That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
Now, I’ll let you in on a secret.
I’m in a relationship.
And yet, I’m not “in a relationship”. So, apparently, this doesn’t count. Apparently, because I don’t want to declare to the entire cyber-world who it is exactly that I’ve decided to get to know quite a bit better than most, what I have with my boyfriend doesn’t count.
Seriously?
According to some of my friends, yes.
Unsurprisingly, this rather annoys me. It isn’t that I see putting a relationship on Facebook as giving in to the crowd, bowing to peer pressure or being taken in by our addictions to the Internet. Well, not wholly that; it’s also that I’ve seen Facebook relationship statuses cause no end of issues.
I’ll admit it can make things easier. It means that you don’t have to go through the awkward “telling everyone” phase. Everyone will just notice the change in their newsfeeds and that’ll be the end of that. But then there’s going to be comments on the change. Congratulatory comments that always seem to be a little odd: “congratulations on finding a guy who can actually put up with you” is what they sometimes sound like to me: there always seems to be an element of surprise in most “congratulations” comments. And slight patronisation. It’s not as if I’ve won an award or anything, all I’ve done is what millions of people have done in the world. I don’t expect many people to care, the only people it really means anything to is me and my other half - and that’s fine.
But Facebook relationship statuses are useful in other ways. I’m going to be honest, I’ve checked out the relationship status of a guy I’m interested in before making a move – it saves time and embarrassment later. In this case, listing myself as in a relationship on Facebook could save any guy I meet on a night out the trouble of hitting on me again. If he bothers to remember my name and check out the Facebook profile, he’d find out all he’d need to know to avoid disappointment or any awkward moments later.
But there are all sorts of “horror stories” attached to the relationship status. The story of the girl who updated hers to “in a relationship”, only to have the guy she was seeing reject her request to link to his page. A few friends have also had their relationships suffer under the strain of having attached such labels to their romantic entanglements and even the “open relationship” status can lead to arguments and derogatory comments from those people who consider an open relationship as the selfish and commitment-phobic approach to love.
But for me, there’s also the fear of who looks at my Facebook. Previous romantic entanglements who should probably not find out about such things via the Internet. And parents, of course, who never miss an opportunity to look at my profile somehow and find out what I’ve been up to - I can only imagine the phone conversation that would follow that cyber-announcement: “You’ve got what?” I’d probably get congratulated there too.
But most of all, I guess, is the fear of what would happen once the relationship had run its course. After the break-up, there’d be the question of who dumps who first on Facebook. Of which one of us wanted to be responsible for announcing to the entire world that our relationship was over. There is absolutely no subtle way of changing or taking down a relationship status. Unless you love living out your love life in the public sphere of Facebook it will never be fun.
And so, this is why I have refused so far to make a relationship known to my cyberspace friends.
I lie actually. I am in a relationship on Facebook. It’s just with my best friend instead. And I’d like to keep it that way.
That’s one relationship I know isn’t going to go down the pan.
A person rejecting someone else's relationship request is far from a "horror story" in this context. People have been killed by jealous lovers for updating their profiles to "No longer in a relationship" or "in a relationship with someone else". Of course, I doubt anything like that'll ever happen at UoY, but it's scary nonetheless 
One of my best friends was in a relationship for over a year and never made it 'Facebook official'. Sometimes it's better (and wiser) to keep these things private.
I've been with my girlfriend for over three months, and we've had it on Facebook the whole time. I don't think our relationship would be any less special if we weren't "Facebook official", but we both agreed that we wanted people to know that we were together. My Facebook profile tells my friends and family about my life, so to not have my relationship on there would feel like hiding it. And I definitely don't want to find the fact that I'm with someone and I'm happy; I love my girlfriend very much, and I talk to people about her all the time. I guess it's one of those things that depends on what the people in the relationship are like, and what their thoughts are on social media. Although I agree joke relationships are fun... I've been married to one of my best friends, and in an open relationship with another male (which did genuinely lead to a couple of people thinking I was gay).
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