Facebook and Marriage Envy

Is Facebook the new “Keeping Up With The Joneses” for marriage? We scroll through our Facebook feed and the next thing you know you want to go to Hawaii like your friends Homer and Beatrice. But what if your husband doesn’t want to go to Hawaii?

Or you see a couple at Disneyland wearing matching Mickey hats, and suddenly the definition of fun in marriage is parading around Disneyland in matching hats. Or you see a couple on a date and the restaurant looks oh so romantic and you find yourself wondering where the romance in your marriage has gone.

Let’s look at how Wikipedia defines Keeping up with the Joneses:

“Keeping up with the Joneses is an idiom in many parts of the English speaking world referring to the comparison to one’s neighbor as a benchmark for social class or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ is perceived as demonstrating socioeconomic or cultural inferiority.”

Did you know the phrase originated with a comic strip?

And it is comical and a bit ridiculous, don’t you think? And yet, we all fall prey to it. We think that what we see is better than what we have. When in actuality what we see on Facebook are pictures of others highlight reels of their life. Maybe not always, I enjoy the occasional I hate my cat for destroying my new exotic rug or My life stinks today posts, but more often than not we are seeing the highlight reel.

Then we play the comparison game.

When we allow pictures to navigate our thoughts in a negative direction we need to come back to reality.

Yes, all looks great in pictures but you don’t know which couples had their worst fight ever right after the picture was snapped. Or which couple is struggling, and that’s why they post pictures that look romantic and fun. Even I have made some of my worst of days look good in a picture. As we scroll through our Facebook feeds we need to remember what we see, in many cases, are another version of those Christmas letters. You know, the Christmas letters with all the awards, and accomplishments, and family praises.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change from shifting shadows.

-James 1:17

And isn’t our spouse our best gift from God?

If we want our marriages to be stronger we need to “water” them at home, and not on social media.

We need to think on what is good about our spouse.

We need to praise with words…in person!

We need to make a reservation at a restaurant and talk to one another.

We need to love sacrificially.

When we focus on making our marriage the best it can be, we won’t be tempted to look “across the street.”

Would you celebrate marriage with me and tell someone about my book soon to be released?

From Me to We: A Premarital Guide For the Bride- and Groom- to- Be is available now on pre-order online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, and Christianbook.com.

Now, make a difference and love your spouse today.

Blessings to you, my friend!

Fondly,

Lu