There’s been a couple of interesting changes regarding Facebook’s “Relationship Status” option recently. They’ve added domestic partnership & civil union as an option, a move that has been praised and condemned by members of the gay community. And a new 3rd party app was created to notify you of when your friends changed their relationship status, but Facebook banned it after many complaints.

This makes me think of something I’ve noticed before. Whenever I see the news that someone has gone from “In a Relationship” to “Single”, you quickly see a dozen comments like “I’m sorry to hear that/Let me know if you need to talk/etc.” It seems so intrusive. That’s the main reason I don’t list my relationship status on Facebook. Anyone who needs to know, already knows.

And some of the options they already had never made much sense to me. “It’s Complicated” has to be the worst. What the frak is that supposed to mean? And what possible reason would anyone have for putting that in their status? “In an open relationship” is another one that seems pointless to me. I’m not even sure I see the need for “Divorced.” Why not just put “single?” The same goes for “Widowed,” although I can kind of see why you’d put that, I guess to honor your spouse who passed away, but I think I’d still just go with “single” for that. Married or single, those are the only two choices I need.

And here is something I noticed last year. I had two female friends who changed their status. One went from “Engaged” to “Single,” while the other went from “In a Relationship” to “Single”. Both were accompanied by the aforementioned swarm of sympathetic comments. But the kicker is that both changed their status’ back to “Engaged” and “In a relationship” the very next day. So now, since they felt the need to list their status publicly on Facebook, we all know that something really bad happened the previous day, even if we don’t know exactly what. A major fight that led them to consider their relationships over. Yet they made-up the very next day, so it couldn’t have been that bad. But it seems so childish. And these weren’t kids, both women are around 30 years old, so how do you “break up” with someone one day and get back together the next? It makes me think this was all some little game, like they had a fight, so they immediately change their Facebook relationship status, just to stick it to him, and then when he sees that he panics and apologizes. Grow up already.

Another Facebook news story popped up last month: apparently, Sarah Palin had a 2nd Facebook account registered under the name Lou Sarah. Some website made a big deal about this, especially because Lou Sarah “liked” a lot of Sarah Palin’s posts, and sent encouraging messages to Bristol Palin. I’m no fan of, or apologist for, Sarah Palin, but this is really no big deal. My Favorite Singer, Stacy Clark, also has a 2nd FB page, specifically to talk to family and friends, in addition to her official Facebook page, which is for connecting with fans. So that’s totally a non-story.