Love Island 2018: Why do couples ‘make it official’ and what does it mean?

Does it make a difference?

Love Island fans rejoiced on Sunday evening when fan favourites Jack Fincham and Dani Dyer officially became a couple.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the popular duo were already "a couple", given that they’ve been sharing a bed and copious kisses for three weeks as partners on the ITV2 series.

However, today’s dating scene is nothing if not dependent on rhetoric, the general consensus being that until you have both agreed that you’re “official”, use of boyfriend/girlfriend labelling is strictly off-limits.

Before this pivotal moment occurs, you're simply adrift in ambiguity and are either "dating" or "seeing each other".

Sunday’s episode proved that even reality TV stars aren’t immune from such lexical parameters.

The concept of “making it official” might be a hangover from our youth, but it remains of the utmost importance to some and is considered to be the pinnacle of relationship nirvana, giving you and your partner a stamp of societal approval.

This is odd for a number of reasons.

Firstly, unless you have a thing for lexical quirks, most people would only refer to someone as their boyfriend or girlfriend in the third person i.e. when you are speaking about them to another person.

Obviously, it’s a far more appropriate and conventional term than an avant-garde alternative (“lover”, “adult sleepover friend”, “special buddy”) but it’s really just a point of reference used to vindicate your relationship to other people and usually bears no behavioural significance within a couple, official or otherwise.

"’Making it official’ is all about reassurance,” explains dating coach James Preece.

“Once you are officially together you can announce it to the world and update your Facebook status.”

After you've promptly alerted the world that you are now "in a relationship" and are no longer "single", the next logical step is to showcase your relationship bliss on Instagram.

Typically, this can be expressed via a "candid" couples selfie captioned “James and Lucy have been a koople for three months”.

Cue a slew of hand-clapping emojis.

As if the social media validation wasn't Black Mirror enough, the actual process of “making it official” can also be a little jarring.

For example, who asks who? How do you go about it? And is there a way for a self-respecting adult man to say “will you be my girlfriend?” to someone they’ve been with for several months without sounding like a sex-starved prepubescent teenager?

The truth is that for the majority of couples, having “the conversation” about becoming official is an unnecessary hoop we've been conditioned to feel we need to jump in order to please other people - and to imitate the happy coupled-up characters in Richard Curtis films.

Unless you take it as an opportunity to start investing in couples memorabilia - his and hers mugs, for example - being official is unlikely to change anything in your relationship and some couples can go years without ever actually "asking each other out" like tweenyboppers in an episode of One Tree Hill.

Although, Preece adds that it can be useful in terms of establishing exclusivity.

“Saying you’re ‘official’ is saying ‘hands off they are mine’,” he tells The Independent.

“This is especially important at a time when people are initially dating several people at once.

“You are both stating you are ready to commit and focus on each other completely. Not much will change, but you may feel more secure in your relationship.”