Search Results: facebook status ideas

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(For the purpose of this, you can substitute any social network for 'Facebook'.)

It seems there's a gap in how some of us use Facebook for publicly announcing our relationship status. It also seems that this gap may be very generational.

Personally, my use of Facebook is pretty reserved. I have a profile that I originally created just to communicate with high school alumni after my reunion. Of course, after a while, I'd added a handful of my close friends and people I regularly communicate with. My profile information is pretty spartan. Most of it is just enough for people to know that they found the right 'me' when they stumble across my profile, being that my profile pics have been cartoon versions of me.

When I set up my profile, I set my relationship status as 'single'. I figured that it'd be a good idea considering the number of single gals in my high school class that I'd seen at the reunion.

I later got into a relationship with another gal. She uses Facebook much more than I do, and puts way more information on it. Because of what our relationship dynamics were, this just could have been because she was more passionate about expression and I am more reserved and less trusting of big corporate interests.

To make sure that I was sending a signal that I was very interested in pursuing a deeper relationship with her, and was not out there looking for the 'better deal', I changed my Facebook relationship status from 'single' to nothing. On my big dating profile, on another site where she found me, I changed to 'seeing someone'. I explained to her that my Facebook presence was not really for dating and just for keeping a minimal contact with people I know. I wasn't going to change my Facebook status to something else until we'd gotten to some significant relationship level, like moving in together.

I suspect that she may have taken this as a slight. I certainly didn't intend it as such. I was very into her, but I didn't want to announce through every network until we'd reached a certain level.

So for those of you on Facebook (or any other social network with a similar status you can set), how do you use your 'relationship status' setting there? Comments about how you see announcing this status on social networks? Comments about whether you expect exactly the same from a partner?