Why you should break up with your Facebook relationship status
One thing I absolutely adore about Facebook is how it has championed subtlety.
It begins nudging your friends two days in advance to wish you a happy birthday. It shows you just how many of your friends are attending that party you weren’t invited to. And when you break up with the love of your college life in the middle of exam week while all your friends are out of town and your beloved dog, Mr. Waggles, just died, Facebook showcases your heartbreak via 37 mini-feed alerts, 26 of which are attached to a broken-heart icon. I believe the other 11 feature Nelson from The Simpsons pointing and laughing.
Facebook asks you to list many things about yourself, from your name and major to your favorite music and religious views. The minifeed then let’s everyone else know what’s up – that you’re no longer interested in “shopping” or can’t get enough of ABC’s sure-to-sweep-the-Emmys Cavemen. Basically, you control the information Facebook puts into its megaphone.
Which is exactly why you should not list your relationship status. Your Facebook relationship status invites everyone to take a front seat to your love life. New boy/girlfriends and breakups become open to public scrutiny. Suddenly the kid who sat behind you in your freshman seminar last year is messaging you to ask if you’re all right. And you thought that his kicking your chair was enough of an intrusion into your life.
In fact, 46 percent of the Northwestern Facebook network chooses not to list their relationship status, and it’s pretty easy to flesh out a few reasons why. For one thing, it makes breakups that much suckier.
“When you have to take [your relationship] off Facebook, it makes the breakup official for sure,” Communication sophomore Krissy Cox said.
My friend recently broke up with her boyfriend of two years. One of the first protests he posed to her was: “Give me a few days before you take it off Facebook. I don’t think I can handle the questions from everybody yet.” In my most recent breakup, I asked my ex-boyfriend to take the status off. I didn’t want to have to deal with it, because, even though it sounds so silly, removing a relationship from Facebook is really emotional.
And it shouldn’t be. Facebook relationship statuses have too much power if they’ve become a major political point of a breakup. Relationships are real, live, breathing things. They shouldn’t be summed up by a heart icon on a social networking site. After a really bad break-up, you need Haagen-Dazs. You need a roommate who doesn’t mind washing the mascara off her sweater after you cry on her shoulder. You do not need a little cartoon broken heart alerting 300 of your and your ex’s closest friends that you’re no longer listed in a relationship.
Maybe, like 23 percent of Northwestern, you’re listed as single.
Cox says she is listed as single simply because she doesn’t have a boyfriend. But why do that, rather than forgo a relationship status altogether?
“People definitely can use Facebook as a dating tool, so if people are looking for a relationship, advertising that they are single on an open profile can be a way of theoretically keeping their options open if people decide to stalk them,” Weinberg senior Samantha Goldstein said.
All right, so Facebook, for better or for worse, is a dating service. But, presumably, you’re not going to stay single forever. You’ll start seeing somebody, and then you can’t keep advertising yourself as single. But maybe you’re not in a full-fledged relationship yet. You’re in a pickle that you’ve created for yourself by letting a Facebook relationship status define your actual relationship status. If Facebook accurately portrayed reality, it would serve up statuses like “It’s Sexual With…” or “We Hooked Up Once, But I Don’t Know If It’s Going Anywhere With With…”
Plus, if you enter a relationship, everyone with access to a computer (so sure, maybe your friends in third world countries will miss out) is going to want to know all the details – pressure a fledgling relationship does not need. Figuring out another human being is difficult enough without your cousins scouring for photos of you and this quarter’s dreamboat. Spare yourself.
Honestly, I don’t have a problem with girls who list themselves as in relationships with other girls, despite a specified interest in “Men.” Guys who are secure enough to do this rock my life. I still think it’s better to go status-less, but I like that this makes a joke out of the entire idea. I know girls who are in relationships but are married to their best friends (chicks before dicks), and others who go to different schools and want to prove their bond has yet to weaken. And, of course, some who are using their pseudo-relationship as a buffer from the cruel reality of listing yourself as “single” after a breakup.
“After a catastrophic breakup, I was in a fake relationship with one of my guy friends. He thought it would make me feel better if I didn’t always have to see ‘single’ whenever I opened up my profile,” Goldstein said. “It actually did cheer me up and we were fake married for about eight months.”
Most of these fake relationships are what make up the 13 percent of Northwestern that list themselves as married, engaged, in an open relationship, or simply “it’s complicated.” If you are actually listing yourself as “it’s complicated” with your significant other, then holy hell, I just don’t even know. You’re not just broadcasting your love life to everyone in your network – you’re actually taking that extra step to let everyone know you’re having problems, too. Wow. Really? I’m betting you’re friends with Lauren Cohn, too.
Okay, ready for a little self-mockery for a change?
In my nearly two years on Facebook, I have been listed as single, married to a guy I’d never met, in a relationship with a long-distance boyfriend, in an open relationship with my roommate, back with the boyfriend and nothing.
Yeah, I’m a bit of an idiot. And a Facebook whore. But I’m speaking from experience. Sure, it’s fun to list your favorite band, but when they break up, it doesn’t blow up on your mini-feed – or in your face. Don’t wait until a shitty breakup or awkward starter-relationship to delete your Facebook relationship status. And don’t let Facebook define how “official” your relationship is. Then you’re just getting caught up in a game where everyone loses. Kind of like that one mini-game in Mario Party (who fucking likes Paddle Battle anyway?).
Besides, now that I’ve settled into my statusless-ness, I don’t plan on changing it (unless, of course, Edward Norton finally accepts my proposal and we drift off into marital bliss). I don’t need Facebook to create an easily digestible reality for my acquaintances. My good friends know what’s up with my love life; creepy chair-kickers do not.
This, however, will all change if Mark Zuckerberg takes a few of my suggestions to heart. New statuses “Drunk Dialed A Few Too Many Times To Be A Coincidence” or “Had Eye Sex in Edit 201 With” are just dying to make a hypocrite out of me.
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It's not just your friends that can see when you break up on Facebook. The administration might be able to see it, too. Or you can return home.
If people are going to take Facebook to this level, then they ought to seriously reevaluate their lives…or rather, lack thereof.
Bob
October 24, 2007 at 12:44 pm
turn off your minifeed alerts?
th
October 26, 2007 at 3:25 pm
This is actually a point I forgot to mention — to minimize harm, remove your facebook status and delete the story. Then it will only say “Information removed from profile.”
Lisa Gartner
October 26, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Click privacy in the top right corner
Click news feed and mini feed
uncheck the box next to “remove my relationship status” and anything else you dont want showing up in your newsfeed
th
October 26, 2007 at 8:22 pm
The part you forgot to mention is how when you break up with someone on Facebook it says “CANCEL RELATIONSHIP” which is the world’s harshest button.
Tommy Rousse
October 27, 2007 at 11:44 am
http://northwestern.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2368214533&ref=pr
OH MY GOD. Facebook (apps) totally stole/listened to my idea. Check out this terrible, wonderful app.
Lisa
December 20, 2007 at 6:55 pm
it’s only a website! you shouldn’t get so caught up in facebook! if you feel this strongly towards one tiny part of a website it seems that you’re living on facebook and need to get a real life.
me
May 4, 2008 at 8:50 am
look up people ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
what he
July 2, 2008 at 4:21 am
I have a question. What is your partner lists their interested in “Women” on their Facebook? I mean I understand that’s what’s they are interested in but isn’t putting it out there mean they are still “looking”?
Crackbook
July 18, 2008 at 3:40 am
Totally agree with you, FB relationship status is pointless and sometimes can be embarassing for the ones in relationships, like when it gets to the ‘fb break up time’ of only being together for 2 weeks…bit sad. I guess when you first sign up to FB the option is there but when entering a new relationship and forever posting it as on and off complicated etc…Then you have no life at all and only care about what others will say b/c its fresh and new and your excited but then who gives about what other ppl think unless you need to confirm with yourself to make u happy…or you want your gf/bf partner to have it on their fb page so all his/her girl/boy ‘friends’ know that hes taken….whatever! Get some confidence and stop stalking other ppls profiles! argh….
pink moonlight
September 2, 2008 at 9:23 am
Wise words, I know from experience how damaging that dreaded little status box can be.
In the past two years I have had classic examples of exactly the sort of thing this article warns against:
After two year of being with my ex-boyfriend, he went away to Asia to work for a year. During that time we had our relationship status as with each other. I wasn’t sure about continuing the relationship but in the end we both decided to stay together and that I’d go out there and visit him in a few months. While he was away, he deleted me from his status, and then changed it back again, several times. I was going crazy wondering what the hell was going on. He started doing it almost daily, it was a form of torture. When you’re in a really long distance relationship you rely on things like facebook to keep in contact, to upload photos etc. So anyway eventually it turned out he was seeing another girl out there and we broke up. But it’s hard to forget the pain and confusion he put me through and how I wish I’d spared myself this by just not having a status up; he would’ve told me about his other girl eventually and I would’ve not had to be paranoid for months.
Now I’m with a guy I’ve been seeing for 6 months. 3 months or so into our relationship, I requested him as my boyfriend on facebook. I just thought it would be nice and it seemed like the usual thing to do. Little did I know it would be fuel for the only argument we’ve ever had in an otherwise pretty much perfect relationship. He denied my request for all the reasons listed in this article, and me being insecure from my past relationship, I took it to heart. I’ve never fallen out with my boyfriend over anything else and this article makes me realise just how silly it is. After all this I feel like an idiot for letting something as ridiculous and trivial as facebook have such an emotional pull on me. I’m sure there are plenty of other stories like mine.
I never list my status on facebook anymore.
Me
December 4, 2008 at 12:54 pm
We just breack up a monts go , breakup are very hard , we stay together for 1 year I miss a evry day and realy love he but love take two to be.
Soon as we splet she put a self ” single ” 2 day later , that hurt!!
I email he and tel he: I was sad to see that , but it was a rigth so
Let a be….. I was Going to he profile evry day ,torture I finaly send
a message tel he , thank you for the time together I need take out
Of my Freind . Is better for me …
I know one day I will be free to love again
Xavier
January 31, 2009 at 7:15 am
I really think that the Relationship status is more Public Relations than the truth itself. I guess it was created with good intention in mind but is simply misused.
Single Ladies
September 24, 2009 at 3:15 pm