So you’re in the beginning stages of your relationship, and you can’t wait to tell everyone how happy you are and introduce your relationship to the world. But there’s always the possibility of you breaking up during the honeymoon stage. And let’s face it: there’s nothing more awkward than clearing out your cutesy couple photos on IG after a breakup. That’s why you should introduce the soft launch!
A soft launch is basically posting a low-key photo of your relationship, dropping hints on social media that you’re off the market without completely showing off your partner or your relationship. It’s both making your relationship public but private at the same time.
Why You Should Soft Launch Your Relationship
New romantic relationships sometimes come with serious feelings and insecurities. Even if your relationship seems stable in the beginning, telling others about your it still requires some form of trust. Sure, you want people to know that you’re in a relationship with someone – but there’s always that lingering doubt of whether you guys would actually last, and that’s totally normal!
Aside from keeping your relationship relatively private until you’re ready to share it to the world, soft launching also takes the pressure off your relationship. Thrusting your relationship into the spotlight can be a lot to handle, and it adds another layer to the relationship. Hiding your partner’s identity eliminates that problem. Besides, soft launches are fun, it’s a way for you to build the suspense on your relationship, as if you’re dropping Easter eggs for your followers to see.
How To Soft Launch Your Relationship
It’s important to feel out the relationship for a while before posting it to the internet. You don’t HAVE to wait for some weeks or months to share it on Instagram, but it’s not a bad idea. The beginning of a relationship is beautiful, yet fragile, and it has no place on the internet. The timing will vary with each couple, but it should depend on when the relationship feels more solid.
At the core of it, a soft launch should be subtle. First things first – we’re all for the aesthetics. Take a bunch of artsy photos that imply you’re with someone, here are some ideas:
#1 The Dinner Date
#2 The Holding Hands
#3 The Mirror Selfie
Then, make your captions less subtle, which creates ambiguity, and it lets your followers know that the person in question is indeed your romantic partner. Yes, saying something lovey dovey online can feel awkward, and vulnerable, but just know that relationships are ALL about vulnerability, so it’s completely normal that you’d wanna share that sense of vulnerability with your friends online.
Let’s say a couple of months have gone by, and both of you are finally ready to go for the hard launch, a.k.a introducing your boo to everyone. This is when you can go wild, and post as many cute couple photos as you want. At this point, your followers will be excited to finally see who the mystery person is.
But of course, one of the good things about soft launches is that, if the relationship doesn’t work out, you can simply delete every “subtle couple” post you have and act like the relationship didn’t happen. Your followers probably wouldn’t know about it, or they wouldn’t know who to stalk to see exactly who you broke up with. See? Clean slate.
Being in a relationship in your twenties is hard enough – bringing it online just complicates things. A soft launch offers both partners in the relationship plausible deniability: If the relationship didn’t appear on the grid, was there ever a relationship?
