Yes! You have found love. You’re so excited about it. You can’t wait to flaunt them to your friends. You can’t wait to let your ex know that you weren’t a piece of good-for-nothing being after all. You want the whole world to know you’ve swept someone off their feet.

Before you do, take a moment to ask yourself some pertinent questions. Is it safe? If it is, to what extent? If the relationship doesn’t work, would you have the guts to come back and flaunt your next?

Undoubtedly, we live in a digital age. Most of us spend a chunk of our day on social media and the internet at large. Much as we can, however, we should be able to sieve our virtual lives from our real ones. As much as possible, we need privacy— particularly in our relationships— especially if we are yet to walk down the aisle.

Dating or courting is a prelude to marriage. However, not all of such relationships lead to marriage— sometimes for the good of both of you. For Christ’s sake, you wouldn’t want to be explaining to every Tom, Dick and Harry on your 5K friend list why you broke up with someone you had been flaunting all over social media. Trust me, it’s not only a chore but also such a psychological trauma!

For married people, sharing pictures and content about their families poses a security risk to everyone in those pictures. Anyone who wants to harm a couple could possibly harm their children or kin. For unmarried ones, it poses even more risk to the relationship, especially if it’s in its teething stages. You draw unusual attention to yourselves and an avoidable tension may mount therein.                                                                            

Keeping your relationship (which you’re expecting to lead to the altar) in the closet saves you from a lot of hell. When the unexpected happens, you’re able to manage better. Ensuring the privacy of a relationship doesn’t mean you’re hiding your spouse-to-be. You are just being mature about it.

Pay attention to these five tips on how to live your life openly on social media yet keep your love life private. 

Don’t ‘dear-future-wife/husband’ them!

You see, one boring way to announce that you’re single is to make posts of yourself with a #DearFutureWife or #DearFutureHusband hashtag subtly alerting the world of your expectations in marriage. Guess what. Another boring way to announce you’ve finally found your missing rib is to continually post their pictures with the same hashtag.

We all know you want them to be your future spouse but hey… nature has its plans, too, which unfortunately may be contrary to yours. Slow down.

Don’t add their names to yours already!

It’s interesting how love can sometimes make us take actions we think through only lightly. We all should love with our hearts even as we think with our heads!

Don’t start calling yourself a ‘Mrs.’ already on social media even when you both have not wedded yet. If you want to keep your relationship out of the eyes of social media, don’t change your account name into his. Possibly, don’t share your password details with them or even add their name to yours yet. You both haven’t walked down the aisle yet!

Besides, it’s your private account. Let it remain as such. Your profile picture should be only you; not you both. Your account name should be you; not you both.

Don’t be tagging him/her overly in/under every post!

Tagging a particular person in/under almost every post or comment raises eyebrows. Everyone wonders why it should always be them.

It’s OK if they are not really your ‘special one’. If they are, limit it. You draw unnecessary attention to both of you which makes people actually read between the lines.

If it’s his/her birthday, leave a simple message!

Everyone wonders why you’d celebrate a particular person’s birthday for over a week with sumptuous captions on their pictures all the time. It’s great for you to desire to honor the love of your life. However, keep it simple. Let it have no subliminal romantic tone. You can do all that in their inbox or tell them in their face.

Always remember you want to save the best wine of your relationship for the last. If you want that relationship to last indeed, keep it off social media! 

If it’s a picture of only you both, possibly don’t share!

In today’s age, people are quick to conclude who two people are in a picture. To save yourself from all the thousands of questions you’d have to answer from the social media community, just save that picture of you both for yourselves.

For a group picture of many others, you can always share. No one can really tell. Well, of course, unless they are wizards. Lol.

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The writer is a playwright and Chief Scribe of Scribe Communications, an Accra-based writing company (www.scribecommltd.com).