Confession: Defriendment

I defriended someone on Facebook.

It was semi-retaliative, semi-preventative.

I must admit that I do feel a twinge of guilt about it.  See, what had happen was . . .

I posted pics of my 30th bday party on FB.  So, if you're my FB friend, then not only do you know that I turned 30, you know what I did to celebrate such an event.  (Which, by the way, was a very impromptu dinner with my mom and a few friends.) A particular person who is not exactly my peer and who I only accepted as a friend because we are in the same circle of acquaintances made some very irritating comments to me under the guise of wishing me a happy birthday when he/she saw me later on that weekend.

Perhaps I should note that this person has a history of making irritating/off-color remarks and posing none-of-your-business questions in general.  Not just to me.

Even though my response to his/her comments should have been enough to let any person who is somewhat adept at reading social cues know that I was not cool with what was said, part of me felt like I needed to let him/her know that I wasn't cool with what was said.  I had two options: 1. Say it to his/her face or 2. Be passive-aggressive.  I chose option 2.

It was so much easier than having an uncomfortable verbal confrontation.  Go to FB, go to your friend list, find the person, hit "unfriend."  Done.  Message communicated.  And, as I stated earlier, it wasn't purely retaliative. It was also preventative.  I reasoned that if I had never been FB friends with him/her in the first place, he/she would never have had the opportunity to be in my business enough to know that it was my 30th birthday, etc., and therefore he/she would never have made the comments he/she made.  Once he/she took the liberty to print out a picture of me taken while I was abroad to give to my mom.  It was a nice picture, and it was a nice gesture, but it was also borderline creepy.  Maybe that should have been my cue back then to at least put on some privacy blocks.  But because I chose to be passive aggressive, it came to all-out defriendment. He/She needed to know that you can't just say crazy stuff to people and it be fine.  So there.  You're not my friend anymore.

But how childish does that sound?  It's literally the cyber-equivalent of a kid who doesn't want to play with another kid anymore.  "You're not my friend."  Part of me feels badly because in retrospect, maybe option 2 was not the most mature one, and I'm pretty sure that I hurt his/her feelings.

But what can I do now?  Try to re-friend him/her?  Awkward.  And besides, I don't necessarily want this person to have access to my stuff anyway.  I know it's not a big deal in the big scheme of things.  He/She will get over it.  But I have this niggling sense of guilt, and I'm wondering if I need to just woman up and talk to him/her about it the next time I see him/her.