Facebook’s relationship status feature allows you to share your romantic relationship status publicly or with a customized audience. While many people enjoy broadcasting their relationship status, others prefer to keep that information private, especially from certain individuals. Fortunately, Facebook provides options to hide your relationship status from specific people while keeping it visible to others. Here’s how to do it.
Why Would You Want to Hide Your Relationship Status?
There are a few common reasons why someone might want to hide their relationship status from a particular person on Facebook:
- You recently started dating someone and don’t want a specific ex-partner or family member to know yet.
- You want to reveal your new relationship in person to certain people rather than have them discover it online.
- You are in a complicated or nontraditional relationship that you don’t want certain disapproving friends or family members to be aware of.
- You broke up with someone and they are still able to see your profile. You don’t want them to see when you enter a new relationship.
- You have a new partner but are still legally married to someone else and don’t want the wrong people to find out.
Whatever your reasons, you can easily keep your love life private from select individuals on Facebook.
Adjusting the Audience for Your Relationship Status
By default, your relationship status is visible to everyone. Here’s how to customize who can see it:
- Go to your profile page and click on your relationship status in the intro box.
- This will open a dialog box where you can enter a customized relationship status. Click on the audience selector below the text box.
- Choose “Custom” to manually select who can see your relationship status update.
- Uncheck the box next to the names of any individuals you want to hide this information from.
- Click “Save Changes.”
Now your relationship status will be hidden specifically from the people you unchecked. Everyone else will still be able to see it.
Hiding Your Profile from Specific People
In some cases, you may want to go a step further and completely block a person from seeing your Facebook profile. Doing this will hide not just your relationship status, but everything else you post as well. Here’s how:
- Click on the arrow in the top right corner and select “Settings & Privacy.”
- Go to the “Blocking” tab located under the “Privacy” heading.
- Type in the name of the person you want to block. Click on their name when it appears below.
- Click “Confirm” to block this person from interacting with you and seeing your profile.
Once blocked, that person will no longer be able to find or contact you on Facebook. Your posts, photos, relationship status – everything will be hidden from their view.
Restricting an Individual’s Access to Your Posts
Blocking someone entirely may feel a bit extreme. A middle ground is customizing your privacy settings to restrict a specific person’s access to your future posts. That way they won’t see any relationship status updates, but aren’t completely blocked either. Here’s how to do it:
- Go to “Settings” and select “Privacy.”
- Click on “Privacy Shortcuts” near the top.
- Locate the option for “Limit Past Posts” and click “Limit Old Posts.”
- In the box that appears, type in the name of the person you want to restrict.
- Click on their name when it pops up, then click “Confirm.”
This will automatically customize your privacy settings to limit that person’s ability to view all your previous posts. Anything you post going forward will also be hidden from their view unless you change these customized settings.
Unfollowing or Unfriending the Person
Another option is to simply unfollow or unfriend the person you want to hide your relationship status from. Here’s the difference between the two:
- Unfollowing: If you unfollow someone, you will remain connected as friends, but their posts will no longer show up in your News Feed. Likewise, your posts will not appear in their feed. Your profile and any public posts will still be visible to them.
- Unfriending: By unfriending someone, you are completely disconnecting from them on Facebook. This will remove you from each other’s friends lists entirely. They will no longer be able to find or see any portion of your profile, including your relationship status.
To unfollow a friend:
- Go to their profile page.
- Hover over the “Friends” button and select “Unfollow.”
- Confirm you want to unfollow them. This will prevent future posts from both of you appearing, but still allow profile viewing.
To unfriend someone:
- Go to their profile.
- Click on the “Friends” button.
- Select “Unfriend” from the dropdown menu.
- Click “Confirm” to disconnect from them completely on Facebook.
Hiding Old Relationship Status Updates
What if you just want to hide a past relationship status update from certain people, but keep your current status visible? This is possible by going back and editing the audience of previous updates.
- Go to your profile and click on your relationship status in the intro box.
- A dropdown will appear showing your current status plus previous updates. Click “More.”
- This will open a management page with your status history. Click the three dots beside any status you want to edit. Select “Edit audience.”
- Choose “Custom” and uncheck the people you want to hide this old update from.
- Click “Back” to return to the main status page.
Now only your selected audience will still be able to see that particular status update. You can repeat this process to customize the visibility of any previous relationship statuses.
Turning Off Relationship Status Completely
What if you don’t want your relationship status visible to anyone? You can turn off the feature completely:
- Go to your intro box and click on your relationship status.
- Select “No status” from the dropdown menu.
- Confirm that you want to remove your relationship status.
Your relationship status box will disappear from your profile. You can still enter a status update to share relationship news at any time, but it won’t be permanently visible.
Conclusion
While Facebook makes it easy to share your romantic relationship status, their privacy tools also allow you to be selective about who sees it. By adjusting your audience settings, restricting profiles, and limiting visibility, you can easily hide your relationship status from a specific person or group of people. Just be aware that determined individuals may still find ways to learn about your love life through mutual friends or other sleuthing methods. Proceed with caution when trying to conceal anything on social media.
| Method | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Adjust Relationship Status Audience | – Can still show status to most people – Easy to do |
– Person may still find out from mutual friends |
| Block Person Entirely | – Completely hides your profile – Prevents any contact |
– Very aggressive approach – You lose access to their profile too |
| Restrict Person’s Access | – Future posts will be hidden – Allows some access |
– Old posts still visible – Complicated to set up |
| Unfollow or Unfriend | – Easy to do – Removes posts from each other’s feeds |
– Profile still visible – Loses connection entirely if unfriended |
| Hide Old Status Updates | – Can select specific statuses to hide | – Time consuming – Current status still visible |
| Turn Off Status Entirely | – Completely removes status feature | – No status visible to anyone |
Other Methods to Increase Privacy
In addition to directly hiding your relationship status, here are a few other ways to increase privacy on Facebook in general:
- Frequently check and adjust your privacy settings. Facebook often changes options and defaults.
- Be selective about approving friend requests. Decline requests from people you want to conceal information from.
- Review all tagged photos and posts and remove any you don’t want publicized.
- Disable location services and geotagging to avoid revealing your physical whereabouts.
- Never share or access Facebook on a public, borrowed, or shared computer.
- Install a reputable antivirus program to detect malware designed to infiltrate accounts.
- Turn off ad personalization so your activity isn’t tracked for targeted advertising.
Though Facebook has become a popular way to share relationship milestones, you aren’t required to broadcast your love life to the world. With the right settings and some vigilance, you can successfully keep your dating details private from select individuals. The important thing is being proactive about increasing privacy rather than assuming anything posted online is only visible to your target audience.