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Chris Messina and Tara Hunt not only co-founded social media agency Citizen Agency and helped start the coworking movement, they also shared a very public romantic relationship for more than two years, until they had an equally public break-up (Chris and Tara).

Berniece Yeung explores their relationship in San Fransisco Magazine — “So Open It Hurts” —

In a world not known for its epic romances, ChrisandTara used to be Web 2.0’s version of Brangelina. They lived together, worked at adjoining desks, finished each other’s sentences, guided each other’s dreams. Personality-wise, they were yin meets yang meets a whole lot of Venus and Mars. But in many other ways, they were two pieces of the same puzzle. Ultimately, the core tenet of open-source culture is that the sum is exponentially greater than the disparate parts—and the same could be said of Hunt and Messina’s union. In both work and love, they pushed each other to thrust the ideals of open source, including transparency and collaboration, into real life. In just two years, through the coworking movement and myriad other projects, the ripple effects of their partnership could be seen around the globe.

Then, just as their efforts were hitting the mainstream, Hunt and Messina broke up. True to their principles, they pushed themselves to be extraordinarily candid about what was happening—­­as they continued to work as business partners and occasional cohosts in the same once idyllic, now heartbroken community. But it’s been a deeply painful struggle. Comparing their tentative interactions at the Web 2.0 Expo party with their potent partnership just a few months earlier, I wasn’t sure which I felt more strongly: admiration for their determination to stick it out, or pity for how exhausted they must be. True, no one ever said living an open-source life would be easy. But did they—or anyone—have any idea that it would be this hard?

In keeping with the spirit of the story, both Chris and Tara have blogged about it –

That our relationship was something of a spectacle is not beyond my grasp. I do see it — even if throughout the relationship I kind of held that idea in the abstract, like, “well, people know this internet concoction that is ‘The Tara & Chris Show’, but I’m still the same regular dude I’ve always been…” I don’t think it was ever the intention — or at least something that I put any conscious effort in to — to become known for being a publicish couple. It just kind of happened.

The design of Flickr and Twitter actually shaped the contours of our relationship: by facilitating openness as the default, our relationship was simply more open and exposed. And long after lonelygirl15 was proven to be a farce, we ended up with this amazing network of friends and contacts, made up of people who got to know us as individuals and as a couple, and to know that we are just your regular folks, and that we use the same internet as everyone else, and that we stumble humiliatingly and earnestly along just as everyone else, seeking the approval and attention of our peers, while giving away the source code to our ideas and our experiences all along the way.

So, yes, I live my life very openly… mostly thanks to the advent of Twitter. When Twitter and its 140-character limit came along, it gave me license to broadcast the nuances of my everyday life. And it catapulted my openness into an extreme place. And the most powerful part of this is that the more open I became, the more I connected with people: personally, professionally and otherwise. I was growing an extended family on Twitter. It was an amazing resource for personal healing.

But there is a downside to this that I only discovered after reading Bernice’s article. With openness comes vulnerability. Not vulnerability in the sense of: ‘omg, ppl know I’m not home, so they are gonna break into my house’. Vulnerability in the sense of: ‘I’ve ripped my ribcage open for you to see my heart and if you reject it, I think I’ll die.’

I feel for Chris and Tara because I have felt their pain firsthand and my post on ‘The Long Tail of Pain’ came out of a very public, very painful breakup –

So, Chris and Tara, as you try to figure out “how open is too open”, my thought will be with you.