Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Have you ever had a cyber "friend" who was your confidant, mentor, teacher or someone you enjoyed conversing with? The friendship could have started on any number of levels and quickly developed into an experience of sharing personal thoughts, goals and causes.

What defines a cyber friend differently is the fact that you never get to see that friend's body language, you only get to know them by their online presence behind a keyboard and screen and by the way they present themselves in different media, whether it be email, message boards, forums or social media groups.

Everything seems to go along great for a while until one of you disagrees or shows a "real life" side to your online personality that sets off a bell inside your head. It could be something as innocuous as being too bossy in an email, or a blog entry or action taken that is in disagreement with the ideals you both set forth in the beginning.

Go back and think about what brought you together in the first place, and how excited you were to have someone online who was there to help, encourage, and support your efforts. Think about that first digital impression you got of each other, the way everything seemed to flow the way you wanted. Unfortunately, not all good things are made to last forever, and now the usefulness of your friendship is over.

So it comes time to part ways with your cyber friend. How do you handle the breakup? Do you pick at old wounds? Do you ignore emails saying you are just too busy to answer? Do you harbor ill feelings and hurt? Do you wage a subtle campaign against them in blog entries calling them out?In my mind when it's time to call it off, call it off!

Let it go, move on. There are millions of others on the internet to converse with that will see your viewpoint so there is no need to hang on to animosity. It's the quality of cyber friends that is important, not necessarily the quantity.

Give it up gracefully, you will both be better for it. Karma has a way of taking care of the rest.



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