In other to keep your relationship private this days, one needs to adopt the virtue of discipline.
We live in a society where personal life has turned to become boring and outdated, if it is not shared on social media. A world where people are so keen in creating content with their personal lives, not minding the risk associated with it.
A society where couples are more interested in faking a happily married home online , than actually working on their marriage to achieve a real one.
Living to impress the public and seek for their validation has suddenly turned to a norm, hence the reason why people rarely keep their relationship private.
The issue of keeping a relationship private comes with some kind of controversies. Some folks have this assumption that a relationship which is kept private, is not genuine, but rather the partner who intends to keep it private have a skeleton in his or her cupboard. I’ve seen couples fight and argue over the issue of keeping a relationship away from the public. Some have this assertion that their partner ain’t proud of them or probably have someone else, hence the reason why they don’t love showing them off to the public. But this is a wrong mindset.
Before you get into conclusion. Understand that there’s a difference between keeping a relationship private and keeping a relationship secret.
When you keep your relationship private, you’re jealously guiding it and protecting it from public validations. You’re securing it like a personal property you can’t afford to loose carelessly. People around you or close to you may know you’re in a relationship, but you don’t need to go about broadcasting it to the whole world. It’s just like achieving a success. Probably a completed project, and then you call people around you to celebrate with you and share your joy with you. In this scenario, you’ve made your success known to people, it’s no longer a secret, nether has it been publicized. You just shared it within your circle, showing that you’ve kept it private.
On the contrary, a secret relationship is one in which deceit and lies is the order of the day. In secret relationship,call logs are deleted, status are hidden from your partner, you can’t introduce them to people around you as your significant other, or friends because you have lots of skeletons on your cupboard.
People who keep their relationship secret are not necessarily people who don’t want publicity, but people who cheat on their partners or have other ulterior motives of being with their partner aside long time commitment.
In other words, before you argue with your partner over not being proud of you, you need to find out first if they are really hiding you or value their privacy. So how can you differentiate between a secret relationship and a private one?
Secret relationship versus private one.
Observe the life style of your partner.
There are people who love being on a low key, everything about their personality including their achievement, financial status and family are concealed and unknown to the public.
This is just who they are, they see it weird and unnecessary bringing every details about their life to the public, and their relationship is not an exception too. and most times, they have valid reasons for this, especially if they’ve had a bad experience in the past after sharing their personal lives on social media.
Such people can be in a relationship for several years, yet you won’t know, until they make it official by inviting their friends to their wedding. If you’re dating someone who doesn’t publicize their life style, be rest assured that your relationship will likely be the same. When you understand their personality, you”ll know they ain’t making your relationship secret, but simply keeping it low and simple.
Find out about their past relationships.
Have they been publicizing their relationship on social media, and then suddenly went low on yours. Chances are that they are making yours a secret.
Though there could be an exception to this. Change is the only constant thing in life, they might have realized the cons associated with relationship publicity and may have decided to turn to a new leaf by putting an end to it.
However, the only way to spot the real truth is to watch their behaviour with others. Do they show off others and had decided to keep you secret? Do they celebrate others on special occasions? but not you, If that is the case, then it might no longer be the case of keeping their life style on a low key.
So why should you keep your relationship private? Here are some of the reasons.
Reasons why you should keep your relationship private.
To avoid curiosity.
We live in a society where most people are curios to understand every details about your life, especially when you’ve flashed a little information to them. Curiosity itself is a human trait. With the tiniest information, we are always eager to know more.
As soon as you change your relationship status from “single”to in a “Relationship”. and then post it to the public, you’ve stirred up the curiosity in people. With their congratulatory messages, They will definitely be curios to know about its end. Not every relationship will lead to marriage, what if it eventually leads to break up? How will you face the public, especially those who are either anticipating for a blissful end or those envious of you and who actually desired it that way. This is why you need to keep a relationship private till you’re certain of its future.
To reduce societal pressures.
To keep your relationship private, entails reducing pressure and possibly overcoming depression due to delay in marriage . As soon as you inform people you’re in a relationship, expectation rises, and pressure becomes intense. You have to get ready to keep replying to the question. When are you getting married, when will you finally settle down? We are expecting an invitation soon. In as much as being in a relationship marks the first step towards finding ones soul mate, one still need to take his or her time before venturing into marriage.
Dating is like a rehearsal. You’re still in the learning phase, trying to know if it will progress to the next stage. Anything can happen at this period, there is a possibility of discovering certain incompatibilities, which might lead to lack of interest. This is why you should keep your relationship private so you wouldn’t succumb to the pressures of marrying someone you can’t cope with, in other to impress people.
To avoid public validations.
Social media has a positive impacts as well as negative impacts to relationships today. The negative impacts these days seems to outweigh it’s positive impacts as a result of couples focusing more on public stunts than working together to enhance their relationship.
There are so many toxic advises online. People with failed relationships and marriage are determined to destroy more happy relationships to ensure that others falls into the same category with them.
Unfortunately, most people find it difficult to filter out these toxic advises from the real one. They ingest everything they read online, causing more harm to their relationships. There are feminine pages created to negatively influence the mind of women from working on their relationships and marriages. Any little misunderstanding is usually followed by break up and divorce, even when it can be worked out. People can’t ruin what they don’t know, when you keep it private, it becomes unpredictable. Thereby ruling out every possibility of terminating the excitement.
To avoid third party interference.
You need to keep your relationship private in other resist the temptations of always reaching out to friends for complaint over an issue which can be settled amicably.
You don’t have to invite a third party every now and then. If both parties can’t handle their relationship misunderstandings while still dating, it will become disastrous in marriage. Learning how to handle your relationship/marital issues alone is an emotional maturity every couples needs to adopt. And it have to start by keeping your relationship off the public, to avoid unnecessary interference.
To foster more understanding.
Did you notice that a lot of marriages are in shambles today because both couples are not ready to work out their differences? They feel reluctant discovering the root cause of their problem in other to tackle it or find solutions to it. But rather invest their energy in putting up content to give the public a false impression about themselves.
When couples have their priority in building a healthy relationship.
They will focus more on having a better understanding about themselves, working on their compatibility levels to achieve their family goals.
To avoid insecurity.
If you can keep your relationship private, you’ve solved some relationship issues common to most relationship these days.
Before the invention of internet, relationships thrived well. People were sincere, there was trust and transparency among people.
Sadly, reverse is the case these days. Internet and social media has negatively influenced lots of relationships.
The rate of insecurity is alarming. Questions like where are you? What are you doing? Who are you chatting with seems to be the order of the day.
Once you’re not taking your calls, it is assumed that you’re cheating, once you’re not replying to your chats, they will assume you’re busy with another. But this shouldn’t be the case, if relationships publicity were minimized.
To avoid unnecessary competitions and comparisons.
Putting up fake life has suddenly become the norm today. A lot of relationship only thrive well on social media, while in reality, it is nothing to write home about. Such public stunts can put one into pressures of trying to meet up with other people’s standard thereby diverting their attention towards working out their relationship for real.
To adhere to this point, you have to watch your circle too. Be mindful of people you mingle with. When you’re always with people who show off their relationship every now and then, you will be tempted to do so. Which will stir up unnecessary competitions and comparisons. You may start comparing your partner’s with them, how their partners treat them versus how you’re treated without realizing that they are all fake.
Sometimes, your relationship might actually be doing better than theirs, but because they are displaying the script they want the public to view, you will always assume that the grass is greener at the other side.
