Face to Facebook
Should you accept a friend request from ex’s new wife?
QUESTION: My ex-husband and I have four adult children. We maintain a friendly and cordial relationship. He recently got engaged to Elizabeth and they are planning their wedding. Elizabeth is not someone I have ever met and don’t have a strong feeling to become friends. She sent me a friend request on Facebook. I am not sure how to respond. Any advice?
CALLIE’S ANSWER: I would leave the friend request pending. My feeling is if you have never met her, I feel it is not an appropriate time to make that decision if you should accept. This would be a situation into which I would tread very lightly.
LILLIE-BETH’S ANSWER: I cannot think of any etiquette that would require you to accept her friend request, nor can I think of how it would help or hurt your relationships with your adult children right now if you did so, which are the only relationships that matter in this situation. That is your call, but you can leave it pending indefinitely, as if you had never seen the request.
You also can decline or accept it without comment. If you feel like you must respond for some reason to keep some sort of peace but don’t want to accept her request, then send her a quick friendly message saying you wish her well with her upcoming wedding to your children’s father but that you don’t accept a Facebook friend request unless you know the person well. Then leave it at that. However you handle it, don’t worry about it one more minute. You aren’t being rude, and you can always friend her in the future if you wanted to, or not. Maybe you came up on her “people you may know” list, and she accidentally clicked.
HELEN’S ANSWER: You need to think about what you post on your Facebook page. Do you post personal things that you might not want to share with everyone? Do you limit your friends as to what they see on your page?
If have not even met her, I would wait until you do so, then you might have a better idea how or if you want to respond to her friend request.
GUEST’S ANSWER: Devonne Carter, licensed clinical social worker: I think this is a modern age situation we would never have dreamed up, and we will be dealing with this forever now because of technology.
You already know this, but if you FRIEND Elizabeth, you will be sharing your private information with her that you post on Facebook. There are ways to limit that amount of sharing of course, with how you friend her. So, you need to decide how much you are willing to “share” with her through social media.
There are no etiquette rules for the people you must build relationships with. There is no requirement for you to befriend her in any capacity. It will make your children’s lives easier if you have a cordial or friendly relationship with her, just as you do with their father. So that weighs in when you are making your decision.
It isn’t rude to not friend her, and it is perfectly acceptable to meet her before making that decision. This is a tricky one, and I wish you well.
Callie Athey is 20-something, Lillie-Beth Brinkman is in her 40s, and social columnist Helen Ford Wallace is 60-plus. To ask an etiquette question, email helen.wallace@cox.net.