Facebook’s Friendship Page allows you to look back on your Facebook friendships and relationships over the years. This page shows you when you became friends with someone, along with any relationship status changes. Here’s how to find and view your friendship and relationship history on Facebook.
Finding the Friendship Page
The Friendship Page is only available in the desktop version of Facebook – it can’t be accessed from the mobile app. To find the Friendship Page:
- Log into Facebook on a desktop web browser.
- Click on your profile picture in the top right corner.
- Select “Friends” from the dropdown menu.
- Click on the “More” tab at the top of the page.
- Click on “Friendship” in the dropdown menu.
This will open up your Friendship Page, which shows a history of your Facebook friends and relationships.
Viewing Your Friendship History
The Friendship Page automatically sorts your Facebook friends by when you became friends with them, with your newest friends at the top. For each friend, you’ll see:
- Their profile picture.
- Their name.
- The date you became friends.
To view more details about a specific friendship:
- Click on the friend’s name.
- A popup will appear showing the specific date and year you became friends.
- It may also show how you became friends (such as being friends in real life first or meeting through Facebook).
Scrolling down the page will take you through your Facebook friendship history in chronological order. You can view all the way back to your first-ever Facebook friend!
Viewing Your Relationship History
In addition to friendships, the Friendship Page also tracks your dating relationship history on Facebook. Any time you change your relationship status on Facebook, it will be recorded here. To view relationship changes:
- Scroll down to the “Relationship Changes” section.
- You’ll see a timeline of when you went from “Single” to “In a Relationship” or vice versa.
- It tracks relationships back to when you first added a relationship status on Facebook.
Clicking on a specific relationship change will open up a popup with details like:
- The date your relationship status changed.
- Your relationship status before and after.
- The name of the person you started or ended a relationship with.
This allows you to get a high-level overview of your relationship patterns over the years. You can see how long you were with an ex or reminisce about past relationships you may have forgotten!
Things to Keep in Mind
Here are some important things to note about Facebook’s Friendship Page:
- It only tracks friends who have added you back. One-sided friend requests don’t show up.
- Your friendship network needs to have some history for this page to be useful. If you just joined Facebook, you won’t see much.
- You can only view your own friendship history, not those of your friends.
- The Friendship Page is private – others can’t search and see your friendship timeline.
- Facebook may delete older friendship data over time, so it may not go back to the very beginning.
- Facebook friendship data isn’t always 100% accurate. Occasionally dates can be wrong.
Troubleshooting When Friendships Don’t Show Up
In some cases, Facebook friendships you know you have may not show up on your Friendship Page. Here are some common reasons why a friend may be missing:
- They haven’t accepted your friend request yet.
- They removed you as a friend.
- They blocked you.
- Your account or their account was temporarily deactivated.
- One of you has privacy settings hiding friend lists.
- It’s simply a data error on Facebook’s end.
If you’re certain you’re still Facebook friends with someone but they aren’t appearing, try the following troubleshooting steps:
- Have them double check that they still have you added as a friend.
- Go to your main Friends page and search for their name to confirm you are still connected.
- Check that neither of you have friend list visibility limited in your privacy settings.
- Ask them to add you as a friend again. This will reset the friendship date.
- Report the issue to Facebook as a bug if it persists.
How to Edit or Remove Friendship Info
For privacy reasons, Facebook doesn’t allow users to manually edit or delete data from the Friendship Page. However, there are a couple of options if you need to modify your friendship history:
- Remove a friend – You can unfriend or block anyone and they will be deleted from your friendship timeline. This is permanent though.
- Change friendship date – Have the friend remove and re-add you to reset the friendship date to current time.
- Remove relationship info – Change your relationship status to blank. Past statuses will remain visible though.
Keep in mind that nothing can be fully erased from the Friendship Page though. Facebook keeps this data for internal analytics.
Downloading Your Facebook Friendship Data
If you want an offline copy of your Facebook friendship timeline and relationship history, you can download it:
- Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings.
- Click on “Your Facebook Information” in the left menu.
- Select “Download Your Information”.
- Choose date range and media types to download.
- Select “Friends” and “Relationship Info” to check those boxes.
- Click “Create File” to have Facebook compile and email you the download.
This ZIP file contains your full friendship page data, which you can save for personal records or analysis. However, keep in mind this reveals a lot of personal information to anyone who accesses the file.
Alternative Ways to Look Back on Facebook Friends
In addition to the official Friendship Page, there are a few other ways to take a nostalgic trip through your Facebook friends list:
- Look at your earliest Facebook posts and comments to see old interactions.
- Use the On This Day feature to resurface old memories.
- Install the Friendiversary app to highlight Facebook friendship anniversaries.
- Try out Wolfram Alpha’s Personal Analytics tool for social stats.
- Manually scroll through your full friends list to jog your memory.
Conclusion
Facebook’s Friendship Page offers a unique way to look back on the evolution of your Facebook friendships, relationships, and network over time. As you go through your history, it can be nostalgic and interesting to see friendships fade or last for years, relationships come and go, and watch how your social circles changed shapes. Just keep in mind the data may not be 100% comprehensive or accurate. But overall the Friendship Page is a great retrospective tool if you’ve been on Facebook for many years.