Facebook has become a popular place for people to share details about their personal lives, including their relationship status. However, you may want to limit who can see updates about your love life on the platform. Fortunately, Facebook provides privacy settings that allow users to hide their relationship status from specific people.
Why Would You Want to Hide Your Relationship on Facebook?
There are a few reasons why someone might want to hide their romantic relationship on Facebook:
- You’re just starting to date someone and it’s too soon to make it “Facebook official.”
- You want to keep your love life private from certain friends, family members, or co-workers.
- You’re in a long-distance relationship and don’t want to deal with nosy questions from acquaintances.
- Your partner is not on Facebook and doesn’t want their information shared on your profile.
- You’re keeping the relationship secret for other personal reasons.
Hiding your relationship status allows you to connect with your partner online without sharing private details with your entire network.
How to Hide Your Relationship on Facebook
Here are step-by-step instructions for limiting who can see your relationship status on Facebook:
- Go to your Facebook profile page and click on the “About” section.
- Under the Relationship section, click on the edit icon (shaped like a pencil).
- This will open a menu where you can enter your relationship status and your partner’s name.
- After filling out the relationship details, click on the audience selector (a globe icon).
- Choose the option to limit who can see your relationship info by adjusting the audience selector.
- The default setting shares your relationship with the entire public. Use the selector to customize who can view the info.
- You can hide your relationship from specific people, lists, or groups by clicking “Custom” and manually selecting who to exclude.
- You can also hide your relationship from everyone except a small group of people you select.
- After choosing the preferred audience, click “Save Changes.”
Using Friend Lists to Hide Relationships
One effective way to hide your relationship status is by using Facebook’s lists feature. Here’s how:
- Go to your profile and click “Friends” on the left sidebar.
- Create a new list titled “Close Friends” or “Family” and add the people you want to see your relationship status.
- When adjusting your relationship visibility, choose the option to show your status to only your new custom list.
- Everyone not on the list will not see any relationship info on your profile.
Segmenting your network into lists gives you granular control over who can access sensitive personal information.
Hiding Past Relationships
In addition to current relationships, you can also hide past dating details on Facebook:
- Go to your profile and click “About.”
- Scroll down and open the Relationship History section.
- Click the three dots next to any previous relationship.
- Select Edit or Remove to eliminate it from your profile.
- Adjust the audience selector to limit visibility of your history.
Deleting old relationships can be part of cleaning up your social media presence.
Relationship Visibility on Facebook Posts
Hiding your overall relationship status does not automatically apply to individual Facebook posts:
- Even if your status isn’t public, relationship mentions can still appear in posts and photos.
- To manage visibility of specific posts, adjust the audience when creating the post or later by hitting the ellipses and selecting Edit Post.
- The default post setting shares with your Public connections, but you can customize this.
- Be mindful of tagging your partner in caption or photos as it may reveal your relationship.
Granular post settings allow you to maintain some privacy while still creating social media content.
Partnership Status vs. Relationship Status
Facebook offers users the ability to display a partnership rather than a relationship:
- If you’re in a domestic partnership or civil union, you have the option to show a partnership status.
- Partnership visibility has the same customization settings as relationship status.
- You can hide partner info from specific people or make partnerships completely private.
This allows people in committed same-sex relationships to share their status without having to change relationship type to “married.”
Displaying Single Status
You can also choose to display yourself as “single” on Facebook:
- If you previously had a public relationship, updating to single will share that information.
- The single status option does not allow for a customized audience.
- Single status is always public and shared with all connections.
So if you need to limit who knows you’re single, it’s best to hide your relationship status completely.
Using Other Privacy Settings
In addition to relationship visibility, other privacy tools can help manage dating details:
- Adjust tag review so you must approve tags from your partner.
- Limit who can look you up using your email address or phone number.
- Block specific people from viewing your profile or posts.
- Review all your privacy shortcuts to make sure sensitive info is locked down.
Leveraging all available preferences can allow you to reveal select personal info to some individuals and keep it private from others.
Special Scenarios
Certain unique relationship situations may require customized privacy strategies:
If You’re Dating a Coworker
- Hide your status from colleagues by adding them to a Restricted list.
- Be careful about posting details that would reveal where you went together.
- Leave your status visible to some coworkers you trust who already know about the relationship.
If You’re Divorced
- Delete your previous relationship status and history with your ex-spouse.
- You may want to keep the change hidden from mutual friends.
- Eventually you can update your status when ready to share your new relationship.
If You’re in a Long-Distance Relationship
- Display your status but hide it from acquaintances who may ask nosy questions about your partner’s location.
- Share your city-to-city distance in posts but obscure specifics that could identify where your partner lives.
- Check that both you and your partner have location services disabled for privacy.
Relationship Privacy Considerations
While limiting relationship visibility on Facebook can be useful, it also has some risks and disadvantages to consider:
- Hiding a status can appear suspicious and raise questions if discovered.
- It can be complicated to keep track of who knows what about your love life.
- You may forget about tags and accidentally reveal info to someone unexpected.
- Changes to your visibility settings can be notified to users who previously could view your status.
- You have to be careful not to mention a hidden partner’s name in public posts and photos.
Thoroughly think through your situation before hiding relationship details online. In some cases, it may be better to display your status publicly and clearly state that you like to keep your personal life private.
Conclusion
Facebook provides profile settings that enable users to hide relationship information from specific people or groups. This allows you to protect intimate details from those you don’t want nosing into your love life. However, discretion is still required as tags, locations, and other social media activity can unintentionally reveal a hidden relationship. Adjust privacy settings carefully for your circumstances and consider the implications before concealing your dating status on Facebook.