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Recently, a growing number of women have been declaring their relationship status by posting photos of their partners without ever revealing their faces. Whether it’s a close-up of a hand, a foot, or the back of someone walking away, the identity remains hidden.
“Hiding a partner’s identity can absolutely be a sign that someone isn’t fully available. It might indicate they aren’t fully invested in the relationship or that they don’t view their partner as someone of significant importance,” Bree Jenkins, a licensed marriage and family therapist, dating coach and relationship expert, told MadameNoire.
When I started dating my husband nearly 10 years ago, we made it social media official after four months of dating with a photo of us snuggled up at the park—a clear signal we were taken. Today, a gesture like that can take years for couples to make and I don’t understand why.
Soft launch or red flag? When privacy starts to look like secrecy
Bree Jenkins, a licensed marriage and family therapist, is skeptical about relationships where a partner’s identity is hidden. Source: Bree Jenkins
Jenkins, the relationship guru based in California, believes hiding your partner on social media could be a red flag.
“I find there’s a strong psychological correlation between secrecy on social media and issues like cheating, emotional unavailability, insecurity, and shaky commitment levels,” Jenkins said.
This intentional tactic has raised concerns among relationship experts. They suggest it may signal deeper issues and could even be a red flag about the health of the relationship.
A survey, conducted by Datingadvice.com, found that 38% of millennials and Gen Zers prefer soft-launching relationships, 17% favor hard-launching, and 45% said they don’t share their relationship at all online or don’t have social media.
“In many cases, people who are married or in committed relationships but are pursuing situationships or side pieces will hide their partner on social media,” Jenkins said. “This creates a false sense of honesty, such as ‘I never said I was single,’ while still maintaining secrecy. It’s a way to avoid full transparency and manipulate perception by taking advantage of the gray area created by that secrecy.”
I always found it intriguing how people are comfortable enough to post detailed content about their entire lives, such as occupations, house tours, trip itineraries, and everything you can think of except their partner’s face.
“Concerning behaviors include consistently removing tags, refusing to share mutual photos, or going to great lengths to hide a partner while publicly documenting events, vacations, or special moments they share,” Jenkins confessed.
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