When do you go public with your relationship?

#brunchtalk: When do you go public with your relationship?

00:00:01 - 00:05:01

The dateable podcast is an insider's look into modern dating that The Huffington Post calls one of the top ten podcasts about love and sex. On each episode, we'll talk to real daters about everything from sex parties to sex droughts, date fails to diaper fetishes and first moves to first loves. I'm your host, USU, former dating coach turned dating sociologist. You also hear from my co host and producer Julie Kraft chick as we explore this crazy dateable world. Brunchables, welcome to brunch talk, brought to you by the date of a podcast. We are here to answer your burning dating questions that are oh so good. They burn so good. That sounds lovely. Burn so good. Especially for brunch. Whatever you say brunchables, I hear lunchables in my head. I know. That's what comes to mind. Not a good brunch. No, and they're so bad for you. So bad. Lunchables should not be given to children. I don't know how they even got approved. It's like all preservatives. So this is a little side tangent, but my partner and I bought this card deck from the gottman institute. It's like 51 questions to ask before you move in and get married. Love it. In a lot of them are just about how you'd raise your kids. Which is fascinating. And one of them was what foods would you restrict? It had definitely took me down memory lane of the foods that we thought were good back then. Like how much fast food I eat McDonald's and I'm like, that's so gross. I would never do that now. But I think it was a sign of the times also like the fact that lunchables was adorable kid lunch that would never be today, so process. Coke was so big in my family. We drink Coke all the freaking time, like more than water, and I think for us it was like the immigrant mentality of not having access to Coke and then coming to the U.S. and having mountains and mountains of Coke at our disposal. So we over drank on that. And now looking back on it, my goodness. That was just jerky. You made it. Straight up. With all your code. Sugar. Yeah, I will never drink another Coke in my life. Actually, I've not had a Coke in over 20 years. Yes, well, anyways, so Brown shopping. That's over here. Luckily, brunch has gotten more organic. We're healthy. Yes, brunch talk. So the question for this brunch talk is, when do you go public with your new relationship? Sounds like something bennifer would ask. J.Lo's like, um, I wonder when we should alert TMZ. I love that analogy because this is a question we hear all the time. And the person that wrote in, they basically asked, I'll read it, is I recently started dating my boyfriend, we've been dating for about a month, and I'm not sure when I should post on social media. When do I make this Instagram official? You know, we've heard variations of this question and whether it's social media telling your Friends, it's more like, when do you bring this person out of this secrecy of the two of you into your larger world? Is the root of this question? I personally think it's a personal decision. We all see Instagram, social media. We interpret them differently. I personally like to keep things private, so I don't feel like an announcement is necessarily necessary for my entire friends and family to know. I think it's really your own decision and if this is a relationship that you feel like, the world needs to know that we're together and how happy we are, then post it, like have us share in your happiness, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're more along the lines of I want to keep things more private, I don't want to jinx things, which is where I am. I get I want to jinx things too soon. Then you do that too. That's your life and your relationship. Nobody can dictate your timeline. I'd rather look at it not in terms of time that you've been together, but more of what conversations, what understanding do you have with this person? I think the first thing to know is how would they feel being put on social media? Are they a social media user in themselves? Do they not care at all? All that stuff is important because it's a partnership at the end of the day. And not saying that you shouldn't do something because your partner doesn't want to, but it's having that conversation and understanding their stance. I almost feel like a good benchmark is do you understand their stance on social media and can you have a conversation with them? If you can't do either of those two, maybe it's not time yet. And it's better to have those conversations. I just remember a guy friend of mine, this girl that he was dating put a photo of them on Facebook and I remember messaging him and be like, oh, I didn't know you were like dating someone. He's like, we've been on three dates. It was just like, why did she do this? She didn't talk to me. It made it seem way more serious than it really was.

00:05:02 - 00:10:02

So in her head, it probably was serious, but they clearly weren't at that point. I mean, I think for me, I've definitely run the gamut of, I don't really have a time I'd put someone on social media. It's more just dependent on how I'm feeling with the relationship. Like my current relationship, I think I did it after we had had more like these conversations of being official. And to me, that signify that this is something that I was pursuing. Of course it could have ended in a month, like you just never know, but I wanted to share with my friends. It also just depends on your Instagram following. I purposely have a private account that I keep very small. So it's not that big a deal for me to put it up. If that's not you, then it's a different situation as well. And when you have a relationship that came out of COVID, it's almost like you want to be public with it because chances are your Friends may have not met your partner yet. So you want to keep them updated. But again, it goes back to your situation and like you said, Julie, you have an account for your close friends and family. So of course you want them to know the news. But if this is giving you anxiety, thinking about when you should post about your relationship or be public about your relationship, the first thing to do is talk about it with your partner to talk about the anxiety that this is causing you because we're not in this relationship with you and something is causing this anxiety, right? Maybe it's you're hoping things are going to go well and that you don't want to jinx things and that maybe it's too soon or are you moving too fast? I think this is actually a much deeper question of, are you trying to set some milestones for your relationship? I really have nothing to do with social media or posting we're going public. It's like, I think you are trying to define different milestones for your relationship to reach. I definitely think it's deeper than just social media. And I do think there is this fear that you alluded to of jinxing it. And this is very real. And I think this actually extends outside of just social media, but even just making someone public in a small group of friends. I feel like in dating, it's so private. And I definitely got to this point when I was dating, I would even talk about people until it was like a couple dates in. Because the worst feel like the world is to be like, I met this amazing person. Yeah. And then your friends like two days later, so what happened with that amazing person? You're like, I have no idea. They ghosted me. Not that amazing. The worst. And you take it as a feeling of not being good enough. The validation that comes with dating, I think it hits really hard. And there's so much to unpack there that's like for another whole brunch talk episode, but I think there's a balance of your friends and close people connected to you on social media as well, but even outside of social media. They're not going to judge you if something doesn't work out. Like if you genuinely feel like you've had these conversations with your partner, let's say you did the two check ins of I know their stance on social media and I can have a conversation with them and even better. I know where I stand with them, then I don't feel like it's a risk to put it out there to a small circle of people that are really ultimately rooting for you. Of course it's going to suck if it doesn't work out, but they're your Friends. That's why people are here for you if it doesn't. Just keeping it all bottled up and not wanting to share because of fear. That doesn't seem like a great avenue either. It goes back to the why, why would you want to post or why would you not want to go public with your relationship? If you're wanting to go public with your relationship because you want to show your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend that you've moved on. Probably not the best why to go by. If you want to go public because you're trying to show that aunt who asks you why you're still single every year during the holidays. Probably not a good idea either. It's not for other people. If you want to go public purely to share in the joy and tell your Friends and family how happy you are, that is a great reason to go public and nobody can fight you on that because that's your happiness and that's a beautiful why because it's not about other people. It's about you. Have you noticed that no one does Facebook official anymore? Like in a relationship with. You know what I've noticed? A lot of people do the single status on Facebook. Really? Yes, maybe your Friends. I've seen many and most of them are divorced. Oh. Or gone out of long-term relationships. I think maybe it's because before they got into that last long-term relationship, this was a thing. Yes. And so they felt the need to update their status. But many people with a single status, which is nobody does a relationship in a relationship with someone, except for someone in our community, Ryan. Oh. Ryan just went official on Facebook. So I think that I stared corrected. I stare corrected. Some people go Facebook. It's just very rare now compared to, I feel like Instagram is more of the reveal at this stage.

00:10:03 - 00:15:01

Or like a photo on Facebook. And then everyone's like, who is that? You know? Yes. It's more of the mystery of it, opposed to like, I'm in a relationship with X yes. And that's such an interesting observation that you had that a lot of people that were in the era when everyone was doing that now feel like they just have to say single. And that's I guess the reason for never doing it in the first place. Just don't do it. I'm no longer in a relationship with this person. Great. Thanks for letting us know. I remember meeting this girl maybe once or twice and I got on her newsletter and somehow. She sends out an end of the year newsletter every year, updating people on what's happening in her life. I shit you not. I only met her twice. I barely remember her name. But this newsletter had, I was promoted at work. I moved to this new city, and I found the love of my life. We've been dating for two months, and it had a picture of me. Oh my God. And her cat. And I just remember thinking, first of all, I don't even know who you are. And second of all, this is very strange that you put me on this newsletter that's with your most intimate life details that I have no investment in. I mean, I would say that again, it's coming from a place of validation to show that she has someone. And I don't want to stereotype because maybe she's the type that just wants to put it out to everyone, but I would say 9 times out of ten, since you don't even know this person, you're not really there to experience the joy with her. Yeah. If they broke up, would you be the one consoling her? Probably not. Right, 'cause they broke up shortly after. Oh God, that's bad. That's what I heard because he started dating someone else. And he's like, we have never had any conversation. Who are you? We've been on three dates. You know, that's what you need to think about. Yeah, can you imagine maybe he saw the email and thought, how did I end up in her newsletter? The so strange. Well, that's why I think you do need to have the conversation a little and be on the same page and you know, I mean, my boyfriend does zero social media, like zero. And I've had people reach out to our community. They're like, I've been trying to find your boyfriend not so much. Why? It doesn't exist. And I think though I knew that going in and I remember remember we did a Facebook Live and someone asked me because I did post a photo on oh yes. My personal Instagram which does have very few people and I talked to him about that and someone did ask me caught me off guard essentially, but we were on a Facebook Live. In our Facebook group. And I've never just been like, oh my God, I hope I didn't say too much. Not because I didn't feel like we were secure, but more just respecting the boundary that this person isn't a public social media type of person. Yes, I think that's the main point is, do you have buy in from your partner and you putting their face, their name and likeness out there does put them at some sort of risk. Even if it's to a small circle of Friends, now his identity is revealed and people can put a face with the name. So it goes back to get by in from your partner, get aligned on how you view social media and posting about each other. And that's a conversation to be had with each other. I'm just remembering do you remember, I won't say who it was, but someone that we had on the podcast that we never ended up airing. We've had maybe two of those in our lifetime that they were blocked by their partner on social media. They would put up these declarations of love on social media. That was crazy. There's some weird stuff. I remember I also didn't go on a date with someone once because I found their Facebook and was public, which also was weird in my opinion. And they had this whole paragraph and photo of their ex-girlfriend, I thought their ex passed away. It seemed like a declaration that much that that's where my mind jumped. I clicked on the person. Very much alive. They just had this very strange declaration of love to their acts that was so public and I remember not going on the date because I was so turned off that I was like, if I actually dated this person, I would never want something like this up. It wasn't even a photo of the two of them. It was a photo like a headshot. It was so strange. Wow. I don't want to judge again. You do you, whatever feels good for you and however you want to profess your love, you do it your way, but there are consequences these days. And it could prevent you from if you break up and you have this paper trail of your proclamation of love to someone, then it could prevent you from getting future dates. Yes, absolutely. Could employers look at this and think it's a little bit odd, maybe. I don't know. There could be so many reasons for this to have more consequences than you think. Just really got to think before you post and go public with shit, right. Let's hold that thought for a quick message. This episode is brought to you by topic dot com.

00:15:02 - 00:20:02

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Just download the drizzly app or go to drizzly dot com that's DRI dot com to start sipping with purpose. Have you ever thought about how much better dating would be if you had a whole army of people supporting you along the way. We know that dating can be frustrating and lonely, but it can also feel fulfilling and fun. Have you recently decided you want to make some changes to your love life? Maybe you've recently reentered the dating scene. Maybe you've gone on one too many dates that went nowhere, or maybe you're just ready to take your current relationship to the next level. That is exactly why we created the sounding board, a true extension of our podcast that delivers a personalized experience, which includes monthly office hours where you can drop in and chat with us about anything. Weekly sound offs with guided discussions and regular virtual happy hours, allow Julie and I to become your dating sherpas to provide real-time guidance and wisdom in a more intimate way so we can all navigate dating and relationships together. Join the sounding board today by going to dateable podcast dot com slash sounding board. Again, that's dateable podcast dot com slash sounding board. Now that we're back, I want to talk to you about soft launching on social media. You've seen this before when you don't see the face of the person. You see like a hand or a foot. Basically something that reveals that there is someone else in your life. What are your thoughts? That's kind of fun. Because that's a little mystery. It's not a shocker once you do posts at the entire person. And your close friends and family will have already known about this person. During this time of soft launch. So that they feel like they're in on the secret, right? So I think that's kind of fun. I like this concept. What do you think? I don't know. I've kind of started to be honest. I feel like if you're gonna go for it, just go for it. That's my personal take on it, but I do think kind of what we're talking about earlier, the photo does matter. What isn't that you're launching with, whether it's a soft launch or hard launch or whatever you want to call it. I think having a headshot or something is super creepy, but having a cute photo of you two together is endearing. So it's not just when do you post, but what do you post in my opinion? It's taking me back. I'm a little triggered right now because just remember to stalking possess and for years, there were no pictures of other women in thinking, oh, he's still thinking about me. There's still a chance and the first photo he posted of his new partner was them getting engaged. And I was like, when did this happen? Oh my God. That is. Talk about a hard launch. That's the long game right there. That's hard. I remember reading so heartbroken and my heart just dropped. I think, oh my gosh, those two years, I thought he wasn't dating anybody. Oh my God. Flourishing relationship. And now they're engaged. Reason number one, not to stalk your exes on social media, but hey, you know what? I had my fun. I think that proves a lot of the points that we're making about is you know any of his friends are close family. I'm sure they knew about this person. I would hope so. But people like you that are quite frankly shouldn't be seeing photos of his life.

00:20:02 - 00:25:01

Let's be honest, he kept it away from and you know, it's hard because it's really like what do you use social media for? You know, I'm going back and forth. Do I make a public account that's more dateable focused? I don't think I would put a bunch of photos of my partner on that. But the way I have Instagram right this minute, that it's really a place for me to share with my closer friends or anyone that feels like there is a connection with, right? Like there's some total stranger that's a public for anyone to see. I do think that that adds context also. So who is looking at your stuff? Who are you really sharing this update with is a big piece of it? Sometimes I just look at my partner and think, I just want to keep our relationship sacred and to ourselves. And for some reason, when I think about posting about us, it minimizes our relationship for some reason a cheapens the relationship. For some reason, because now we're out there for other people to judge and interesting. I'm trying to take back that control. So I often get the I post pictures of my partner and I, but not in a way of declaring my love or saying news flash were together, but I have had a few friends say, you're very quiet about this relationship on social media, you hardly ever post about him. And I realized I'm like almost protecting it a little bit. More and I don't want to be out there for other people to scrutinize. I personally like sharing photos. I feel the opposite that it makes me feel closer to my partner. Because I'm never going to just send my friends or family like me and my family. I don't want to say that. I'll text my mom a photo of me and my partner. But I'm never going to text a group chat like a photo of my partner and I hike you should be fucking weird. Yeah, but I wouldn't. And you wouldn't either. That's so strange to me. But I do like sharing with close people, like what we're doing. And it makes me feel connected to see that stuff from them. It's kind of like when people post photos of their kids is the same deal like I think in theory they could be sending them to through text, but I don't necessarily need to get bombarded. With text from people about their personal lives, whether that's partners or kids, but I do like seeing what people are up to on Instagram. It does make me happy to see what's going on in people's lives and sharing that myself. So yeah, it comes down to personal takes. You're why? Yep, exactly. Your why your situation, the context, all of that is a factor for sure. Do whatever it makes you feel good, but just make sure your partner is on the same page. That's the major takeaway. Don't post when they think that you're in the very early stages of dating and you think that you're in a defied relationship or they hate being on social media and you're posting every day. They don't know it and they've blocked you. Don't do that. And get their approval on the photo too. Oh, that's a good one. I don't think I did that, but that's a good one for women especially. I think guys, for the most part, not going to generalize all, but for the most part, don't care as much. Oh, my partner, care. Have you ever seen those memes of like your boyfriend takes the worst photo of you ever? Because I'm glad my boyfriend doesn't have Instagram. I was at, okay, is my two second ranch on this for my birthday. My friend took the same photo as my boyfriend. They were at the same place. Hers was a wonderful shot of me. His, I looked like I had 5 chins. I'm like, how did you two take the same photo at the exact same moment? Well, okay, so yes, I've had to train my boyfriend on being a good Instagram husband. He was a good Instagram husband, yes. He's actually taken YouTube courses on how oh my God. For Instagram because I was like, babe, you're an architect by trade. You are a very, very visual person. How do you make me look like I'm four 11 and every photo? I just don't understand how these angles play out. Now get your tall, but you could just lower the camera. So he started taking these courses like this is kind of interesting too, because he's very into us, that of a photo, but I realize this is how I talked myself down this ledge of like, why is he taking such a bad photos? Is that from every angle he thinks you're beautiful, you know? That's what he says. There you go. We digress a little, but anyways, be official, whether the feels right, make sure everyone's on the same page, do what's right for you, play the context, I think we got the main points covered. And know your why, why you're doing this. Know your why. That's with everything in life, right? Yes. And why is why we're going to end this episode now? Because we're done. We're done. We're finished answering this question. Thank you for sending in that lovely question. You can send in all of your questions to our email, hello at dateable podcast dot com, or you can DM us on Instagram at dateable podcast.

00:25:02 - 00:26:55

And we'll never post your photos without your permission. Because we're going to make sure that they're good angles, okay? You have our promise. We've been trading our partners to be our photographers. All good. Okay. We'll see you next week. The dateable podcast is part of the frolic podcast network. Find more podcasts you'll love at frolic media, slash podcasts. Want to continue the conversation? First, follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter with the handle at dateable podcast. Taga's in any post with a hashtag stay dateable and trust us. We look at all those pose. Ben head over to our website dateable podcast dot com. There, you'll find all the episodes as well as articles, videos, and our coaching service with vetted industry experts. You can also find our premium Y series where we dissect, analyze, and offer solutions to some of the most common dating conundrums. We're also downloadable for free on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Google Play, overcast, stitcher radio, and other podcast platforms. Your feedback is valuable to us, so don't forget to leave us a review. And most importantly, remember to stay dateable. Now with Walmart plus, members earn 2% Walmart rewards online and in store. That's up to $500 savings toward future Walmart purchases. Join Walmart plus today, limited to paid member shopping in store and receiving shipping and delivery orders in select markets only offer expires one 31 23, other restrictions apply. Hear that. That's the sound of a patient whose health data is protected from a cyberattack. And that, that's the sound of a financial system that's digitally secured from bad actors. Right now, there's an invisible war being fought on a digital battlefield that impacts what we do every day. That's why it periton, we do that can't be done to help protect the vital systems we rely on because if we don't, the alternative is unimaginable. Periton.