The Facebook Relationship

It’s amazing (and a bit frightening) how quickly facebook has become the place people turn to in order to find out what’s going on with the people in their lives. For those that are regular users (like me) you check it at least once a day to see if anyone is up to anything interesting. For those that are addicts – checking every hour or so – (well you need more diversity in your interests I think). For those that don’t use it… probably best not to start. But the one thing that gets the most ‘love’ –  no matter when it happens, who is involved or what your association to that person is – is the Relationship status.

When you meet someone new, you immediately go and find them on Facebook and to try and learn what you can about them. How many friends do they have. Who is posting on their wall most recently. Are they single, in something complicated, or taken. Are they into all those crazy Facebook games or just connecting with their ‘peeps’. It’s become the ultimate tool in navigating (literally) your social network. And when someone’s relationship status changes – for good or for bad – the immediacy with which people respond is astounding.

Take for example me. I’ve was single (and happy being so) for a very long time. I was in and out of a few bumpy courtships but nothing that was serious or warranted a comment on Facebook. I was going through some ‘life’ stuff over the last year.. some of which involved boys … and so changed my status to “It’s complicated”. What I meant was that my life was currently very complicated and relationships were a part of that. But people wanted details. They wanted to know what was going on. They kept telling me to ‘hang in there’. People that I am connected to on Facebook because we went to the same highschool. Not because we’re still close friends. In fact, many of them I haven’t seen in more than 10 years. But because my relationship status on Facebook changed everyone under the sun came out of the woodwork.

About 4 months ago I met this completely fabulous man – in the most random way at the most unexpected time in my life. We’ve been together ever since and are both blissfully happy with the arrangement. This past weekend he was playing around on the computer and I was hanging out – cooking dinner, baking a cake, etc. I turned on my own laptop and proceeded to Facebook for my daily dose. The first news item that popped up was that my BF was “in a relationship”. I laughed and told him that according to Facebook he was in a relationship and then commented on the post that I heard she was a very cool chick. Then I promptly went and changed my status and we both amused ourselves with the comments pouring in from our ‘friends’. Apparently we’re not officially official until it’s been posted on Facebook. So now that it’s out of the way we can continue with everything else that makes being in a relationship so great.

So, what amazes me about this entire thing is how much this one crazy website has infiltrated so much of our daily lives. People have ALWAYS cared when their friends have happy news (like announcing you’re dating someone) or hard news (like announcing that your suddenly single). The difference was you were talking to the select few in your inner circle that you wanted to confide in. Now, through this one site, we’ve extended our ‘circle’ to include (in some cases) everyone we’ve ever known. And even the ones that you never talk to take a sudden interest. They have a view into your life in ways they wouldn’t otherwise.

I am all for using Facebook to stay connected with people. And I am very happy to be officially official with my BF. But it seems like we (society) should be taking a step back to at least think about why it’s so important to have such insight into the lives of people that don’t matter enough to have seen them in the last 10 years.