Almost every single time I go online I (along with everybody else) find my timeline flooded with various photographs all having assortment of different subjects. Commonly posted is the all-too-familiar "couples' picture." I don't even have to describe it any further for you to know what I'm talking about; it's two people, they're so in love, and they want us all to know it. We've all seen them, we've all clicked "like", and almost all of us (including me) have posted something like it. I, personally, love seeing pictures of couples. I think that two people who are mutually in love with each other is a beautiful thing and I would never try to discourage anyone from expressing their feelings for their significant other to the world.

But when does it all get to be too much?

There is a fine line between posting occasional pictures together and having your relationship thrive solely off of plastering yourselves all over the internet. I had never really thought of this until a few weeks ago. I had been hanging out with two of my friends and somehow we'd found ourselves huddled together and scrolling through Instagram. After a few minutes my one friend had turned to me and said, "I'm looking through your profile. Why don't you have more pictures of you and your boyfriend?"

I looked at her, perplexed and unable to come up with an answer. I clicked to my own profile in an effort to understand her question and still, I could not understand what would cause her to ask me that. My boyfriend and I have been together for ten months, he's been a rather reserved and private guy since the day I met him so taking pictures isn't exactly his favorite past time. Still, he will always take pictures with me if I ask him to and we have about four or five up on my profile. Up until my friend's question I had thought that amount had been just fine.

I remember looking over the pictures of us together and asking my friend exactly what she meant.

"I don't know." She answered, "I mean, you've been together for almost a year. I feel like you would have posted more pictures of him by now."

I couldn't give her a reason. I could only shrug in response and tell her we just weren't the kind of people who posted a lot of things online that way. To my friend the question probably seemed like something simple and passing, but to me it really got me thinking about the way we rely on social media to not only fulfill our own selves, but even the relationships we have around us as well.

I know couples who have been together for over five years, are still just as in love as they were on day one, and only have one picture posted together. I also know couples who posted dozens of pictures online a month, and still found themselves so unhappy in their relationship that they had to end things. This isn't to say that private couples are happier couples because I have, in fact, seen people post hundreds of pictures with their significant others and find themselves to be just as in love (if not more in love) than they appear in the pictures they post. My point with any of these couples is that the fate of their relationship wasn't due to their posting count on Twitter or Instagram; the fate of their relationship depended solely upon them as people. Nobody knows what happens behind closed doors.

My mother and father met each other in the early 1990s, before even MySpace was launched. They married each other and ended up having three children together. They didn't need to feel a sense of purpose based on a number of likes and they certainly didn't need to feel like their relationship was "goals" to those around them. Couples took pictures for the love of it and the love of each other, not because they had thousands of followers they wanted to impress. Being reserved with certain aspects of your life wasn't strange then, so why is it so odd now?

I'm very proud to have my boyfriend and vice versa. If you ask any of my friends they can attest to this statement. He didn't become my best friend, partner in crime, and the one that I love because a picture of him and I on Instagram received sixty likes. Our relationship's foundation isn't based on how many people consider us "Couple Goals". We grow together, we have mutual respect for one another, and enjoy being together. Those things and more are the reasons why we are so happy with one another.

Whether you and your girlfriend or boyfriend have posted dozens of pictures or you haven't even gotten around to sharing one, remember that at the end of the day what really matters is how you feel when the phones are put away. Posting pictures is a wonderful way to make memories with the ones you love, but doing so will not make you feel any more content or in love than you already are, only the wonderful person by your side will be able to do that for you and so much more.