It became a bigger deal with the rise of social media. There are pretty rabid dfans (particularly of the women) who hound this type of info and then send tons upon tons of mail, email, tweets, facebook messages about it to WWE. Wanting it in storylines etc. It had become a legitimate issue within WWE administration.
Then there was Lana utilizing it by airing her engagement to Rusev to get out of the breakup angle they were running on TV at the time. That pissed Vince off, and this in turn was fueled by Vince's history of trying to break up couples he feels don't belong (aka, guy gets girl Vince feels is too hot for him) which was what motivated Lana to out her engagement to begin with.
There's a decree now backstage to keep any relationships quiet unless they are already out there in the open. Zack Ryder and Emma have stopped posting pictures of one another or possibly even broken up. And Vince put Carmella and Big Cass on separate brands just to avoid any of this relationship stuff.
It is a fucking mess
That genuinely just sounds like a complete cluster. I appreciate you shedding some light on it since I didn't know it had gotten to that point, but jeez. Those people clearly have no lives. They should be able to keep the two separate and differentiate between them without expecting any personal relationships to carry over to their TV sets.
Although, that kind of makes me respect Lana to a degree, honestly. Good on her.
I hate for them that Vince is taking it to that extreme. It seems they could just ignore the ignorant masses, let people have whatever relationships they choose, and continue on doing whatever works for storylines and TV. With all the travel and everything else, I could see it being difficult at best for the wrestlers to maintain much in the way of personal relationships outside of the people they work with, so of course those relationships are bound to happen. Sometimes it's good to listen to the fans, but to me this is not one of those times or scenarios. They should just stay out of their private lives. I know with social media that's impossible, but I mean from the standpoint of "who cares?" and let them do what they want on their own time.