Social media allows us a glimpse of the lives of friends, acquaintances and even strangers, sometimes with details that most of us don't want to know. Who really cares if you're having noodles for lunch or you woke up with a dry cough? Or even anyone who is really interested in seeing yet another photo of your cat?
Usually what you read on your news feed when there's status updates are usually frivolous fluff that warrants 0.2 seconds of your attention, exception to this may be the gossip-inspiring ones. This is tricky territory, where social networks go from silly to significant, and where people in relationship sometimes differ. Some are too happy to declare their eternal love for their other halves in the virtual networks world, while the others are simply blase about the whole thing.
I'm firmly taking the latter view of this when I say: what's the point? Well, not to denigrate any relationship as unimportant, but what happened before social networks? Did couples open up their address books and phone everyone to announce they were dating? Sure, some women say that men don't want to advertise their relationship status so that they can continue sleeping and flirting with other women out there. Yeah, that's true. Declaring you're "in a relationship" does put the kibosh on casual sex and flirting.
I know many guys that follows a logic that goes beyond a desire to sleep their way through their acquaintances. This logic stems from an "expect the best but plan for the worst" philosophy, which I gradually learnt after going through berserk from previous relationship. When I begin a relationship with Aaron, its all exciting, tingly and fifty shades of awesome, but the idea of declaring it all on a social network brings me back to thinking logically.
Because frankly saying, it's all fun and games until you break up. Then your proudly declared relationship status has to be sheepishly retracted. And forget about deleting it from your timeline - soon enough, somebody will notice your status has changed to "single" or simply disappeared. Then the drama begins.
You start to get messages from friends asking what happened on different networking platforms. Sometimes, others might get comments or posts appear on their timeline from less subtle acquaintances, saying "Blown up? She/He found out?" or even worse, "Finally you've gained back your freedom. Nice, let's go party!"
At this point, you know well you are truly screwed.
Somewhat this is exactly what happened to me in my previous relationship. After I changed my status, within minutes I got comments and messages from friends. And worse, my ex called confronting me angrily why do I have to change my status away even though I tried reasoning nicely to him that surely my relationship status have to change at some point of time. Then, I realized, because it hit home for him and for myself. Up till then, there was always a chance that both of us could get back together but after I'd announced my single status to the world, the relationship was truly over.
It's weird that something you declared in the virtual world has more weight than the same declaration in the real world. there is a sense of finality when you announce something on a social network - to basically everyone you know.
Also, nobody wants to be the couple that has broken up, then got back together, then broken up again - back and forth until the dreaded "it's complicated". All this just makes the couple look dysfunctional. And that's the problem with declaring your relationship status on a social network. Breaking up, getting back together and going in circles is what couples do. It's normal, but broadcasting those troubles by dutifully changing your relationship status is the equivalent of airing dirty laundry. When a previous loving relationship is ending, you don't need the world to know.
I"ll never display my relationship status again. Now, mine doesn't say whether I'm taken and I am taking away my status that stated "single" - so that a decent compromise for my current boyfriend.
So to anyone out there that had a hard time deciding whether to accept your other halves' pending status request on Facebook, I advise you to do the same, and explain whatever you had read here to them nicely before you decline the request, mainly to avoid headaches next time and definitely makes your posts on your social network much less gossip-worthy and relegates us to reading about what our friends had for lunch/dinner and staring at photos of their pets.
