Your relationship status on Social Media.....

[Mel85]

In a world where we live with advanced technology where we’re able to be in two places at once via using Skype, Facetime or any other technological app or device, all this makes me appreciative of having “older” generation around me who still teach me how they use to “court” or communicate with their loved ones via mail, or oldschool telephones. I love hearing stories like that! 💜

This also had me thinking about the pros and cons of being on social media whilst being in a relationship with someone. My question or questions that come to mind is;

1. Would you let everyone know that you’re in a relationship online via Facebook or any other app?
2. When is it a good time to change your status (once you’re in a relationship) and let people know?
3. What if your other half doesn’t want your relationship to be publicly announced, but you do?
4. Or are you the type to keep things private?

Personally, I would hate the idea of letting people know the status of my relationship until I get married, but even so, I am very much a private person.

I know and have heard of some horrible experiences where people have changed their online relationship status (to “in a relationship”) , then to have change it back again (to “single” or “it’s complicated”) due to things not working out.

I am no means condemning those who have their relationship status public, and that’s your choice, but I just want to know y’all opinions are in this, since ‘social media’ is pretty much the “in thing” where people tend to communicate most.

Feel free to take the poll as well!

Share away!

 

[Subhumanoidal]

I'm a private person as well, but i'd let everyone know. Not that i'd charge to social media to make a big announcement, or i may not even get around to it right away, but i'd eventually get to it.
I've had to change it back in the past. It's not that big of a deal. Though i say that as one that has very little interaction with people i know well i fb. And those few i do likely already know anyways. But of those i do have on there, that i'm not so close to, most likely wouldn't notice, or care much anyways. Being 'horrible' sounds like quite an exaggeration. It's social media, after all. Those relationship status's change constantly on there.
If it was made horrible by 'friends' then find better friends.
Perhaps if i had more people taking note and being quick to comment i'd feel differently. But then i'd just put up a post saying not to ask me.

Like i said, no rush. But nothing before there is an official relationship. Otherwise it's simply not true.

It would depend on their reason. Without an understandable, valid reason i'd wonder if they had a reason to 'hide me'.
If they had a valid reason, then i'd be unphased.

 

[MegMarch]

I don't currently have any social media where this would apply besides maybe this site, but in the past I kept my information private to the public, but my friends could see if I was in a relationship. I wouldn't want my partner to think I was trying to hide them or my relationship status.

I will make a loose connection to people who don't wear wedding rings. I say loose because I know it doesn't exactly parallel. I know several men at the gym I workout at who are married but choose not to wear a ring while they workout. I personally would feel hurt if I was married and my husband chose to do this. There was one man that I didn't know was married for a solid year because he never wore a ring and never talked about his wife. I don't like the waters to be muddied for my relationships in this way.

 

[Dino246]

Generally, I don't advertise my relationship status. Nobody with whom I'm connected on social media has ever asked.

I will make a loose connection to people who don't wear wedding rings. I say loose because I know it doesn't exactly parallel. I know several men at the gym I workout at who are married but choose not to wear a ring while they workout. I personally would feel hurt if I was married and my husband chose to do this. There was one man that I didn't know was married for a solid year because he never wore a ring and never talked about his wife. I don't like the waters to be muddied for my relationships in this way.

I don't know about the specific reasons for the men at your gym, but I know that there are very good reasons for choosing when not to wear a wedding ring, and hefting weights is a plausible reason. Rings aren't nice to fingers when they are being bashed, crushed, and twisted by heavier and harder objects.

 

[MegMarch]

Generally, I don't advertise my relationship status. Nobody with whom I'm connected on social media has ever asked.



I don't know about the specific reasons for the men at your gym, but I know that there are very good reasons for choosing when not to wear a wedding ring, and hefting weights is a plausible reason. Rings aren't nice to fingers when they are being bashed, crushed, and twisted by heavier and harder objects.

I agree. Some men and women wear the silicone rings in place of their other one, which would be my personal preference. I don't know of any women in the group currently who don't wear a ring and are married. But heck, maybe there is one and she never talks about her husband. We have all been workout buddies for over a year, so our relationship status has come up in conversation before.

 

[Lanolin]

some of the married couples I know have joint accounts on facebook but they rarely post anything much.
I dont look at their status and nobody looks or cares about mine, its not even a thing.

People do post about their families sometimes but I dont. when my sister put photos up there of me and didnt tell me and tagged me I was a bit uncomfortable with it, I also dont like it when some people put up pics of me without permission. Unless I was at a party or somewhere where everyone had a photo and said 'I am putting this on facebook' I dont want random pics of me and then someone saying ' Im Lanolins boyfriend now. '

It was originally meant to be like an electronic yearbook you signed at end of graduation, but since facebook has been growing for several years since it was rolled out to harvard students, the original users have grown older and started families etc. so for some they use it as a family album but I dont put pics of my family there, I suppose if you were a young couple you might, if you had the time, be putting up baby pictures for the world to see but I wouldnt be the type of person to do that. esepcially as baby or children have NO say in what pictures you put of them on there.

also it depends on how many and what type of friends you have in your facebook circle I think. if its just people you met who want to keep in touch or is it EVERY single person you meet or ever have known. I dont have high school mates on there cos we dont hang out together. I used to but closed my account and made a different circle cos I just wasnt that interested in what my old school friends were up to. sorry but its true, I only have one or two I was friends with at high school. the recent class I was that have just finished we made our own group but It because we did bond a little, some classes you just there to learn not make lifelong friends in. (you also dont want really want to know all about some of the more annoying classmates like the ones who copy your answers)

 

[Lanolin]

I think if I was getting engaged to be married and changing my name then it would be a big deal and you do have to let people know but otherwise, nope.

 

[Lynx]

"So are we a couple now?"

"I dunno... I like you, it's just... I dunno..."

"Well... Will you be my "It's complicated" on facebook?"



"Yeah I would have broken up with her, but our internet connection was down."

 

[cinder]

I'm a pretty private person and that's part of the reason that the extent of my social media use is pretty much CC singles forum where I can pretend people are listening to my insightful and brilliant opinions (ya'll have your sarcasm detectors on right).

But if I could imagine myself being in a world where I did feel the need to maintain a social media account, I think I would tell eventually, but only after enough foundation had been built that I wanted to discourage other suitors (not a problem I ever really seem to have) or I was pretty certain this relationship stood a good chance of lasting and being impactful enough on my life that it would be a singificant part of it. So I'd be most likely to be someone who changed my relationship status and then had people asking really, how long has this been going on? And I'll be like about a year.

Anyone too eager or too reluctant to make our relationship public will probably need to give me a good reason to, especially online. Also, no one super closely connected to me should be finding out about my relationship from social media those are things you should tell people personally.

 

[Mii]

Besides marriage no. Been single all my life and status does reflect.


I would like to re-engage social media as potentially a ministry/business OP when I find a partner...kind of need her say so because it does take up a bit of time. There some soil there, I'm just not certain if it's worth tilling at present myself. If I had a paid assistant it might be viable. Time will tell.

 

[Dino246]

Facebook was originally designed, in part, to help college kids display their relationship status.

No wonder Facebook is abusing our privacy; we're abusing its purpose.

 

[MegMarch]

Tangent warning. You've been forewarned.

Is the person's motive for not showing others their relationship status (I'm only referring to serious relationships) pure or tainted by some impure motive? If my partner is just a private person, then okie dokie. I might still voice my differing feelings on this with my partner, yet I also ask myself why does it really stinkin' matter since, at this time in my life, I see little value in social media.

 

[melita916]

oh lets see... lol

1st relationship: we change our status on fb because we were both excited and it was the 1st relationship for both of us. lol. we were together for a long time. when we broke up, we didn't change our status immediately. i changed mine when i realized he changed his, and i only noticed it because i was creeping on his fb lol. what i did was make my status not public, and then changed it to single. this way, it didn't show up on anyone's feed cuz Lord knows i didn't want people asking me what happened! my family and friends knew. they are the ones who mattered the most.

2nd relationship: well... what had happen was lol. he asked me if we could be exclusive even though neither one of us was dating around lol. i said yes. after the call, i texted my friend and told her. the next day, i told my parents. for some reason, i was hesitant to update my facebook status. i asked myself, "what if i misunderstood the whole thing and we are NOT a couple???!" he didn't have fb at the time, so it didn't matter when/if i would update. a few days later, since my relationship status was still not public, i changed the status and kept it not public. about a week later, we had our first kiss, so if that doesn't make it legit, idk what is! lol. i made my relationship status visible. 2 weeks after that, i posted our first picture.

and everybody saw melita FINALLY has a boyfriend.

 

[laughingheart]

I would need a reason. Anyone who is my friend or family member would be aware of what was happening in my life and those who don't know, probably don't need to know. I think some people post to either announce a relationship or to let people know that they are no longer in that relationship.

 

[Lynx]

I don't have facebook, so I would have to improvise.

 

[G00WZ]

I don't use social media that much, i actually deleted my Facebook years ago. I do use skype and discord sometimes, but i can't really put a status on there, and most of the people i have added on there don't care anyways. Usually when i do things i keep it low-key, the less attention the better, i don't like having an audience.

 

[ArtsieSteph]

Hmm....I think it depends on the other person in the equation. I've had gentlemen that preferred I not gush about it online, and then there have been some that as soon as we made the relationship public they changed like all their social media to mirror that.

 

[seoulsearch]

I don't have facebook, so I would have to improvise.

I have to admit, for a while, I would have been the person with the megaphone.

Time and an elongated bout of singleness has probably turned me more into the person threatening to stab everyone involved.

I used to think I would broadcast it to the world if I were seeing someone, but to be honest, as time went by, I saw too many instances of people happily announcing all over the forum that they were IN LOVE, only to have it fall apart and then somehow have to go back to being their single selves online.

These days, I wouldn't want to announce anything publicly (except to close friends and family) unless it was a pretty solid thing, and only with the consent of the other person. (If he was someone who had to tell EVERYONE RIGHT AWAY, I would have a few hesitations, because what else would he want to tell everyone on social media about me?!)

 

[Lanolin]

In the olden days you put an ad in the paper that your were engaged and what date your wedding was.
If you wanted everyone to know.

Facebook isnt really the place to announce stuff although it has been used as way to get news out to out of people, but in the days before newspapers. what they did was put wedding banns up at the church.

and that is still the place you would go to say I am with someone and where you would be married if you are both believers.

 

[Solemateleft]

Fairly new to social media - largely a private person - always a one woman kinda guy...
so YES
"If you're happy and you know it, shout/say, 'Hooray...
If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it.."

What better way to make her feel special?
Don't understand why two people who are genuinely into each other would not chose to showcase that commitment...
Unless of course one of the two is privately awaiting a better candidate to come along?
If that is the case - maybe the relationship has not genuinely matured to be designated a formal relationship?
At what point while two people are still just dating - still getting to know each other - do they become exclusive?
Not typically one to jump to conclusions, but I have to wonder/hypothesize if those who are reluctant to share there status openly for all to see really just boils down to their still having a tad bit of uncertainty that this partner is "THE ONE."

Regarding men wearing rings at the gym... I guess how the ring fits on the finger might have an impact...
Having spent a lot of time at the gym during my adult (while married) life I personally had no physical issues while wearing my ring...
My only concern initially was that it tended to get nicked with the metal on metal contact - but it was never a deterrent to me. I always looked at that worn rugged ring look as a badge of honor...
The only time I found the need to remove my ring during physical activity was while hiking with a backpack - as my hands tended to swell... Learned to wear my ring on my dog-tags whenever I was in the field or hiking...