My boyfriend asks your moot - was my Facebook post 'grossly inappropriate'?

[Fullyswindonian]

I have a small Facebook Friendlist consisting of 99% family and old school friends.

One of the people I don't actually know in real life was 'friended' for his similar views.

I recently read something that poignantly reminded me of him, so posted it on my Facebook Wall, but without direct reference to him. It could have easily applied to a small number of other people on my Friendlist, but he was the only one who chose to respond with comments.

My boyfriend considered it 'grossly inappropriate' as he believes the Facebook friend is interested in me, despite the fact we have no dialogue and certainly nothing even remotely smutty or off topic has occurred. He isn't attractive to me in any way, in fact I find him 'unattractive' in most ways.

I will admit however to a small degree of naievety as I mostly fail to intuit when a man is interested in me, I've been told.

At my boyfriend's suggestion, I put my Facebook post up here for your inspection and opinion.
I would genuinely like to know if my post was inappropriate/ disrespectful to my boyfriend.
My post was prefixed with something along the lines of 'just read a poem by one of my favourites and it reminded me of someone on my Friendlist who is also all these things'.

My boyfriend and I are both mid Forties, neither married nor cohabiting, and I am the only one wothout children from a previous relationship. He is universally considered genuine, kind and fair.

Praise

I praise you because
you are artist and scientist
in one. When I am somewhat
fearful of your power,
your ability to work miracles
with a set-square, I hear
you murmuring to yourself
in a notation Beethoven
dreamed of but never achieved.
You run off your scales of
rain water and sea water, play
the chords of the morning
and evening light, sculpture
with shadow, join together leaf
by leaf, when spring
comes, the stanzas of
an immense poem. You speak
all languages and none,
answering our most complex
prayers with the simplicity
of a flower, confronting
us, when we would domesticate you
to our uses, with the rioting
viruses under our lens.

~RS Thomas

Also wanted to add the poem and the dedication are rather teenager-ish.

Oh, about the conversation with the curren-ex-current partner. Avoid discussing these things over text. Ring him or ask him to ring you. It's easier to miss intent through text. I'd think a proper conversation was better. Unless you start shouting with each other. In which case it is better to use text and take time thinking about the replies.

Maybe I'm odd but I didn't read it as a love poem at all. I read it as. Poem about admiring someone's creativity even if you find them hard to understand. I can now see the religious overtones as described here.

So no, it's not grossly inappropriate at all IMO

What I thought is "why is the OP's BF trying to tell who she can and cannot have on fb and what she is allowed to post on her wall." Because to be honest that would really annoy me.

Nobody posts a poem like that to someone they don't like, and anybody's current partner would be well pissed off.

The poem is 'teenager-ish'?
RS Thomas was a Welsh Anglican priest, deeply spiritual and very nationalist. He lost out on the Nobel prize for literature to Seamus Heaney . His later poetry was increasingly spiritual. This is a poem of worship about a God whose ineffability means his his power lies beyond the limits of human achievement and perhaps imagination.

Odd to suggest it reminds one of a person, I think, due to the spiritual nature of the worship, but anyone who thinks this poem has anything to do with romantic human relationships is misunderstanding the context of the ops post which is silly in making a comparison between someone she doesnt know and a God who is portrayed as the Creator of Art and Science in the World, but not flirty.

Lazy I don't think my "current partner" would be. In fact I know he wouldn't.

There's a lot of hysteria on this thread.

I would be really upset if I was your partner. It reads as very intimate.

well i take extreme umbrage at:

^in a notation Beethoven
dreamed of but never achieved.^

unbelievable. how fucking patronising. has this RS Thomas actually taken the effort to know any of Beethoven's works in depth?

i think it's an awful awful poem.

so on the basis of that i think you're a twat.

I didn't know anything about the poet but I stand by my opinion of the poem.
I find it v odd that a forty something woman would dedicate it to an anonymous 'friend' on FB.

The whole thing is v high school.

Eddie, while I suppose people have been left for things worse than being a bad literary critic, if you are a priest who believes in a Divine Creator, the words are not patronising to Beethoven. And I have little doubt that 'this' RS Thomas was perfectly au fait with classical music.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0006548377/ref=mw_dp_mdsc?dsc=1

This thread proves how important it is to teach poetry analysis in schools.

indeed!

Slipshod - Well i'm pleased i still remember something of my A'level literature lessons That poem was certainly not written about any human! it was obvious within the first few lines it was dedicated to a divine being, a creator. Not sure how it got mixed up as a romantic poem. 'Patronising to Beethoven' lol!

Gunz even being a philistine not accustomed to reading poetry I could tell it was not a romantic poem. I'm a bit gobsmacked by the hysteria here to be honest.

And I think the op's bf needs to stop trying to control who she has on fb and what she posts.

It wasn't the poem that was romantic.
It was how it was posted...

Although it was still a bit of an over-reaction by the bf.

I think your bf is being over sensitive. Maybe it's just the idea of a poem for someone other than him. He sounds a bit insecure. Maybe you need to direct some kind of affection towards him.

BitOut- Wrong poem, but as they say 'Its the thought that counts' so in this case i still think the OP deserved a bollocking.

Of course she doesn't 'deserve a bollocking'. And anyway, what sort if person wants or feels that they have the right to bollock someone they don't know on an online forum?? Maybe I've not hung around mumsnet long enough to know how these things work, but this discussion is really unpleasant in places. The first few pages are pretty mind-boggling.

The poem's clearly not romantic in the least, but it doesn't actually matter what you, I or the postman think about it (although I did have a bit of a whaaaa! Moment at 'patronising to Beethoven - how on earth did anyone come up with that?). What matters is how the OP interpreted it and how she feels about the whole thing - and giving her a bit of space to talk about it.

A reasonable person wouldn't dump you over this, OP. Not even close. They'd have a chat with you about it and move on. Dumping someone over what is at worst a small lack of judgement (actually I struggle even to see that) is pretty bizarre. I'm glad others have pointed this out to you.

Good luck!

of course she doesn't deserve a bollocking, is a matter of opinion, plenty felt she did including OPs BF.

what sort of person wants or feels that they have the right to bollock someone they don't know on an online forum??

OP voluntarily posted on an online forum asking people if she was grossly inappropriate, the people online gave their opinion as asked.

She deserved a bollocking? Christonabike really?

She posted a totally non threatening poem, in a public place with no secrecy or subterfuge, with the intro that it had made her think of someone, and she deserves a bollocking because the person that responded was male?

I cannot even begin to describe how skewed I find that thinking

Or how wrong I think her bf is for clutching his pearls and calling it disrespectful.

It's utterly ludicrous!

Yes. She asked for opinions. She didn't ask to be 'bollocked' or insulted.

There is a big difference, although it appears that plenty of people here can't see that.

Awful stuff.

What would piss me off is my partner/wife was one of those annoying people that writes cryptic posts of FB.

If the poem made you thing of someone why not post "this poem made me think of X because he too is a self absorbed knob" lolz

For the record I'd suggest the OP is either being disigenuous with us or on the autistic spectrum.

Okay. Yes, it was an innocent poem, nothing to it and everyone is mental.

' This week I will be mostly reading doggerel ' < thanks to the Fast Show >