Relationship Status Dilemma

Description
This pattern occurs when users are hesitant to announce their relationship status to the public. This is often because the changing between different statuses might come with consequences.

Examples
There are several reasons to why this pattern might arise. Most can be found on Facebook that (as of September 2011) is the largest service with relationship statuses. One reason is the concern of appearance the own individual. Another is the concern of other users.

A rather clear example of both reasons is when a relationship has ended and the relationship status ought to be changed to match the current situation. The announcement of a break up is something that attracts a lot of attention and many people doesn’t want to be pitied or felt sorry for. Maybe because the break up is not a consensual decision and one of the parts isn't sad at all. In such a case, the user instead wants to protect the other part, who might be sad, from getting hurt by constant reminders of the break up. In this example, the dilemma occurs as a result of Protecting Privacy of one or both parts.

Another example is the choice of having no relationship status set at all since it reveals to much private information about the user. It is very common to not display when being single, since it might be seen as the user is having troubles finding a partner due to some reason, a scepticism which might act even more against the user’s chances of finding someone special. This is part of Maintaining A Facade.

A change of relationship status that shows of a break-up could also be something that the user wants to hide from the public in order to give the impression that everything is perfect in life. This is also a way of Maintaining A Facade.

What most people don’t know, however, is that Facebook (September 2011) only posts positive (in a relationship, engaged, married, etc.) changes to a user’s wall and the news feed of that user’s friends. The negative ones (divorced, widowed, etc.) will just change on a user’s profile where any other status would be seen as well. Although, a change towards being single is not seen as either positive or negative (since it could be both) but is handled by the service as a positive one.

Pros and Cons
This pattern protects the user’s identity and privacy as well as the relationships between users but acts agains the purpose of the relationship status itself.

Relations
This pattern origins from the ability to Publicize Relationships (Crumlish & Malone) and can act as a type of Self Censoring pattern but is not bound to it since it can also occur as a result of a desire to protect others than the user’s self.

Contributors
Created by Patric Westberg after being discussed with Andreas Bjerkeholt.