Friend Request Experience

I get really excited when I see a friend request on Facebook. It's like going to the mailbox on your birthday - there's usually something special waiting for you when you open up. I treat facebook as a social tool - I do not use it as a networking tool - that's my LinkedIn account. So when I get a friend request that is from someone I don't know, or someone I think isn't really interested in keeping in touch so much as being nosy, it's a bummer.

There are a few rules of thumb I keep in mind when I'm accepting or sending a friend request. First, am I really interested in what's going on in this person's life?

Do I respect them? Do I care about them?

Am I friends with their spouse too? (I often find I'm uncomfortable friending my friend's husbands - there are a few exceptions to the rule.)

I guess the spouse benchmark is the big hang up for me. My husband and I have some families that we are friendly with, but when we boil it down, in many cases, I'm friends with the wife & not the husband. It's not that I don't like the husband (ok well maybe in a few cases I dislike him). It's just that when I talk to the husbands of my friends, it's often a surface conversation. I don't have a connection with them that makes me feel comfortable labeling him as a friend.

I recently posted an ambiguous comment on facebook that hinted at some changes going on in our house. I made the post late in the evening and early the next morning I had a friend request from the spouse of one of my facebook-friends. This is someone who talks down to me every time I see them, has a know-it-all attitude towards many people and has clearly seen friendly comments to their spouse (posted by me.) So it's rather suspect that NOW, when I make a comment that could be an indication of what's up in my house, do I get this friend request.

All I can say to that is NO THANK YOU. If they really were my friend, they would have picked up a phone a long time ago...or sent a friend request a while ago, not when I'm all of a sudden interesting. The only thing I wish I could do now is archive the request (like LinkedIn) so they can't badger me to 'be their friend'. Obviously I could block them, but since I'm friends with the spouse, it would be obvious. I don't want to be rude, I just don't want to open up our interaction to facebook.

So at the end of the day, I did not accept this request - and won't accept any future requests from this individual!