i'm a little embarrassed by what i'm about to tell you. i once spent a whole sunday investigating my own boyfriend's instagram like i was getting paid by the fbi. eleven months together and i wasn't on there once. not a story, not a tagged photo, not the back of my head at a restaurant. meanwhile i had to hear about how his coworker's fiancée "looks so nice" in the pics she posts, while i was at his mom's house every other weekend carving a turkey. when i brought it up he gave me the classic line. "i'm just a private person." sir, you posted your gym bag yesterday. you posted your breakfast sandwich 😭 so i did what we all do, i told myself i was being insecure. i said it doesn't matter, people who are really happy don't need to post it. i said only teenagers care about this stuff. i said all the mature things and i almost believed them. then one night a girl from his old job replied to his story with three fire emojis and he hearted it, and i watched it happen in real time from the other end of the couch. that's when i understood what the empty profile was for. it wasn't privacy. it was availability. he got to come home to me and still walk around that app like an open door. and that's when the anger fell away and something smaller showed up underneath it. i felt like a secret. a woman in her late twenties, sitting a foot from a man who loved me in the house and hid me in public. i didn't need a post to feel loved. i needed to know i wasn't something he was keeping quiet to protect his options. now i want to be fair, because some men really are private. some people don't post anybody, their mom, their friends, their dog, nothing. if his whole page is a ghost town and he introduces you to everyone he knows, holds your hand in front of his friends, and you never feel hidden, that's a different man and you can relax. the difference is easy once you stop lying to yourself. does he hide everything, or just you? does he talk about you when you're not in the room? would a woman who found him tomorrow have any idea you exist? you already know the answer, and that's the part nobody likes hearing. some of them don't post their girlfriend because they want other women to think they're single. and honestly it's a convo i wish i'd been ready for eleven months sooner. - @empty.glances