Dear Richard,<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been with my girlfriend for a few months now and it\u2019s going really well, but I am getting more and more irritated by her insistence that no aspect of our life goes undocumented. Travel, meals out, drinks with friends: it\u2019s all captured on her phone, after due consideration of which of its four camera lenses is right for the shot in question. Then there\u2019s a nightly post-production session, at the end of which edited highlights are posted on social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve asked that I don\u2019t feature in too many of the posts, so sometimes she blanks out my face as if I\u2019m some sort of criminal. But it\u2019s not really that I mind, nor the pervasive sense that the version of our life that gets posted is a bit fake, so much as the sheer inconvenience of it all. Anything fun we do we have to do twice or in a stop-start way, and her editing sessions cut into time when I wish we could be more properly together.<\/p>\n Can I stem the tide of content and get back to just living our lives, or do I have to get used to it if I\u2019m in it for the long haul?<\/p>\n \u2013 T<\/p>\n Dear T,<\/p>\n How absolutely awful. I\u2019m surprised you\u2019ve stuck with it for this long.<\/p>\n Your girlfriend\u2019s behaviour reminds me of a story I was recently told by a friend. She\u2019d been in the arrivals hall at Heathrow<\/a> and got chatting to a father who was waiting to greet his 20-something daughter from her flight. He hadn\u2019t seen her for months. Eventually she appeared out of the customs exit and he waved excitedly at her. \u201cDarling! Over here!\u201d<\/p>\n She saw him, nodded and held up one finger. Delving into her shoulder bag, she produced her iPhone, switched on the video, held it above and slightly behind her, filming herself slowly walking, crabwise, towards the long-awaited reunion. In other words, the moment wasn\u2019t real to her unless she recorded it on a selfie.<\/p>\n Of course, those were blood ties. Yours aren\u2019t. My advice? Unless your girlfriend agrees to join you in the real world and step away from the virtual one, I\u2019d hit the delete button on the relationship. Find someone who\u2019s happy to live with you in the here and now, not the obsessively edited past.<\/p>\n \u2018Our daughter wants us to get rid of our dog because her child is allergic to it\u2019Dear Richard,<\/p>\n