Hate It: Relationship Statuses

“Oh, so you guys are Facebook official now! Now you know it’s legit.”

This is the sentiment I’ve heard dozens of times after I begrudgingly agreed last month to place my relationship status on Facebook. For some reason, my peers don’t accept a relationship as “legit” unless it’s immortalized in cyberspace—no amount of real-life emotional commitment can convince them otherwise. Gone are the days of “don’t trust everything you see on the Internet”—to my generation, it’s more like: “don’t trust anything until you see it on the Internet.” The Facebook Relationship Status is, unfortunately, a powerful thing—and people seem to use it for all the wrong reasons.

I was in the ninth grade. I met a fifteen-year-old theater nerd at drama camp, and I was convinced it was love. Even though we lived thirty minutes away from each other and neither of us could drive, we thought we were destined for each other.

Obviously, the first thing we did was immediately list our relationship on Facebook.

After months of enduring the heart-wrenching trials of a long distance relationship and hundreds of passionate pledges to go the distance, his sister dumped me on his behalf via text message. Heartbroken, I logged onto Facebook to write an angsty status about not being able to trust people. To my surprise, an event appeared at the top of my profile: Julia is no longer in a relationship. He had already broken our cyberspace bond, without even asking. People actually liked my modified relationship status. Maybe they liked my misery, maybe they liked the fact that I was again single. I hoped it was the latter. Devastated, I deleted my account…only to re-register the next week.

“It’s complicated,” “Married,” “In a domestic partnership.” None of these relationship statuses should be being used by people my age, and particularly not as a joke. Yeah, I know you think it’s cute to be common-law married to your BFF. But honestly, we all really know that by that, you mean: “In a relationship with Nutella while I drown my sorrows in Netflix binges.” And really, if your relationship status is that “complicated,” why are you posting it on Facebook? Maybe you just thrive on the drama.

Until Facebook makes it possible for me to be “in a domestic relationship” with “How I Met Your Mother” or “it’s complicated” with the Catholic Church, I’m sorry, but I’m gonna have to denounce the whole thing. Relationships should exist in real life, not on your Facebook timeline.