little put out by the amount of "concern" evinced in this thread over the number of partners the writer has had, sexual or no. WTF?


Not that it matters much for something this lightweight, but speaking as an official old fogey the number of partners the writer claims goes to her credibility. She sounds like a script writer who is trying to get noticed for Sex In The City: The Next Generation.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:39 AM on July 22, 2013


We don't text much, as none of us are fourteen.


As a 30-something who regularly texts with his 60-something parents, this made me roll my eyes hard. Do you also not own a TV?

In any event, I agree that the number of partners (however defined) is a red herring. What grabs me about the article is a small suspicion that some people actually LIKE being able to keep track of their exes online, even though it may bring them pain to do so. I think people avoid going the "no contact" route by deleting/blocking a social media contact even when it would be better for them mentally, because they like the ability to take a quick peek now and then, even at the cost of occasional emotional distress. That for me would be a more interesting angle - why do people do this to themselves?
posted by modernnomad at 10:42 AM on July 22, 2013 [3 favorites]


the number of partners the writer claims goes to her credibility

Yes, it's absolutely inconceivable that a woman could have sex --or some romantic connection that does not quite involve sex-- with somewhere between 3 and 4 people per year. NO ONE CAN LIVE AT THAT SPEED.

Seriously, people, she says she's been dating for eleven years. If you're an attractive, outgoing person, who is not a serial multi-year monogamist, it is pretty easy to have something fun/flirty/crushy/sexy/emotional go on 3 or 4 times a year. Voila, 36 "exes."
posted by like_a_friend at 10:45 AM on July 22, 2013 [14 favorites]


As a 30-something who regularly texts with his 60-something parents, this made me roll my eyes hard. Do you also not own a TV?

I'm 41, I text a lot, and I don't own a TV. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 10:54 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


...the number of partners the writer claims goes to her credibility. She sounds like a script writer who is trying to get noticed for Sex In The City: The Next Generation.

So your take-away from a long-form print article from New York magazine written by a woman who is being honest about some intimate details of her personal life is that she's lying for attention?
posted by A god with hooves, a god with horns at 10:57 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


Yes, it's absolutely inconceivable that a woman could have sex --or some romantic connection that does not quite involve sex-- with somewhere between 3 and 4 people per year.

As I say, I'm an old fogey. I easily kept up that rate when I was in college but after that pickings got quite slim and frankly I found other things to do with my time than crush on people, consumated or not.

And as was mentioned above her numbers are way out of line with what is generally reported. If she's not exaggerating she is at the very least way the hell out at the end of the curve.

So your take-away from a long-form print article from New York magazine written by a woman who is being honest about some intimate details of her personal life is that she's lying for attention?

Actually my takeaway is that she has interesting commentary on the permanent connection generation. My thoughts on her writing style is that she is taking artistic license with her personal details to make it a better story.

Of course this would be an unprecedented first for New York Magazine, it being the bastion of journalistic integrity that it is. Surely no writer has ever fibbed to make a story more attractive to the purchasing editors, as they are all consumate professionals who are far more interested in maintaining their purity of thought and being than making a sale to a "Lifestyle Magazine".
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:10 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


As I say, I'm an old fogey. I easily kept up that rate when I was in college but after that pickings got quite slim and frankly I found other things to do with my time than crush on people, consumated or not.

Other people did something different than you.

And as was mentioned above her numbers are way out of line with what is generally reported. If she's not exaggerating she is at the very least way the hell out at the end of the curve.

And a lot of people are based on my anecdata. I think the numbers in the study cited actually seem insanely low.
posted by josher71 at 11:17 AM on July 22, 2013 [4 favorites]


And as was mentioned above her numbers are way out of line with what is generally reported.

So what?

If she's not exaggerating she is at the very least way the hell out at the end of the curve.

Again, so what?

FWIW I have a few people in my world whom I count as exes even though we never had sex. Sorry if my definition upsets anyone's universe.
posted by rtha at 11:21 AM on July 22, 2013


FWIW her number is in line with many people I know of all genders and ages. The generally reported averages clearly disguise wide differences along cultural and generational lines.
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:22 AM on July 22, 2013 [4 favorites]


If she's not exaggerating she is at the very least way the hell out at the end of the curve.

The long tail is longer than you think.
posted by anonymisc at 11:30 AM on July 22, 2013 [6 favorites]


stbalbach: "A 2007 nationwide survey in the United States found that the median number of female sexual partners reported by men was seven and the median number of male partners reported by women was four"

First, let me say those numbers are bullshit. For every hetero interaction, there is on average an increase in partners by 1 for the female and 1 for the male. The average number of partners for the sexes should be equal, since for a man to increase his partner count the woman has to increase hers also.

Secondly, those are self-reported at the age of the person reporting (and ages could vary wildly). Those are not lifetime numbers, unless they are polling dead people. In that case, I'm pretty sure the numbers are still bullshit.
posted by I am the Walrus at 11:32 AM on July 22, 2013


I have at least 5 or 6 people who are, like, "exes in my mind." [...] What do you call someone who had the ability to break your heart into itty bitty pieces, if not an ex?
posted by like_a_friend at 12:22 PM on July 22

Eponysterical?
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:41 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


The "that generation" thing is also ringing really false--I am forty, and text almost daily in a lightweight, random-checkin way with my mid-sixties parent and late-twenties sibling. The parent is more active on FB than I am.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 11:46 AM on July 22, 2013


> The average number of partners for the sexes should be equal

Maybe I'm wrong, you're the expert of course, but I've heard prostitution has always skewed numbers in these self-reported surveys. Can you verify?

> Those are not lifetime numbers

The Wikipedia source says "has had in their lifetime", which usually understood to mean "in their lifetime so far". It's hard to imagine anyone thinking someone could time travel into the future and report how many partners they had before the act, though that would be cool, Wikipedia's choice of grammar doesn't invalidate the results of a survey comparable to other surveys of its type.
posted by stbalbach at 11:50 AM on July 22, 2013


I'm not sure that a survey from 2007 is really the best indicator of what the very youngest sexually active generation is up to. Even many of my peers, out at the oldest fringe of the millennials, had only a handful of years of sexytimes under their belts by that time. Lord knows my sex life pre-2007 wasn't at all representative of how the business is shaping up overall.

The existence of a person who is different from you is not, most likely, a lie, but a mere difference. I personally know a number of people who easily match the author's numbers; I know a couple who might think her a bit of a slacker. (Only 4 a year?! That's just lazy.) They might be outliers but they are not EXTREME, unimaginable outliers. Sheesh.
posted by like_a_friend at 12:12 PM on July 22, 2013


Oh, for the love of ...

I, too, have many exes! More than a few of them are on facebook!

So, please either also brand me a slut and/or a liar, or MOVE ON from the ridiculous discussion of the author's number of loosely defined exes.
posted by kyrademon at 12:35 PM on July 22, 2013 [9 favorites]


Surely there are more options available.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 1:31 PM on July 22, 2013


like_a_friend: " Seriously, people, she says she's been dating for eleven years. If you're an attractive, outgoing person, who is not a serial multi-year monogamist, it is pretty easy to have something fun/flirty/crushy/sexy/emotional go on 3 or 4 times a year. Voila, 36 "exes.""

Every three months, for 11 years.... Y'all are getting a lot more happy fun times than I did at that age. ;)
posted by zarq at 1:36 PM on July 22, 2013


If you're an attractive, outgoing person, who is not a serial multi-year monogamist, it is pretty easy to have something fun/flirty/crushy/sexy/emotional go on 3 or 4 times a year

Seriously, I'm surprised people find this surprising. Obviously if you have been in a bunch of LTRs your personal experience will vary, but a few new partners a year seems normal to me if you're dating. Among people who date actively like that, you'd expect the number to climb in this way until/unless they enter a LTR.

Why can't you just hide someone's name without blocking them? Order names by frequency of contact?


Well, you totally can do this in Gchat, she apparently doesn't know how or hasn't bothered.

(On the contact card that comes up when you hover over someone in Gchat, click the down arrow at the bottom right, then choose "Never show")

And the new hangout stuff orders by frequency of contact.

But there's more basic FB stuff she could do that shes not too (setting frequency / availability of updates, etc) so either she doesn't know, doesn't care about a technical solution or doesn't really want a solution (which is quite probable).
posted by wildcrdj at 3:48 PM on July 22, 2013


My beef with this is less anything to do with her numbers, and more how it felt like the NY Times trend piece where a lot of "we" is used to presume in place of "I."

I'm not friends with any of my exes on Facebook. Most people I know aren't — they block them fairly quickly, and I live in a big enough city that outside of an occasional "Oh, you still shop at Trader Joe's?" it's pretty easy to avoid people. The narrative did read as self-indulgent drama seeking, even as I'm in pretty much the same cohort.

I dunno, it's like, delete 'em, block 'em, whatever, but this essay feels like one of those, "I just ate the whole carton of ice cream AS A RESULT OF DIGITAL ENNUI" reaches.
posted by klangklangston at 4:21 PM on July 22, 2013 [4 favorites]


But the norm seems to have changed drastically since I was single, so I find it rather fascinating.

I was last single 18 years ago and the number she reports was not unusual for myself and the people I knew.
posted by KathrynT at 7:13 PM on July 22, 2013 [4 favorites]


I've been out of the game for the past 6 years (early-mid 30's now). But before that, I was never a serious dater. 3-4 partners a year would have been my average. That's not a lot at all if you're into casual dating. I've always considered my 'number' to be average for a woman who started her sex life in college (well, high school if you consider heavy petting) and didn't settle down until nearing 30.
posted by Windigo at 8:30 PM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


A gal who's doing online dating could easily rack up 36 "exes" (using the author's definition of "ex," which is very open-ended) in short order. As could a gal in a big city who likes to go out a lot to bars.

That's not at all a difficult number to achieve, practically speaking.
posted by nacho fries at 10:07 PM on July 22, 2013


I remember when Facebook added my college when I was a freshman, back when you had to have a .edu email address to join. Instantly everyone was on it, and it was pretty useful - you could enter your course numbers and see your classmates.

What constitutes a relationship when everyone you have ever met - even those short friendships, classmate acquaintances, brief encounters, friends of former roommates, someone you hit it off with really well and then never really saw again, awkward crush - are constantly auto-populated in your every day life? I had no trouble understanding what she meant by "36 exes", clearly that is the generational gap in understanding right there. Social media is like constantly being surrounded by alternate universes: cities you could have stayed in, girlfriends you might have gotten more serious with, friends who never left your hometown...
posted by bradbane at 10:08 PM on July 22, 2013 [4 favorites]


"I have 700 friends on Facebook[...]"

This first line of the article is her problem. No one has 700 actual friends. If you friend everyone you've ever met, you will have drama. If you only friend people you are actually friends with, your life will have a lot less drama.
posted by MexicanYenta at 10:23 PM on July 22, 2013 [5 favorites]


Well, the definition of 'friend' is changing, for better and worse.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:42 AM on July 23, 2013 [1 favorite]


I am 39 years old and I have 1100 facebook friends because I've lived in Nashville, Portland OR, Seattle, NYC, and Baltimore. I've had friends, been in bands, and had jobs in all of those places. I've met a lot of people, and a lot of them are on FB.

I don't think I have a lot of drama.
posted by josher71 at 4:38 AM on July 23, 2013 [1 favorite]


Of my actual exes (i.e., people I've been in relationships with), I've kept nominally in touch with only one of them. (She's in my Facebook contacts, though we don't interact much. I tried removing her from LiveJournal when we broke up, but put her back because LiveJournal drama.)

Other exes have disappeared. I doubt I could find my last gf before the current one without hiring a private investigator (which I have no intention of doing). Occasionally I regret that, but then again, I doubt we'd have much to say to each other.
posted by acb at 4:42 AM on July 23, 2013


Well, the definition of 'friend' is changing, for better and worse.
posted by iamkimiam at 5:42 AM on July 23


True. Back in the days when kids were allowed on my lawn, we called most of these people "acquaintances".
posted by MexicanYenta at 5:22 AM on July 23, 2013 [4 favorites]


It also wasn't a verb back then. Ah, nostalgia for simpler times.
posted by iamkimiam at 6:06 AM on July 23, 2013 [1 favorite]


KathrynT: " I was last single 18 years ago and the number she reports was not unusual for myself and the people I knew."

Fair enough! :) Definitely was not in my circles.
posted by zarq at 7:10 AM on July 23, 2013




My very first Facebook friend was a girlfriend. I joined it, from MySpace, at her request, because she wanted to change her relationship status. I find that online stuff can make a nice way to keep in touch and become "just friends" again in a post-relationship setting. But that takes some time. Maybe it doesn't work well right after the breakup.
posted by dylan_k at 8:23 AM on July 28, 2013


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