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Being newly single can be daunting – but there are a host of activities available to take the pain out of going it alone

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WHEN something good happens in your life, it's pretty common to want to shout it from the rooftops.

Whether it's a new job, having an offer accepted on a house or passing an exam, people tend to want to share it with the people who matter to them - and often those who don't.

A few years ago, I won a prize in a gardening competition. I didn't even come first but I was so pleased I told everyone from friends and family to passing acquaintances.

But do the same rules apply to a new relationship?

Do you want to tell the world, and is it a good idea?

Of course, a relationship is a bit different to, say, passing an exam.

After all, it's not guaranteed - just because it's going well at the moment doesn't mean it will even exist in a month's time.

Plus, it's not just your thing. While you might feel like telling everyone you've ever met about your lovely new man, he may not be so keen to share his personal life.

Nevertheless, some people do choose to tell the world about their relationship very early on. And thanks to social networking sites people can use the Internet to announce their new flame to the world, changing their relationship status to: Lisa is in a relationship with Mike' etc after a couple of dates, should both parties wish to do so.

Faith definitely puts herself in the "sharers" category.

She says: "I'm obscenely public with my relationship but then my boyfriend is, too. When we were first getting together I shared everything with my girlfriends. I have to say I loved every minute of it and I hope they did, too. I didn't tell everyone about it - like random strangers on the street - but I was pretty open.

But then he's very open, too, so I felt able to be that way. If he'd been hushhush then perhaps I'd have reined it in a bit.

"I have had relationships in the past where it's all secretive and while at the time it's all terribly exciting and us-against-the-world', once you go public, you can find that air of mutual secrecy was all that kept you together in the first place. If a relationship has to be kept secret it's generally for a reason, and that reason generally ain't a good one - i.e. because one of you is doing somet h i n g that actually, you shouldn't be doing."

Karen, however, prefers an air of secrecy in the early stages. She says: "I hate going public with a new beau. A private affair that becomes a public one seems to lose a degree of intimacy. Suddenly the relationship is not just ours its everyone's. Ultimately, people have to know but I try to prolong the honeymoon period as long as possible.

"I can't help gibbering excitedly about the man in question at every given opportunity but at the same time I doggedly downplay his role in my life as fleeting or temporary in a bid to convince myself I have the upper hand.

"Facebook announcements are cringe-worthy but useful for breakups.

If you have fallen into a relationship/ love the people that matter should come to know in the natural course of events and not through a social networking website. But it does handily negate the need to relive painful memories 100 times to different friends after a split."

May also likes to keep things quiet.

She says: "In my current relationship, my partner and I share a group of friends. We decided to keep quiet about our burgeoning relationship for the first few months as we didn't relish the prospect of being under the spotlight. This concealment involved some subterfuge and it wasn't long before our friends became suspicious. However, we turned deaf ears to all hints and innuendoes and managed to keep up the pretence until we actually set up home together.

"Our early period of pretence had its good and bad sides.

The bad was that I did not like being less than honest with my friends. The good being that, by the time we acknowledged our relationship, our friends had actually known about it for ages; therefore the novelty had worn off and we were spared the usual awkward moments that can arise when friends manage to put their feet in their mouths."

Personally, I think I fall somewhere between the two extremes. In the very early days, before a date has even been arranged or after one or two, I tend to share details with all and sundry as amusing anecdotes.

At this point, everything from the awkward kiss to the "why did I say that?" inappropriate comment can be repeated for amusement sake.

But as things get more serious, I tend to want to share less. My closest friends know pretty much everything but as I develop a relationship with a bloke it seems inappropriate to gossip wildly about him.

I guess, as Faith says, the important thing is that you and the man in question are both happy in the amount of information you're sharing. And while I think sharing every little detail is probably unwise, not to mention potentially tedious for your listeners, treating a relationship as if it was a dirty secret has got to be bad news.

2:59pm Wednesday 4th June 2008

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