Facebook relationships = modern love notes?

Remember those days when you could have entire relationships just by using a friend to pass notes to your love interest during class or in the hall?

The question can be adjusted as necessary:

• older generation (you know who you are)
  replace friend with carrier pigeon
• What's a note? (i.e. younger generation)
  replace notes with text messages (or IM)
  .. IM (that's instant messaging in case you old farts can't keep up)

Everything from "do you want to go out with me?" to the dreaded "Dear John (or Jane)" letter could occur without the two parties talking or even being in the same room together.

Facebook Basics

First, all you non-Facebook users need to understand the basics. You have a group of registered friends that get updated when you update information about yourself or your interests. It is a great way to share information with friends without broadcasting it to the world (like on a blog) .

You can change your relationship status:


and even link to another Facebook member (via the to...). When you change your status it gets published as an update to all of your friends, and appears like this:



Our Facebook Initiation

When we first signed up we didn't really understand how it works, so we signed up as our boat! We wanted one place to share our content and the setup worked just like all the other sites. We entered Sail as the first name and Billabong as the last name and voila, we were social networking our buns off.

Later, after we realized the social nature of "find a friend", we added our individual accounts. KT started first but I couldn't be bothered, so I added her in my relationship status on the SailBillabong account. Her long lost high school friends must have wondered, who dates a guy named Sail?

The Love Triangle

It all started after I signed up and KT changed her relationship to point to me (the human.. not the boat). I got this request via email:

"KT said on Facebook that you two are in a relationship. We need you to confirm that you are, in fact, in a relationship with KT.".

At first I was a little miffed.. "in a relationship", I thought we were involved in something just a little more than that. After all, we were on our 5+ year sailing adventure. We never separated from each other by more 40 feet.. 24/7/365.. *5. Then I saw the options..



and was actually relieved that she didn't pick one of the others: like Single, It's Complicated or In an Open Relationship.

Dumped

Everything was fine; we were enjoying our connected status in the public forum of our friends. It got really funny when our boat email received a message similar to:

"KT on Facebook has ended your relationship."

The boat got dumped and it didn't even have an option to accept it. It was Facebook's version of the Dear John note.

Public Facebook Relationships - Issues and Questions

This all got me thinking about the complexity of modern relationships in an instantly connected world. I have so many basic questions. Do friends get to watch their friends have fights on facebook.. oohhh they're together, now they're not, together.. not. With instant messaging this could all happen within the span of five minutes. Is it a race to see who dumps who first? What if you hit traffic on the way to your computer and she changes her status first? Is it proper etiquette to add a special status just to prove you really dumped her?

Note: the following does not apply directly to my relationship style. Anyone who knows me (i.e. in the "real world"), knows that I'm a one woman kind of guy.

Courtship

Say you meet someone in a bar and they invite you to Facebook. Do you quickly check to see what status they have posted? Do you check to see if they have a "history"; i.e. their status bounces around like a rubber ball? If it does; have you just joined a social networked filled with X-partners? I wonder if anyone has written a relationship status tracker that plots the frequency of changes (sorry geek thought). This might even raise another question: At what point do you invite your love interest to join your network?

Only One?

They only give you one entry to fill out on the to: entry. Hmm.. I've got friends that like to juggle two, three, maybe even four relationships (sorry Phil.. name changed to protect the guilty), all at once. Personally that sounds like a nightmare. What should you put for your status? Single, nope! In a relationship, you're walking a fine line with the truth. At least In an Open Relationship would be honest. I can see the argument now: "But honey I told you about our Open relationship on Facebook".. when they get busted. Additional Note: any of my "real" friend's girlfriends that might be reading this should realize friends is a term I use loosely; I'm not talking about your boyfriend.

When do you go public?

Forget about the standard questions: "when should I call her?", "is it too soon?", "when do I say I love you?".. this is a true modern day public display of affection. If you change your status too soon and it fizzles, you have to change it back and you'll look like a relationship-jumper. If you wait too long you'll appear lame like us; KT just updated her profile to say she is married to me. A few important side notes: our son is being born this week and we've been married for quite some time.

I just got this request via email.

"KT said on Facebook that you two are married. We need you to confirm that you are, in fact, married to KT." and it provides a link to accept the request.

What do you think.. Should I accept?

You can tell when family doesn't read your own blogs, nobody has even said yes.. you dumb @$#!