So the boyfriend and I are sitting around catching up on each other’s Monday and Tuesday last night, and he tells me an anecdote about how his friends are asking why, if he has a girlfriend, his MySpace page still says “single”. To which I respond, “changing your MySpace status is like getting pinned in high school was in the 1950s.” It’s not the first time I’ve heard this sentiment: a friend’s smartass little brother commented last week that if I was REALLY seeing someone, shouldn’t my MySpace say “In a Relationship”?
So this is what we’ve done with the Internet. We’re using Myspace/Friendster/et al as indications of how emotionally committed we are to whoever we’re sleeping with. But all I can think of is that MySpace movie, where the girlfriend is yelling at her boyfriend, “how come I’m not in your Top 8!”
Of course, the whole point of this particular social commentary was to actually put, in my journal, in an open post, that I’ve gone from saying, “I’m dating that guy I met at Bar Sinister two months ago” to saying, “I met my boyfriend at Bar Sinister a couple months ago.” So where it says “single” on my MySpace profile is sort of Not True right now. But at 27, I don’t feel like I need to get pinned to qualify as going steady.
I’m also still getting used to the term “boyfriend”. It doesn’t help that when I use it, someone sings out,”Jillian has a boyfriend!” and I blush. And I get the shock waves back. “You have a boyfriend?” say my co-workers, my friends, the people I haven’t seen in a month or two, since this particular roller coaster started. And I don’t feel that comfortable with the term yet, just because it hasn’t been, well, official for that long.
Normally, this is also the point where I would put in a flip comment about how I have a boyfriend “for the time being”, or how I’m sure this won’t last long, or some other negativity, because I’m so superstitious and anxious that I believe that being positive is taunting the universe. But I’ve been questioning my own negativity this year – Carly called me on being negative, a lot, when I didn’t even realize I was doing it. So that’s why I’m actually writing this post, without disclaimers, without the cynicism that I always used as armor. “Expect the worst and you can’t be disappointed,” used to be a modus operandi for me, but I’m trying something different on this one. I still overthink everything, but I’m trying not to sabotage myself in the process.
At some point, I will probably swap out that MySpace info. But for now, as a warning – when it comes up, in electronic print – try not to be shocked. I think there’s going to be a lot of “boyfriend” references over the summer, just because we’re together as much as schedules permit. No one has made me want to clear my calendar for them in a long time, and no guy has made blog mention status, except as a joke or an anecdote, in years.
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