Alanna Dwoskin

Growing up alongside a strong presence of social media, I’ve been aware of the contrast between people’s behavior online and in person for a long time, from watching Catfish to reading comments from keyboard warriors. The internet provides an escape from everyday life, desensitizing people to what it’s like to communicate face to face, and creating an incentive to say things that people may not have the courage to say to someone’s face. In addition to that, it’s so easy for words on a screen to get misinterpreted or lost in translation.

I’ve been especially conscious of this incongruity as I’ve started to explore the world of romantic relationships. Like many other young women and teenage girls, this behavior is pushed to its extreme in my Instagram DMs and on Tinder. I’ve never had a guy greet me in person with, “If I rearrange some of the letters in your name I can spell anal,” or “Wanna fuck?” But in online communication, it seems to be a regular thing. Most of these messages are from men who I’ve never met, so it’s easy for me to press the unmatch or block button and remove them from my life. What these men say can still bother me, but it’s easier for me to shake than in-person interactions because I know that I will never have to confront this person.

But not all unwanted messages online are from strangers. Throughout middle school, high school, and college, I’ve received unwanted messages from my male classmates that made me feel uncomfortable, violated, and unsafe. Blocking them online may stop the unwanted online communication, but that does nothing to prevent them from behaving inappropriately in person or alleviate the stress of having to see them every day. I wish I could gain back the class time I spent in fear—afraid of how they would treat me in person, how they might react if I blocked them, and of being misinterpreted if I rejected them.

In middle school, these comments were encouraged in a way by the popularity of a website called Ask.fm, where people could anonymously ask questions by posting a link to your Facebook page. I quickly realized that this platform welcomed inappropriate comments—giving 13 to 14 year old boys the ability to send you anonymous messages gets really perverse really fast. These messages affected the way I felt at school. I’d scan the hallways and classrooms, trying to pair anonymous messages to faces, always wondering who had said what. I was suddenly aware that my school environment was not as safe as I’d thought.

In high school, boys left anonymity behind and started to comment whatever they wanted on my Instagram and Facebook posts. For years, I deleted the comments and never talked about them in attempt to be the bigger person—but also out of fear, because I didn’t want to confront these guys, not knowing how they’d respond. I’d been told that boys will be boys, and I wasn’t even sure if I could convince people they were wrong. So instead I went about my days trying to avoid all contact with anyone who said negative things about me online.

It wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I changed the way I dealt with inappropriate messages. There was a person who continually left comments on my Instagram and sent me text messages, demeaning me physically and intellectually. He also attacked my friends, and got his friends to gang up against me. I was over it. I wouldn’t tolerate silently sitting across from someone in class who was extremely hostile to me online. Before I went to the administration, a teacher heard him threatening me in the lunchroom, starting the process of getting help in handling the situation. He got suspended for his online interactions with me. Getting one of the most “popular” boys suspended from school held unfortunate consequences for me, creating tension between me and people who were loyal to him. But it also had its benefits—I had to adjust who I spent time with, and by the end of high school, I felt like the people who I was friends with were not only loyal but shared the same values as me.

Before this point it seemed completely foreign to me to reach out for help regarding unwanted messages. I feared that I’d get in some sort of trouble, or I’d be told “boys will be boys” for the billionth time, so I kept it private. This helped me realize that it’s not only okay, but extremely important to hold people accountable for their actions online. There might always be a gap between the way people behave online and in person, but online actions have no less weight than their actions offline.

My most recent experience with unwanted messages was different from the rest. For most of my second semester at college, this guy in one of my lectures wasn’t even on my radar. He usually sat far behind me in the fifty-person lecture class and had never said a word to me. One day he friended me on Facebook and I accepted, just as I would anyone else who went to my college. Almost immediately, he messaged me asking about how the class was going and if I wanted to hang out sometime. It seemed like a perfectly friendly message on the surface, but something about it really freaked me out. I didn’t know him; what motivated him to suddenly reach out to me? I responded politely, telling him a bit about the paper I was writing and deflecting his invitation to hang out, saying maybe another time. I hoped he’d notice that I wasn’t interested and stop messaging me. Over the next few weeks, he continued to send me random messages and asking me to hang out. I was at a loss for how to deal with it.

I had a lot of anxiety about rejecting him over Facebook Messenger. It’s easy to misinterpret the tone and intention of words on a screen. I’ve had my fair share of rejection, and I didn’t want him to assume there was a personal reason that I rejected him, or that I rejected him because of his appearance. The lack of personal connection with him made me fear that he’d read my rejection as harsher than it actually was.

So instead, I stopped responding completely. I felt paralyzed, and even though this person seemed nonthreatening, I still feared going to class. I didn’t know how he interpreted my silence, and then the silence lasted so long that I was worried how he’d interpret a response from me and what it’d warrant. Sitting in a room with someone who had extensively reached out to me online but had never spoken to me in person felt mysterious and terrifying. The messages continued even after I returned home for summer, which finally motivated me to end the interaction. I wish I could say that I stood up for myself and explained what was wrong to him, but I ended it by letting him know that I was transferring schools and moving to another state.

I feel that it’s somewhat unfair that I ignored him and didn’t tell him clearly that I wasn’t interested right away, but I stand firm in my belief that the frequency of his communication crossed a line. His relentlessness was so shocking to me, mostly because it seemed to be the exact opposite of what I would do if I were in his position. I’ve taken the risk of being the first person to initiate a relationship, and I’ve faced rejection a few times and even no response. Either of those outcomes are enough cause me to hide under my bed for a week and never try to interact with them again. This classmate and I might be examples of two extremes, but I feel that the disparity between the way that men and women behave online and in person is extremely vast.
In these three very different experiences with my male classmates and social media, I notice a common theme of entitlement. Those 13 and 14 year-old boys thought it was their business to ask me what my breast size was, with no regard to how violated that made me feel. My high school classmate thought there was no problem with commenting horrible things about me on my own posts. My college classmate made it seem like he was entitled to my time, even after I showed no interest. The relevant platforms for communicating online have changed so much during my lifetime, and are evolving faster than I can comprehend. The freedom that social media gives you makes me really excited for the future, but also afraid, because I really have no idea what kinds of interactions I will have ahead of me as I continue to navigate my relationships.

Almost two semesters into college, and I still feel like I let him slip through my fingers. I wonder what I could have done or what I could have said, if the relationship could have ever even worked given its predestined expiration date.

A little over a month before I left for college, I met a guy who was seemingly perfect for me. He blew my mind— or maybe it was my extremely low expectations that I had for Tinder dates, but I thought he was truly amazing. In high school, I hadn’t had the best luck romantically, and when I met this guy, I thought it just might be time to release myself from this trend. We talked with so much ease and had incredible sexual chemistry. I was dying to explore where this relationship could go, but I was faced with the hard fact of having to literally pack up my entire life and move to a different state in a matter of weeks. I was overwhelmed with virtually unanswerable questions: it takes a while for relationships to develop naturally, would ours have enough time? Was it realistic to invest time and energy in this relationship if it seemed to have a set expiration date? Would he even consider this? Was this fair to either of us?

Despite the fact that I was leaving so soon, I went for it. I figured that life is way too short to waste opportunities like this. Plus, it took almost 19 years for him to come around and I didn’t necessarily feel like waiting another 19.

He had just finished his freshman year at a college in my city, and stayed over the summer to continue his job. We had very similar academic interests and cared about many of the same things. We hung out a lot that month, often avoiding the sauna-like August weather inside his heavily air-conditioned dorm. The sexual chemistry was still strong, but my emotions became more and more cloudy, making it hard for me to communicate with him. I buried my emotions in sex, and didn’t allow myself to verbalize how I felt about him because I was unsure of the validity of our relationship. With the way that hook up culture influences our relationships today, I felt pretty confident that my reservations were valid. Among the people I knew who were already in college, there seemed to be a widespread idea that the beginning of college was an important time to be single and explore all of your options. I had heard of many established relationships crumbling when one partner left for college. So what would happen with me and this person I had just met?

I think that he had similar thoughts running through his mind. He would open up and become vulnerable, and then wouldn’t text me back for days. He would ask me to go out on a fun date and then change his mind last minute and decide to Netflix and chill. I recognized those moves from guys who had blown me off in the past so I became cautious about asking too much from him, but this situation felt different because he continuously showed he cared. His inability to commit to scenarios that required a deeper connection suggested he was also indecisive about where this relationship was headed, even though we both really seemed to like each other.

As the weeks passed, the pressure to share how I felt about him grew, but so did my lack of confidence. These feelings were so fresh and different than anything I had ever felt before, only making them that much more difficult to process. I knew that I wanted to express my feelings to him, but I struggled to understand them myself. Even if I mustered up the confidence to open up about my emotions, I didn’t know if he would accept or reciprocate them because I had to leave. I remember pausing outside his door after I left for what would be the last time, trying to give myself one last chance to figure it out.

The short window of time forced me to act fast, but some things simply can’t happen quickly, no matter how hard you try. I was confident in my sexuality so it was easy for me to express how I felt sexually, but I was less comfortable with allowing myself to be emotionally vulnerable. I wonder what we both buried in all of that sex. It was loaded with feeling and seemed to replace our emotional expression. I was afraid of discovering where the relationship was going, and ironically he was the only one who could help me figure it out. The end seemed drearily inevitable, so instead, I chose silence.

The transition to college was hard. I had to adjust to a new environment, people, and a new social culture. During syllabus week, I found myself drowning in a sea of single, horny people looking for instant pleasure and one night stands. All I could think about was that he was probably in a similar environment, and I had no idea if he was participating or not.

Over the course of this school year, I’ve tried to let go, but I can’t push how I felt about him out of my mind. We talked, and I searched for the closure I needed, but I never found it. I tried removing him from my social media, I even made a conscious effort to stop bringing him up entirely. I expected my feelings to fade over time, but I still frequently mull over what could have been. The harder it was to forget him, the more it made me remember how important he was, and that feeling keeps me wondering.

Now I realize how important it is to communicate your emotions in relationships. We were never able to figure out what page either of us were on because we never really shared how we felt. Our relationship lacked the time it takes to develop trust and comfort. Going forward, I want to be more conscious of relationship habits, and practice patience with myself and others. No matter how badly I wanted this relationship to work, I need to realize it didn’t. And remember that I can’t rush myself into someone new, no matter how perfect they may seem, and that “perfect” is probably far less real than I might have once tried to convince myself of anyway.

Author: Alanna Dwoskin

What Slips Away