Dear Facebook Friends,

Look, I’m not trying to tell you how to run your profile or life in general, but I feel like there are a few social cues to which you’re just not savvy yet, that are really costing you some credibility points. And, since you’ve decided to make these sort of gestures in front of a rather large audience of people you actually know, I thought you may want to be made aware of what your actions are saying. Because I care about you and the public persona you seem to be unaware that you’re maintaining.

Just a couple things:

1) Changing your Relationship Status more than twice a month makes you look insane/unstable/desperate/sad.

We honestly don’t care what the reasoning is behind it, but if you go from “Married” to “Single” to “It’s Complicated” in the course of two weeks, you’re not only going to look unstable but increasingly desperate for attention with every status update. Why on earth would you want everyone you know that you and your significant other are in the middle of a love/hate battle that you can’t seem to walk away from long enough to catch your breath? The answer here is obvious with the amount of “Are you okaaaay?”s and “If you need to talk, I’m here”s that are routinely plastered all over your walls as you cycle through the relationship options. While these people may honestly care about you and your thread-dangling relationship, eventually they’re going to start seeing you as a clamoring charity case, if they haven’t already.

After a while, everyone’s going to start sympathizing with the other party, regardless of their relationship to you, much like if you’re the type to obsessively call an ex and then wonder why he/she’s not sprinting back to you. Dignity has a lot to do with attractiveness, you know. Unless you’re into dating people without standards.

Maybe you should consider saving yourself a little public humiliation for a change. Seriously. Breaking up with someone is hard enough (not to mention doing it three times a month) but broadcasting it to the world isn’t going to make it any better on your self-esteem. It’s really, truly not going to hurt any of us if we don’t know that you and this demon/saint you’re remaining in the vicinity of are taking yet another break for whatever reason. And maybe not announcing to the world that your relationship is in turmoil over and over would give you the self-respect to look at the whole thing objectively for a change.

If this applies to you, perhaps you should consider not publicly mentioning your relationship status unless there’s legal documentation to validate your claim. It’s really for your own good.

2) “It’s Complicated” doesn’t mean anything other than “Bad”*

I’m going to be frank here. Nobody, except for the very close friends that you’d still have if Facebook never existed, cares about your relationship’s backstory. Not anyone. And, again, why would you want to publicly advertise that shit’s going down in whatever makeshift relationship you have? All the options are pretty cut-and-dry, but if there’s not one that fits your immediate case YOU DO HAVE THE OPTION OF LEAVING IT BLANK.

This just goes back to self-respect, folks. The thing about “It’s Complicated” is that it really leaves the door wide open for assumptions. For example, if you’ve been married for a few years and now you’re suddenly in “It’s Complicated”ville, guess what? Now we’re all sitting around going, “Affair? Separation? Murder? Bestial Love Triangle?” which is honestly none of our business in the first place. HOWEVER, by you putting it out there, you’re inviting us to make it our business, get it? And, really, when it comes to people going a-Facebooking, there’s nothing but time for judgment and assumptions. I’d venture to say that’s about 65% of what makes it so much fun. (And if you’re of the “I don’t care what people think” variety, then why are you posting something so private as your relationship status at all?)

All we want, as friends-who-are-good-enough-for-Facebook-but-not-enough-to-confide-in-via-phone-or-email-or-actual-interaction, is for you to tell us when you’re “In a Relationship” and then give us a link to that person’s profile so we can immediately go over and judge them based on their appearance and Interests. That cannot be too much to ask.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Gleefully “Married”,
Castallare

* Sincere thanks to the lovely and brilliant Ms. Jennifer Beane for mentioning this obvious truth and causing me to snort Juicy Juice through my nose while we were texting gossip back and forth for an hour.