The most potentially terrifying thing about starting something new with someone is awkwardly recognising the moments when that relationship needs to be defined. The moments I’m referring to here are those moments when friends (sometimes more embarrassingly, mutual friends) ask the “So, what’s happening with you guys?” or when waiters in your local restaurants refer to the person you’re with as your boyfriend/girlfriend. For example, “And what would your beautiful girlfriend like to drink?” I die.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, you’re also asked to define the “relationship” on the internet (hiss boo to the democratisation of it all). Are you single, in a relationship or is it complicated? According to the the movie The Social Network, the idea of knowing the “relationship status” of the person you were potentially pursuing was the single most important defining factor of Facebook. How are we connected to that person, how can we be connected to them and more importantly, who are they connected to and in what way? Essentially, this is what it’s all about.
Has Zuckerberg changed the way we define our relationships?
So, when does that moment come when you change your relationship status? In the words of my friend’s little brother who was once commenting on what we like to loosely term as a “lycra relationship”, “It’s not official, until it’s Facebook official”. For the younger half of my generation, it’s Facebook and other social media that define your relationship rather than the apparently outdated, “where is this going”? conversation. Maybe I’m old fashioned but I actually anticipate and love that moment when both parties realise they have a mutual interest in one another, especially if it catches you off guard.
I’m still unsure as to how changing your relationship status on Facebook is actually negotiated. Do you ask the person beforehand? To avoid said awkwardness, I was in a “it’s complicated” relationship with my cat for a very long time. After raising this with someone, they told me that a friend of theirs had said (don’t you just love the chain of communication here) that if you and your significant other decide to do it at exactly the same moment, it cancels it out on your news feed and won’t show up. Hmmm, forgive me for being dubious.
The moment recently happened when my latest love interest very casually asked if I was ok with him changing his relationship status. Although I was a little caught off guard, I was nonetheless eased by the nonchalance in the way he asked and also the way he reassured me that it didn’t mean that I had to do the same. In fact, I didn’t have to be involved at all. For him, it had nothing to do with defining the relationship (he felt that this was obvious), it was more about communicating the existence of one. I think this was what self-confessed geek Zuckerberg intended when he designed the relationship status concept, that it’s in the communication of the relationship where the heart of it lies.
What do we think here? We would like to know about the moments when you decided to send out relationship requests. Are they a good idea? Or, should we stay in comedy faux relationships with our pets? Does this complicate things and is it best to keep things private? Also, what I am supposed to do now?
