Relationship status.

I've got a boyfriend.

After quite a bit of thinking (and a little hesitation) on my part, and lots of persistence on his, we have decided to make a go of this. It's nice. He's so different to me - which perhaps was a part of my hesitance - but the important thing is his kindness. He's cute, a good hugger, and he holds my hand in public.

Dating in the digital age - even if the dates were a result of online dating - is so strange. Everything becomes so public. While I'm a blogger and do share so much of myself with the world, I also realised just what a private person I am. Blogging doesn't mean I share everything, but it does mean that truth is concrete when it's written down. I've been used to being in control of what I share about myself online - how my life online is curated, I suppose - and so I didn't feel comfortable being tagged on Facebook after our second date. It was a little suffocating. Especially when I am so independent and I was not entirely sure of my feelings.

Curation of our digital spaces means we often share what we are proud of and happy about in our lives. Sometimes we can be too quick to reveal something - explicitly or through subtext - though our social media statuses. Regrets, luckily I've only had a couple. And sometimes, sharing something about ourselves online can make someone else uncomfortable, especially if that person is either not a big social media user or has prominence on social media.

A big part of my hesitation was about my tendency to fall for people through words alone - and especially words on a screen. His words have been very few, and I needed to be shown feelings, rather than just have them written to me.

I didn't even know whether I'd blog about this. What would it prove? is it too soon? Would it set things up for failure? Is it an invasion of his privacy? (I've spoken to him about my blogging and the permission I seek to write about people in my life - he's ok with it.) When I was younger, I imagined when I did get a boyfriend, I'd sign-write it in the sky. I thought I had something to prove. Now I know I don't have to prove my worth to anyone, and I've also found myself with a bit of a public online persona, careful of what I project. So my words here are measured.

There's a sense of pride in finding someone that you like or love. There's also a sense of pride from protecting it from the world. That changing your relationship status on Facebook, it just seems so public. But so is holding hands, isn't it?

(We've been doing some fun stuff on our dates, and yesterday we saw some animals at the Collingwood Children's Farm. Here he is with a tiny baby goat. Nawww!)