What would you feel about this

[Mango27]

I have been seeing a fantastic guy for 11 months. Ticks all the boxes, we spend a lot of time together, still treat the weekends like they are a date and do lovely things.
But now we have a problem. It sounds pathetic but I have really been taken aback.
He has a newish facebook account with not many people as he no longer has access to the old 1. On the new 1 we have been publicly in a relationship since April. He has shared some of your lovely trips on this account and we have been ppublicly in a relationship. Today I noticed that the relationship status was set to friends only on his page. I questioned the sudden change and he told me he had wanted to update his privacy settings for old posts and hadn't changed the relationship status himself.
I been thinking why would he all of a sudden want to change this, and am I being unreasonable to question it?

I have everything set to friends only on FB, can't think why I'd want to be so lax about security that anyone could see it, there's no need. People just shouldn't bother with status' as it only causes paranoia. Bearing that in mind, I have it set to private and its never changed from single, even though at times I've been in relationships. It won't change unless I get married. Start as you mean to go on. If anyone has a problem with that, that's their issue ( even a psyco FB stalker I very briefly dated last year didn't bring a lack of status info up). Same with whattsapp, have the 'time last on' info switched off and it bothers me not one bit that I can't see when someone else was last on either - I bet you check that too?

If you're this worried over such a trivial matter, it's not a good sign for this relationship. If you're not careful, you'll only end up driving him away with your own insecurities. Maybe figure out why this has bothered you so much. Have you a reason to have trust issues?

Well in that case maybe he just wants a clean break from his "old life" and doesn't want people reporting his every action back to his ex? Unless you have reason to believe he is living a double life and hiding you from his family.

If you have met his family and friends and he isn't wanting to hide you away from any of that then it probably just is a genuine privacy concern. Many people have their personal details restricted to people they know. It's a sensible thing to do.

Online privacy is very important. More to some than others obviously.

I would never display my partner or family on social media, nobody needs to have access to this type of information about me via a simple google search. Also having any setting as ‘public’ on social media also seems insane to me.

I used to be far more relaxed about it years and years ago but gradually tweaked my settings and then deleted accounts all together.

If I had a partner that was public about his private life, that would make me seriously question if we could date.

There can be many reasons why your partner would want to tighten up his settings. They don’t have to have anything to do with ‘hiding’ you.

If you’ve ever been a victim of online impersonation, stalkers contacting your friends and family, fraud, or really anything other than unicorns and rainbows online, you’d probably take privacy more seriously too. It’s not a red flag at all.

Does it still say he's in a relationship with you, but to see it you have to click more? Or does it say single or no relationship status at all, when you click see more info?

If you can't see relationship status then it's set so only specific people or only him can see it. Maybe he doesn't want the world and every other nosy busybody to see his posts. I tailor my account to let specific people see certain things. Some things are for anyone a lot is for friends and a few for only a few people.
If your that worried then ask him about it. You got two choices really you either trust him and carry on or you don't and let him go.

Good gracious.
All this angst over FB.

I have mine set to ‘friends only’ too. I don’t want the general public to know everything about me. The only people that need to know anything are my friends and family.

You sound mad, it’s just Facebook FGS. Why are you arsed that the public who you don’t even know can see if he is in a relationship, his friends still can so I don’t understand what the issue is. You are making a mountain out of a mole hill, your relationship is not substantiated by a Facebook status. Focus on real life and not social media

I think the bigger conversation here is how he’s feeling about the relationship. Is there anything else happening that could be off ?

Does it not show you in a relationship at all ?

When I started dating my now husband he did something similar - he made his entire account private - but he did it because an ex he had a year prior to meeting me was heavily stalking him and begging him back. I hadn’t pegged the Facebook change because I hate Facebook anyway. We don’t post what we do on Facebook. Your relationship should be in the real world abd Facebook is pretty much irrelevant.

When he introduced me to his kids is when I found out about her. She FaceTime called them on weekends that she knew they would be with him to try and talk to him. And she didn’t miss that weekend and when she did the youngest answered his phone and excitedly asked her to meet dad’s new girlfriend 😂 we just happened to be sitting together on the sofa watching movies together. So she got to see all four of us looking back at her. She instantly hung up then spent the next three days messaging me directly on Facebook because one of her cousins or something had him on Facebook still. It was completely unhinged.

This is now why we both have Facebook messenger notifications turned off. Both profiles private.

Could he also have a completely mental ex partner that might be causing issues.

I cannot see why if after 11 months this fella would be doing something no good if things are going well. There has to be something going on he’s trying to protect you or you both from.

..........your relationship is not substantiated by a Facebook status

Whilst I fully agree with this, it's actually terrifying how many people obsess over such social media trivia.

Exactly. I wouldn't spend five seconds thinking about this.

Totally agree. The only people who can see anything other than my profile pic is friends. Why on earth would anyone care what the general public know about them?

What else on his account is restricted to “friends only”? If he is wanting to make his profile info less public for security reasons, I would say this is nothing to be worried about. If that is the case I would expect his friends list, photos and other “about” info to be set to friends only also. If they are set to friends only, I wouldn’t worry about it, he is likely just increasing the privacy of his account.

So are you not an FB friend of his account then? Mines set to private though I ve less than 30 FB friends and the majority know my partner of 20 yrs, I just don't see the need to mark it otherwise

I don’t totally understand what you are talking about, but I do know if you carry on like this you will trash what sounds like a lovely relationship.

You either accept his explanation (whether you agree with it or not) or you think it’s suss (in which case leave him).
Stop being a mentalist though. You’ll give him the ick.

It’s Facebook, who cares. It’s all attention seeking stuff anyway. I have everything set to friends only and don’t expose information like my employer or date of birth etc at all. People who are close to me know anyway and it’s none of anyone else’s business. I rarely post, use it just for browsing some of the interest groups I’m in.

Why does it matter to you if people you don’t know, can see you’re in a relationship?

Also forgot to say, my partner of 21 years doesn’t expose his relationship status at all, not even to friends. Doesn’t matter, as I say, people who matter already know.

I don't quite understand all the angst people have about FB or any social media, relationship statuses, who like what, who block who - we are not 12

facebook - the land of make believe...