Thursday 8 April 2010

She's got a boyfriend now

Recently it seems that all the poopyness of single life has evaporated from my life and I am now in a relationship. Now some could argue that as technically neither of us have 'asked the other out' that we are still just 'dating' but we both know, without defining it, that we are together. He is "the boy" and I am "the lady" - which now in writing makes me feel old so maybe something needs doing about this title - I know that I am not interested in anyone else and so does he so as far as I'm concerned I am happy with that. "The boy" makes me happy.

Yet a lot of people this last week have been asking me about when we are going to become 'official'. Of course by official they do not mean, when is one of us going to ask the other out, but, when are we going to put it on Facebook. It has become so much of an interest to my friends recently that my online Facebook wife this week divorced me!



Now while the banter with my friends has been lovely, and while I truly enjoy talking about the boy who makes me smile and thinking about that fun beginning part of a relationship and all the things to follow, I do find it annoying that a relationship can no longer be official until Facebook says so.

Would I like to be "In a relationship with" on Facebook?

Yes. I suppose I would as being listed as "Single" does feel like some what of a fib as I no longer class myself as that, but at the same time I am not going to stress and worry and lose sleep over the fact that we are not "Facebook official".

It almost feels like relationship status' on Facebook have come much like the couples at secondary school who got 'engaged' with no plans of ever getting married, simply because they needed to prove their relationship.

I feel that I have no need to prove my relationship to anyone. The people who matter will already know or will soon find out by seeing us together or speaking to us, so why should I feel the need to broadcast it to a million other people who I never speak to just so they can gossip and gawp?!

Today a friend of mine deleted her Facebook account after returning to it for a total of four days after giving it up for lent. She found that the forty days and forty nights without it were much more stress free. Similarly "the boy" deleted his Facebook account for a couple of months a while ago and since returning to it has not moulded to the obsessed 24/7 user that I and my friends have been known to be. Therefore I can not imagine that becoming "Facebook official" has even crossed his mind!

I already feel that Facebook has too much of a role in my life, of course that is no ones fault but my own and I do not pretend otherwise. To me, Facebook seems to rule everything. I fall behind on my university work because I am sitting staring at the screen waiting for something to happen, I go to bed late because I am sending
Friends quotes back and forth to friends, I wake up and update my status to tell people things they are not at all interested in, then I rush home before work and change it again to tell people that that is where I am off to and then I come home after my shift and feel a little bit neglected that after 6 hours not one person has commented or 'liked' my status! I do not want my relationship to take the same path.

Equally I believe that a relationship should be between two people and as soon as you publicly announce it on Facebook you lose some of that intimacy as people are allowed to comment and 'like' it. And then if things don't work out you are left to once again broadcast the failure to people who only ask you if you're okay simply so they can get the gossip.

Therefore, for the moment I am going to remain listed as "Single" on Facebook and maybe even hide my relationship status altogether. Not because I am not serious about "the boy" and not because I do not care about him because I do, but because I do not want to feel as though I have defined our status for anyone other than ourselves. So maybe when all the pressure from friends has piped down I will send him that request to be "In a relationship with", or maybe I will just wait and see if he sends it to me :)

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