‘The Internet is Not a Safe Space:’ The Power of Keeping Your Relationship Off Social Media

Instagram @porsha4real

Cardi B. Jennifer Lopez. Porsha Williams. What do these women have in common? They all experienced heartbreak for the world to see. But would anyone had known had they not shared their relationships publicly to begin with?

It’s a question Elizabeth Ayoola proposes in a riveting op-ed she penned for Essence. Entitled In 2024, Keep Your Relationship To Yourself — Good, Bad And The Ugly, she divulges in the harm of oversharing relationships on social media and the damage it can do to people in love.

“I have always struggled to answer the question of how much of your private life should be shared online,” Ayoola begins. “On the one hand, I think there is power in sharing–especially when you’re sharing things that have held you hostage like shame or trauma. However, the further along in life and healing I get, the more I understand the importance of safe spaces. Healing, freedom, and resolution, happens when we share in safe spaces. The internet is not a safe space.”

She continues: “It is filled with people who are scrolling looking for entertainment and their next conversation starters. It includes many individuals who are miserable in their everyday lives and scroll so they don’t have to confront that misery. It’s full of people looking to find and gloat about people in pain so they can feel better about themselves. Your relationship issues aren’t entertainment and neither is your pain.”

She advises that both celebrity couples and everyday people find the right spaces to express their pain. But in the event you want to share, wait until the wound has healed a bit and have figured out next steps. She said she once heard a couple say they only share their relationship lessons after they’ve resolved their issues and made peace, not while they’re still in the storm, which the writer believes comes more from a place of healing, not chaos, and feels far more meaningful.

She concluded: “If you think about it, we don’t know if or how many times Denzel and Pauletta Washington could have called a divorce lawyer or if such a thought has ever even crossed their minds. Thats because they don’t tell us. We don’t know whether Oprah ever told Stedman to pack his bags and then took him back the next day because she knows it’s none of our business. They aren’t painting a perfect picture or being disingenuous. Quite the opposite actually. Instead, it shows emotional maturity and their ability to fiercely safeguard something and someone they love.”