This personal essay was prompted by a contest posted on twitter. The New York Times asked college students for their opinion on the current state of love and relationships. I wrote this piece before realizing I was ineligible to enter due to a current internship with one of their affiliates, but wanted to share it nonetheless.
In high school, at a small Midwestern private school in a baseball city, you were either the class couple or the one with the significant other at, what generally seemed like, a secular school in the county. I was the former: on and off with one boy with another looking on, watching.
We flirted before text messaging and being Facebook official were first class concerns to new relationships. Our parents’ approval was all we were worried about. That was 2004, freshman year of high school. That time around ended and we went back to being friends and classmates.
At the end of sophomore year we were back ‘on’ as the school year wrapped up. We’d been working on art projects outside of art class together, doing homework over the phone and talking baseball but denied everything to those pestering us. In true movie form, it was on a field trip that everything changed, but it was also weeks before he was suppose to leave for the summer as a camp counselor in the next state over.
Standing at my locker after one final or another, we decided we’d wait until he got back. I remember removing my Facebook relationship so it was no longer listed. I wasn’t single. It wasn’t complicated. I wasn’t in a relationship or married or widowed. (Or today, in a domestic partnership.) We talked until he left, then I waited.
In late June, around my birthday, my phone rang and I was surprised to see it was him. Starting then, he’d call from camp when he got the chance to say hello and hear the latest stories from working with little kids at the swimming pool.
One day, a 4-yearold asked if I had a boyfriend because he wanted to mine. I laughed and said sure to the little guy, however, the voice on the other end of the phone was skeptical. A, “So, I do have a boyfriend? One my age?” and a quick, sharp “Yes.” probably would have broken the 4-yearold’s heart had he known.
It was July, it was on Facebook. We assumed our few classmates would see it, rejoice, despise, laugh and high five about it before classes started and everyone would just know. We were wrong. We were Facebook official before being Facebook official was a thing.
The break up was just shy of a year from that field trip. It was instant on my Facebook, however he took months to change his. I’ve never asked him why, just assumed it was due to laziness. A year changed a lot and this time our classmates knew it instantly. We didn’t have to tell anyone; they had seen.
Now, three years into college, I missed the moment he became Facebook official with his college girlfriend, which was well over a year ago. We are in different cities and run into each other here and there, say hello and generally leave it at that.
The other boy from high school was, and still is, Facebookless. We talked, flirted, fought, gossiped and did homework via instant messenger for hours every night. In today’s technology filled world, the young have moved on to social media networks to flirt and share relationships, tagging each other in photos and blog posts. Saying ‘I love you!’ in 140 characters on Twitter instead of saving a screenshot of that instant messenger conversation and emailing it around to your closet friends.
We never were officially ‘dating’ even though he was my date to Junior prom and asked to me our Senior; I choose to go with a group of 12 girls instead. If that was today, if we were official, would Facebook have had something to do with our state of relationship? Would I want to be ‘in a relationship’ but not have his profile linked or leave that golden field blank, letting the world wonder? Would he join Facebook just to put it out there or would my profile be living a lie, listing me as single?
Facebook has changed how we get to know friends and acquaintances. You ‘friend’ the kid next to you in linear algebra and the girls from your journalism classes, a guy you met in the dining hall at 7 a.m. on a Thursday, his friend you meet weeks later at dinner, the kids from the tennis courts down the street, the random guy you played beer pong against the night before and everyone on your floor each year.
When they confirm your friend request the involuntary action is to check their relationship status. Single? In a relationship? Is he or she from high school, a same-sex best friend, or an actual significant other? “Unlisted? Why would he do that?!” you yell at your best friend and roommate.
I watch the girls and boys I use to babysit for, now in high school, have new beaus every other week, constantly changing their relationship status. To them it’s what you are supposed to do. It’s suppose to listed on Facebook for the world to see and congratulate you on, only to post the “awww, what happened??? :(” when the almost-inventible breakup occurs.
When red Solo cups in party pictures and fake names so internship supervisors can’t find you become the Facebook’s content, the subtle change still doesn’t go unnoticed. The comments change to adult and positive on the initiation; breakups are quietly noticed. It appears that being ‘Facebook official’ has become the ultimate commitment.
When a friend of my apartment recent listed himself as ‘in a relationship’, “with who?!” came out of our mouths, almost in unison. I had recently begun wondering why he had been single since we met at the beginning of our second year at school. Somehow, this detail of his life, he only let us in on via Facebook; was this on purpose or did it just happen this way? Or, was it just the easier way to let everyone know?
Is there something to be said in how we’ve lost the coffee dates with old friends to gush over our new beau? With friends from our past spread out over the country, those gush sessions have turned into video chats on Skype and long email threads restarted each fall. Will young love and relationships ever be void of technology?
Then, there are the famous last words, “I don’t want to put it on Facebook, even if we do become boyfriend and girlfriend.” Maybe they are scared to admit it to the world that someone new is in their life, or they don’t want to have to change it down the road, or they still find Facebook to be an invasion of privacy.
Becoming ‘boyfriend and girlfriend’ isn’t an instantaneous thing in college. Parents are no longer asking what your intentions are, ordering doors to stay open, lecturing about keeping grades up and snide looks when you get to close on the couch in the TV room. “It’s college,” you say when they do ask.
But, do college kids really ‘date’ or just hang out, do homework, hook up and call themselves dating? Does being ‘Facebook official’ just mean you are exclusively sharing two beds and only two beds or that you are ready to take them back to your small town? Whether it brings labels and exclusivity or nights out on the town and meeting the parents, letting the Internet know you’ve picked one person doesn’t come out of the first ‘date.’
Occasionally, college boys will still take a girl out to dinner, walk her home and giver her a kiss goodnight without expecting an invention come up and to meet her roommates. Of all the first dates from my college career, none have ended in a Facebook notified agreement.
It’s become that dinner and movie is for those already dating and committed, not the ones testing the waters. Yet somehow, after a few hangout and homework sessions, Facebook becomes conversation between math problems, commercials and over breakfast. But what are you until it comes up? If your daily habits include each other without labels, how do you explain that to those closest to you or even yourself?
I’ve listened to friends and ease dropped on classmates about the latest Facebook relationships. Rarely, does it ever sound like a mutual agreement in “let’s put this on Facebook.” It’s always a defensive “(s)he wanted it and I don’t mind.”
Does the Internet’s presence in our relationships mean the 20-yearold’s sense of love has changed from when our parents were our age? Shouldn’t we be head over heals, not defending notifying the world of the matters at heart?
To some, the commitment isn’t real until it’s on Facebook. To others, it being on Facebook is unnecessary.
Recently, I made a new friend who is one of the few not on Facebook, forcing me to figure out who was her significant other from the stories we’d share over lunch. She still lives in the world from years ago, when relationship statuses were earned in friendships, not easily looked up. Happily, she and her high school sweetheart are still going strong. Are the rest of us missing out?
I’ve watched college friends go in and out of being Facebook official, never changing my relationship status since that summer long ago. I don’t remember how it came up – we must have agreed since it’s not a memorable moment. I’ve thought about removing it entirely, letting the world wonder who was calling me theirs, but apparently there’s something to be said in being Facebook official.