The other day I was on Facebook and I realized that someone I went to college with was planning her wedding--for the second time. When I had known her, she had dated a common acquaintance and right after graduation they were engaged. Now, I had known there was some rough spots in their relationship and thus was not entirely surprised to find out a few months later (again through Facebook) that the engagement had been broken off. But before the engagement had been broken, she had published a ton of professional engagement photos on the social networking site.
Out of curiosity, I went to see if I knew who her new fiance was. I didn't. But what really surprised me was that pictures of her ex-fiance were still shown in the top banner as being some of her most recently tagged photos. When I clicked to see all the photos of her I saw that nearly all of them were from her engagement photo session with her ex (or from sorority life during college) and there wasn't even a single shot of her with her new husband-to-be. Now, this was the exact opposite on his page (oops, his security settings weren't up to speed and I can be a stalker when curiosity gets the better of me), for his profile picture was a couples shot of them.
Both members of the couple have their entire walls covered in statuses and comments having to do with their upcoming nuptials but it really surprised me that she had never edited her Facebook to diminish her ex-fiance's presence especially with her wedding coming up in the fall. So my question isn't really about whether or not she's wrong or right, but what is the proper etiquette in the situation? Do you erase your past life and pretend it never happened? Or do you at least more thoroughly establish that you have a new life that doesn't include that other guy you had a professional shoot with?
I'll admit, I never went through my account and deleted everything that went between my ex and myself. The pictures, comments, even the connection as "friends" remains. In fact, I hadn't even realized we were still FB friends until I saw his comment a week after I announced my engagement to Jeff about how he'd dodged two bullets in one month in reference to myself and another of his exes (and one of my bridesmaids). I contemplated removing him, but didn't. I have an attitude about removing FB friends that essentially dictates that I have to wish them dead before I remove them, thus no one ever has been.
However, I feel as though I had been active enough on FB while I was single and while I was dating Jeff to establish very thoroughly which guy I plan to spend the rest of my life with. It wasn't as if I was completely inactive during the two year span between wedding planning periods as this girl I once knew had been. It was just slightly jarring to me.
I'm curious to know how others have handled their exes on social networking sites like Facebook. Did you erase your pictures of your ex? Did you remove them as a friend? Or did you let the past be just as it was no matter how prominently it was displayed?
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