The Relationship Status in Social Networking

Many of us have at least one memorable story about a change in relationship status on a social networking site. It may give you a chuckle to recall it or it may make you a little sad or angry to think about it. Perhaps you have completely blocked that memory out and it is just now surfacing after eight long years of being dormant in your brain … about that tragic relationship status update fiasco from your days on Friendster.com or Tribe.com or whatever the hell social networking website you were working with back then.

I have to admit that for many years I didn’t have any issues with social networking websites and the tricky little relationship status thing on my profile page. No, I was gleefully single for most of it, I guess. Well, I had my trials and tribulations with dating certainly but as far as status I was always “single.” That was true up until about 2004 when I started playing with that little function of my onscreen profile and things got interesting.

I didn’t start it, mind you. It was the girl that started it! I was dating Karah. Things were going fine. I didn’t see us really going anywhere as a couple but it was a hot and sexy connection. I suppose I did confuse that point by sometimes referring to her as my girlfriend when talking to other people about her. She didn’t seem to mind that I was doing it, really. In fact, one morning, kinda out of the blue, she turned to me while we were snuggling in bed and said, “I changed my relationship status to ‘in a relationship.’”

I responded, “oh, who are you in a relationship with?” She said, “Some guy.” I said, “cool!” To this day I don’t know if that guy was me or not. Truthfully, at the time I didn’t care. There was a slight twist to her status change, though. Sure, yeah, she was listed as ‘in a relationship’ but she was also listed as being on the site for dating purposes. Wait a minute … Dating? Dating? You’re in a relationship with someone and you’re also dating? Is this some kind of open relationship kind of thing? I dunno. Like I said I didn’t care, really. I asked her about it because I was curious what her answer might be but when she said it was just something she was doing as a joke and that she thought it was funny I just blew it off.

Of course, that whole thing with Karah didn’t last but it did open me up to the ever-changing world of the relationship status! The next experience I had was with Lulu. Lulu and I became fast friends and quickly moved through the steps of dating into a relationship. It was a lovely time as a couple and when it came time to change our status from ’single’ to ‘in a relationship’ it was a mutual decision. Inevitably … unfortunately, that relationship did not last either. There was a grace period agreed upon for when to switch the statuses back to single and so forth and with this being a more serious and substantial relationship there was the whole process of deleting her friends from my page and also reorganizing my list of top friends and such.

So, that was the Lulu status and profile thing I went through and it wasn’t unusual as far those things go – pretty typical, I imagine, unlike the crazy experience I had with Prella. Prella had omissions or gaps in her profile information. She was listed as single when I met her but later I found out that she is actually divorced. Two other discrepancies on her profile had to do with her having a kid and (as I soon realized is not something that is as cool as it sounds) being bisexual – neither were listed on her profile. There was a lot of back and forth between Prella and I while dating.

She is foreign and so her values were a little screwy starting out. She sometimes referred to me as her “future boyfriend” and once it was decided that I was going to be her boyfriend I was expected to execute a ritual in which I had to give her a gift of her favorite flower and then ask her to be my girlfriend … I dunno, it was some kind of European ritual or something. Anyway, after jumping through all of the hoops except for the actual asking her to be my girlfriend part she kept badgering me harping, “when are you going to ask me, when are you going to ask me?”

The next morning while in bed I finally asked her if she would be my girlfriend but she responded, “how can you ask me here in bed?” After that she would not give me a straight answer. For over a week we went back and forth messaging each other on MySpace about it. I changed my status to ‘in a relationship’ in order to show her that I was serious but she would not budge. Finally after six days of not getting her to change it over on her profile I gave up and changed mine back to ’single.’ That night I got a phone call from her. Prella says, “I was about to change me status but then I saw that you changed yours back to single so I didn’t do it!”

Oh well, safe to say that was the last time my status changed at all.
Author Sinclair Daly