If you are "committed", why would your status be "single" or otherwise-- something fishy huh?

"Tell you later" ? jeez, yeah YOU want to try ME and see if WE click-- you will tell me later, I was the one YOU were looking for and that you were never committed to your previous relationship?

"It's complicated" ? You've been hitting her/him for a while with little or no success?

"Married" ? Gosh you're only 18, how on today's earth is that even possible? Tired of gazillion requests of road-side Romeos/Juliets?

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The 22-year-old University of North Texas senior received a Facebook request from her new beau after a kiss.

"We didn't talk about it, then we kissed and then that night he sent me that request," on Facebook, she said. "Without discussing it. I was like, 'Oh, OK, I guess.'"

Shinn is one of more than 67 million Facebook users. The social networking Web site has redefined privacy online by allowing users to create profiles with photos, quotes, personal information and relationship statuses.

Facebook users list themselves as single, in a relationship, married, engaged, in an open relationship or to say "It's complicated."

In order to be listed online as a couple, both people have to agree to the designation.

For many college students, a new relationship isn't real until it's on Facebook.

It sometimes seems users' relationship statuses change just about every time you log on to the Web site.

Thanks to the main page's "news feed," which keeps tabs on everyone a user has listed as a friend, users can see every change their friends have made to their account, including up-to-the-minute reports on whether couples are still together.

Little red broken hearts appear next to a user's name if he or she recently went from "in a relationship" to "single."

Chris Neal, 20, a sophomore at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, said listing relationships online solidifies the commitment.

When it's listed on Facebook "it's public knowledge," he said. "Guys won't try to come get with a girl in a relationship and girls won't come to get with a guy. It's like marking your territory."

Neal, along with Taikein Cooper, 19, a fellow sophomore at the UNC-Chapel Hill, started the Facebook group "If your relationship isn't listed on Facebook...it doesn't count!" almost a year ago as an inside joke.

The group has almost 700 online members, most of whom agree with the statement, Neal said.

"You got a Facebook and it's not on there, then it's not official," he said.

Cooper echoes: "If you want him or her to be exclusive then you need to put it out there."

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Matt Pestinger, 18, started his group, "Your relationship doesn't count unless it's posted on Facebook," as a commentary on today's world, he said in an e-mail.

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