Making your relationship Facebook official
How soon after a first date should you change your relationship status on Facebook? And should you tell the person you’re dating first?
Never. I mean, unless that profile update is a really important milestone for you to mark publicly, I’d save the hoopla until you announce an upcoming wedding. Or post photos of you moving into a new place together. Or anything else that demonstrates your coupledom to a degree you feel it is suitably flaunted. Instead, why not just hide your relationship status altogether? Save yourself the grief of having to update your status to “in a relationship with” to “it’s complicated” to a broken-heart emoji, if Facebook has developed such a thing.
In your profile settings, click on “About” and on the left side you’ll see a line “Family and Relationships.” It is here that you’ll find the option to make that visible to “Only me.”
If the first date goes well and you end up going on many, many dates with this suitor, maybe you’ll end up married to them. And maybe a photo from your wedding will end up on the old Facebook. Or not.
Don’t sweat it. People will get the gist of it. The guy I had one single date with won’t stop texting me. I like him and we had fun, but it’s time to close the loop until next time so my phone stops dinging in meetings.
How do I do it in text form that won’t offend? (I’m guessing the poop emoji is not an option.) Oh dear. Sorry to hear that. You could turn your phone to silent (not vibrate, but proper silent) and see if he gets the hint from you ignoring his messages.
Another approach is to be more direct and send a firm-but-polite text saying just that, “You text me too often. Really, it’s too much,” and hope he dials it back (terrible pun intended).
If these measures won’t solve your conundrum, you can block his number. It is a cinch to do.
If you are using an iPhone, you’ll find that option under Settings, then Messages. Scroll down to the SMS/MMS portion and you’ll see the option for Blocked.
If you are on an Android, you can find this under the Menu of your Messages app. What exactly defines a latergram? How soon after a photo was taken should you label it as a “latergram” on Instagram . . . and is it bad form if you don’t?
A latergram is a photo posted to Instagram that’s not in real time.
So if you snap some photos, have a nap and post a photo a few hours later, purists would advice that photo be tagged a #latergram.
I personally think within an hour or so is sufficient to drop the #later from your ’gram.
What if there is no decent Wi-Fi to be found? Surely Instagram etiquette must make some concessions for technical requirements.
You can find my later (and Insta) grams at instagram.com/karen_cleveland, btw (that’s text for “by the way, by the way”). Etiquette expert Karen Cleveland answers your questions about life online. Send her your questions: karen@mannersaresexy.com.