Do you know someone who’s virtual life is perfect, but their real life’s in ruins? Don’t we all. It’s the FFL…

I have a friend on Facebook leading a charmed life.

Her posts are filled to the brim with status updates and photos of her loved up relationship with her husband – “I am so grateful I married this man”, her kids – “Every day I thank God for giving me my precious daughter”, her job – “Woo-hoo! End of year work trip to Bali” and her friends – “Girls Night, time for drunken shenanigans with the best friends a girl could ask for!”.  

Lucky cow.

I am sure we all have these friends. While I wake up raging that we’ve run out of coffee and I just know that headache is going to

kick in within the hour without it, she’s written, "Breakfast in bed thanks to my gorgeous man”.

I squish my eyes up real tight, wondering if I too, should write something similar for my status update. After all, AJ did wake me up by lovingly turning the very bright bedroom light on and saying “Are you getting up today or what?”.

The trouble is this. Her charmed life is a fantasy. It isn’t true. It’s her Fake Facebook Life (which I have dubbed the FFL). Unlike most of her Facebook friends, I know her. Really know her. She tells me she is miserable. In quieter moments she has told me she thinks she married the wrong man, she isn’t sure they even like each other.

In drunken moments she has told me she wishes she knew having children was a choice. Not that she regrets having them of course. She is quick to point this out while telling me exactly how different (better) her life would be if she was child-free, like me. She wishes she had thought about it a bit more before becoming a mother.

I am, like most of the world, selective about what I post on social media. While I guess that means I am often showcasing my “highlights reel” and I don’t share my uglier moments sans filter, I cannot understand her need to overcompensate so much. It has reached a point where the disparity between her real life and her FFL is so wide she avoids letting people know the real her and has pushed those that do away.

What it is about social media that makes people lie? Is it a case of living the life you wish you had in a virtual world? Is it simply a case of proving how successful you are to all the people peeking in at your life, whether it’s true or not?

This post originally appeared on Tracey's blog Still Just Us and has been republished here with full permission. 

Do you know anyone with a Fake Facebook Life? Do you have one?