and a friendship?

You can unscrew the light bulb.

The truth is that there are some things that can’t be undone, and using other people is one of them. If you want to be connected with someone only when it benefits you, but sever the relationship when you feel it doesn’t benefit you only to try to reconnect it later, you are suffering from one of the side effects of social media. Social media would have you believe that making a friend and breaking a friendship are as easy as clicking a button, but the truth is that relationships take time to develop and will harbor only a limited number of wounds. Even unconditional love has boundaries. Someone can love you unconditionally while not allowing you to use their living room floor for a toilet. That doesn’t mean they love you any less, it means they love themselves enough to not want their living room used as a toilet.

An alternating series of “come heres,” followed by “go aways,” will take its toll on any relationship, and simply clicking on a “send friend request” button won’t undo the damage. I’m afraid that’s a lesson that many people are going to have to learn the hard way, if they learn it at all. If they apply the rules of social media to in-person relationships, they may just blame the other person until enough of their relationships fall apart that virtual ones are all they have left.