Facebook Ban - The Relationship Status

The relationship status change may be the single most important decision one makes regarding their Facebook profile.

Facebook allows you to post your relationship status on your profile. You have the option to say you are "single", "in a relationship," "in an open relationship", or "it's complicated." Facebook also allows you to say who exactly you are in this relationship with, by linking to your partner's profile. It notifies everyone on your friend's list whenever this status changes, even when you completely remove it.

THAT, my friends, is the why changing one's facebook relationship status is such a big deal.

Many feel that to change the status makes the relationship "official", even if it's already been official for several months and all your friends already know. By changing your status you let everyone (ie: all your ex's) know that you've found someone else, and this has the potential to create drama.

Facebook takes a topic that is generally, nobody's business, and makes it huge news. This can be a positive thing; especially as a tool to ward off creepers or to avoid random messages from local singles. However, the onslaught of comments, messages, and real life "gossip" that this one click of a mouse can cause is frightening.

The more dramatic part of the relationship status change is what happens when you break up. As Neil Sedaka says: "breaking up is hard to do", you don't need to accentuate that by immediately letting everyone on your Facebook know. The deletion or changing of a Facebook status to "single" is a big source of fodder for gossip. People feel the need to comment on this life change, which is just inappropriate.

There is also the issue after the break-up of who changes their status first, and what they change it to. If you change it to "single", and you are the first to do it, it sends a message to your former partner and is pretty harsh. There is a protocol behind the time you wait between break-up and status change. This is dependent on the relationship dynamic between the two people, and how messy the break up was.

My word of advice: DO NOT change your status to in a relationship with a specific person. If it ends, it just makes everything even more awkward. I would not post anything, and leave your relationship status blank. If you are single, and using Facebook to meet people, having a blank relationship status posted on your profile is not a deterrent. The people who write you off just because your status is blank, probably aren't worth your time anyway.