He is not ignoring the story because he is clearly reacting to it in a way that makes it amply evident that it is true.

And he is not defying me because I am not the audience here: those communications are intended for 1. his wife, 2. his family, 3. his friends, and 4. his electors.

I don’t know why, but for the Maltese, at that age they have ‘partners’ not a companion or a boyfriend or girlfriend.

There speaks a very inexperienced person.

The truth is that when people – and I have to say that I’m using Luciano Busuttil as an example here because I can’t and shouldn’t use ordinary people who are not public figures/politicians – use Facebook as a way of branding themselves through their relationships, family life and activities, it is one of the most glaringly obvious signs that something is wrong.

Most sensible people just keep a lid on it, then nobody knows either way, because really, it’s nobody’s business except your own and that’s how it should stay.

Some years ago, a few media colleagues and I had a private ‘joke’ – wrong word completely, because it’s not funny at all – that when somebody featured prominently in a big interview in The Circle magazine, with a cover photograph, we’d hear before long that their marriage had broken down and they were seeing somebody else. It happened so often that you couldn’t avoid noticing (if you knew the individuals concerned, that is, and so their story).

This doesn’t mean that the interview led to the break-up, but that trouble in paradise drove them to seek attention elsewhere and build a separate identity, and putting yourself out there with a big interview is a way of 1. building your self-confidence that might be shattered by problems in your relationship, 2. raising your value with the new person you might be seeing on the side, 3. launching yourself onto the market, 4. raising your profile in readiness what’s coming next.

If you live in a normal household set-up (and by normal I don’t mean gay vs straight or married vs unmarried, but that the relationship is not a fulcrum for something else, like social networking) you will know just how weird it is to want to post photographs of your private life for public consumption all the time on Facebook. That’s marketing, recognisably marketing to people who work in the field, even if they themselves don’t exactly understand what they’re doing or why.

So you have to ask, what are they selling?

As for Luciano Busuttil, if you track back through his Facebook Timeline, you will see that he has been posting those sorts of photographs with his wife and children constantly for a long, long time. I have been uploading stuff about it for quite a while now, and the weirdness of it is exactly why I was not at all surprised when that woman contacted me about his Mark Abela profile and how he used it to contact her.

The absolute nadir of those Facebook posts of his was when he went out with his wife for a ‘special’ anniversary supper and posted a picture of his food from the restaurant table, there and then, telling us where he was and why.

What does that tell people? The brainless ones will say “Wow, Luciano, nice time ta prosit” and the sensible ones will think to themselves, “Hmmmmmm. He’s bored at the table, but thinks he might as well use the boring evening to get some brownie points with his fans.”

My point is: I believe in saying what you have to say, as you did, and unless you’re misunderstood or need to make an additional point, you don’t need to repeat the same thing. It makes you look as though you are after a reaction, and if that is so, you are not getting one from them.

Their bad feelings towards you are probably greater than any bad feelings you may or may not have ignited between them with your posts about Mark Abela.

Unusually, no.