Loyalty

I’ve had a few conversations with some people lately about a topic that is grounded in loyalty. It doesn’t look like loyalty on the surface but it truly is when you dive deep in its rudimental foundation. It’s a topic I know well because I pride myself on loyalty. I’ve worked to maintain it, and I hold others to the same standard even though I know that’s impossible. I hold it as one of my strongest characteristics. Therefore, to judge my own loyalty standard, I see fallacies in disloyal behavior, even when the behavior may look innocent to others.

The topic is dating and following those you once tried to date. It isn’t about ex’s. We’ve all had more than our fair share of those. Ex’s can be followed on social media if you’re still friends, and I don’t mean friends that still hang out. I mean ‘friends’ whom you wish them well, watch to see if they find happiness, and you watch their families thrive. That can be healthy. Most of us follow exes, and if healthy boundaries are in place, that isn’t a problem. They’re exes for a reason, right? Not much of a threat there.

The conversations I’ve had are with people in the dating world who are still looking for someone to share a life with, or perhaps they’ve been in a relationship and they begin to notice things. I think this is a topic the majority deal with but no one talks about.

The problem, as stated isn’t exes. The men/women you’re attempting to date are still following someone they met online, or someone they were interested in at one point in time but never built a relationship. I believe this to be disloyal. It’s disloyal mainly to yourself. Why would you continue to follow or maintain “friends” status with them? Who are they to you? Do they bring value to your daily life, because we all know we spend too much time on social media scrolling the feed? Who are you wasting time on in your feed? People you once “swiped” on? You’re devaluing yourself by keeping them. I know that unless you dig deep into that last statement you won’t find the loyalty foundation, but it’s there. You devalue yourself because you’ve moved on from them. Let them go. By keeping them “hanging around”, it makes you look pathetic, actually. Desperate, even.

Are you trying to keep your “friends” number up? That’s also kind of sad because we should value the quality of our friends and not the quantity.

Secondly, as someone recently said, you’re devaluing the next person you date. How dare you keep a “friend” that isn’t really a friend but someone you saw as attractive enough to meet on a dating site, and someone you invested in, even if briefly. How inconsiderate is it to keep following them when you go blue in the face telling the new person that they’re “enough”? No one believes your words when you’re seen following old dating interests.

How awful of a world is it when you maintain that ‘follow’ when we are already insecure and threatened by men/women online, in magazines, and in our day to day. How disrespectful is it to keep them as a ‘friend’ when this issue is loyalty.

Luckily I don’t have a jealousy problem. But I do have high loyalty standards, and so do the few people I’ve spoken with recently that spurred this discussion. They’re sad and disappointed and quite frankly, I feel bad that they can’t be truly happy because they’re told… “I don’t talk to them, they’re just a friend on fb.”

Some of the discussion comments that were made (the few I remember):

It hurts when they like or have liked pics of them; it hurts when they follow half-naked men/women; it hurts when they follow women/men they don’t know; it hurts when I’m lied to when I bring it up; I hate that it happens and called crazy for bringing it up. They also follow pages of the people they once had interest in.

Ouch! The only advice I could give is express your grievances and if behavior doesn’t change, move on.

Loyalty, man…That’s a hard one to grasp. Maybe explaining the Golden Rule could help? Or perhaps showing them how it feels by reversing the situation? If they don’t care at all and they shrug it off like none of it really matters, but it matters to you, then it should matter to them. If it still doesn’t matter to them, move on and find someone new. Or be single. There is so much value in being single. That’s where I found my healing, and that’s what I tried explaining to the few people I spoke with about this topic. It’s difficult convincing people that single-dom can be amazing. The things I hear and have experienced in today’s dating world are some heavy burdens.

 

Loyalty is more than not sleeping with someone. Loyalty is action. Loyalty is not in your words. Loyalty is in the changed behavior. Loyalty is looking forward, not behind. If you’re still following a man/women you “swiped” on or met once, that’s disloyalty. Especially when you’re just trying to build a relationship through trust with someone you might care about. I don't think I could commit long term (marriage) if I had those relationship problems. Too much baggage. Too many triggers.

I hope this brings benefit to someone, but it could just be more groundling kabuki.

I suppose some don’t care about “likes or follows”, but it’s a love language at its depth. Acts of service. Screw the flowers and the chocolates. We want loyalty. And maybe a trip to Italy.

Definitely a trip to Italy.