I started dating at sixteen, around a month after I got internet at home, and thanks to it. As a gay introverted teenager with no queer classmates, there weren’t many chances for me to meet new love interests the same ways my straight friends did.

My love life and my internet life started around the same time and have often been intertwined. It took some time until people I was dating had an online presence beyond email and MSN Messenger. I don’t recall any of them being a blogger or even having a MySpace, but it got to a point in the late 2000s when everyone had Facebook, and after that, Instagram.

Depending on how relationships end and how you take the breakup, running across each other on the street can go in different ways. I try to end things in a way in which I won’t be nervous or annoyed if I see the other person again. And when it happens, if you don’t talk beyond a greeting and continue to walk by, it’s likely you won’t learn anything new about their lives.

These last few years, you can “run across someone” on the internet. Sometimes it’s by chance, sometimes by following a path you know is going to end with finding an internet profile you shouldn’t have seen. I won’t blame me or anyone for doing so. Sometimes we do things we know are going to hurt us, like smoking or eating unhealthy too often. But we can learn to treat ourselves better and change that behaviour.

Then, time passes by, and the day comes when you’re given an update on their lives by mutual friends or by a common internet place, and the feeling could be described as a “non feeling”. A surprising lack of interest, and realizing their business is not your business anymore. One step closer to inner peace.