We came home with 39 good pictures of ourselves as a couple. A woman walking her dog had even stopped to help take them. My boyfriend and I sat at my house choosing the best ones to post. By that night, mine were on Instagram. A week later, his contribution to the public exhibition was still pending.
I met him in June, and we started going out in July. On October 3, on our fifth date, he asked me to be his girlfriend. That felt fast to me. I prefer taking my time, but I liked him and worried that saying it was too soon might mean losing him. So I agreed, even though my own preferred pace had not quite caught up.
Then I suggested a Facebook post and putting each other’s names in our relationship statuses. I wanted to see whether he was serious. It was a little test dressed as a happy announcement, which is probably more emotional administration than a new relationship needs. He went along with it.
A couple of days later, he took the post down. He left the relationship status, including my name, in place. That detail matters: he had removed a post, not erased every public sign that I existed. Still, I noticed the missing part much more than the part he kept.
The pictures in that first post were separate ones placed side by side, and mine was mostly hair. He had mentioned that we should take a picture together first. I thought perhaps the original arrangement had been the problem. Fair enough. A relationship announcement ought to offer some evidence of the people involved, beyond a promising quantity of hair.
Over the following weeks, I focused on getting pictures with him down by the river. Last weekend, we finally did it. There were 39 that I really liked, and we chose favorites together afterward. We had options, and even a volunteer photographer’s assistance.
I posted because I was excited. I liked seeing us together, and I thought I might have found someone better suited to me than my past partners. People said we made a nice couple. He said so too. There was something lovely about having pictures that matched how hopeful I felt, rather than trying to assemble us from two unrelated portraits.
He asked what people had said about the pictures. I told him they were supportive, then asked outright whether he would post any himself. His response was “haha nice,” which did not give me much to work with. After that, he said he should post and told me to tag him in mine.
Tagging him would put his name on my enthusiasm. What I wanted was a small sign of his own. I know those can look almost identical from the outside, but one means I did the posting and the other means he chose to. Asking for that choice also makes me uneasy: I want the gesture, without having to manage it into existence.
We have been officially together for about a month. His relationship status is still there, and I don’t know why the pictures aren’t. He might attach less importance to posting than I do; the missing post alone cannot tell me how he feels. For now, I have his invitation to tag him, and I still want him to pick a picture himself.
