Is Facebook Causing Us To Cheat?
Social networking puts infidelity at our fingertips. Here's how to guard against the Facebook lure.
Since starting a psychotherapy practice 15 years ago, I've witnessed three basic waves of technology-based infidelity.
Back in the '90s, my clients generally discovered infidelity when opening their partner's cell phone bill. The story was pretty much the same for all of these clients: they would see countless calls to the same number, dial it up and find themselves speaking with the object of their partner's indiscretions. Then came email, the second wave of technology-assisted infidelity. These stories began to emerge in the late '90s. Suspicious partners would log in to their partner's email account and find plentiful evidence of extra-relational activities, if not outright proof of cheating. Watch: Do you snoop on his email?
The third wave began to break in late 2007, when Facebook expanded beyond its origins on college campuses. Facebook infidelity is insidious, and it differs from other technology-facilitated cheating because it begins in apparent innocence. Indeed, Facebook serves as a platform for communication that can lead, almost accidentally, to infidelity. For the most part, Facebook relationship rifts are not about clear-cut physical affairs. Instead, they are about lingering on fidelity's edge. Facebook infidelity begins when the technology, and the relationship that it enables, take too much of someone's emotional energy. Facebook Causes Romantic Jealousy
Recently, one of my clients, a 31-year-old mother of two, complained, "My husband is on Facebook all day! He has more than 500 friends! Who are these people anyway? At this point it's official, I'm a full-fledged Facebook Widow. Help!"
I have heard this term now—"Facebook Widow" (or, less frequently, "Facebook Widower")—more times than I can count. In fact, it is fast becoming one of the most common issues to surface among my therapy clients.
In most relationships, it seems that one partner Facebooks and the other doesn't. Or, if both partners are on Facebook, one has hundreds of friends and spends a good deal of time Facebooking, while the other never gets around to changing their bald, alien-head profile image. One gets hooked; the other doesn't. Watch: Facebook Manners And You
Facebook relationship troubles start out innocently. The Facebooker may join for professional reasons, or because they have received numerous invitations from friends. Before long, however, couples are fighting about who has more ex-lovers as "friends," who friended whom ("I forget" being the most common answer to this all-important question), and why people mention certain tidbits on their status updates that they don't bother to mention to their partner.
Discussion
Hubby's been adding more & more "friends" on his FB account and says everyone of them works w/him in their company... So, I asked him, if there are 3,000 co-workers in the company, will he be adding all of them in his facebook? And he said, ' what's wrong w/ adding more people as my friend? Well, he doesn't know everyone so how come you keep adding "friends of friends" then? Now, I've been adding people whom I don't know as well, even kept responding to anonymous friend request but that's it. And I thought it's just good, clean fun, nothing serious really.
Well last time I looked..FACEBOOK has a setting to say your status: Single, married, etc. It also has the option to say what you are there for MEN, WOMEN, RELATIONSHIPS, NETWORKING, BUSINESS, ETC.
SO be smart and choose. REMEMBER - You get back what you put out there.
My husband gets irriated if I spend large amounts of time on the computer, whether it's Facebook or MySpace or reading the papers or what have you. Not because he thinks I'm going to cheat, but because it takes away from our time together. Add that to the fact that I am a stay-at-home wife, while he works. When we just discussed this article, he said that sometimes he wishes instead of having to go to work all day, he could stay at home and talk to friends on the computer, or play games, etc. I love my husband. I am not going to cheat on him.....not through Facebook, MySpace or real life. Cheating on your spouse is for people who are missing something from their marriage. I am not lacking in any area. I have a great husband who loves me. We have a cute little apartment. We have great kids and an awesome grandson. I have a great family and a wonderful set of in-laws. I am so well and truly blessed in my life, that I cannot imagine, not for a SECOND, throwing that all away by having an affair. Physical or emotional, Cyber or Real Life.
There a numerous avenues if one want to cheat can do so.I certainly do do not believe that is the purpose facebook is offering.Cheating is about the mind-set and so far as anybody want s to do that, there are certainly various means to do it. Facebook can be a means but certainly not the cause.
I'm not convinced cell phones and e-mail make it easier to cheat. Cell phones are more portable, but most couples spend the day apart from each other and have no idea who their sweetie is calling. Land line phones don't produce reports on who you called, so long as it's a local call.
With Postal Service mail, your sweetie might get it first and see that you got a letter, but you could try to be the one who gets the mail or have letters sent elsewhere. With e-mail, it's on your computer and it's less obvious if someone has reads your mail. It also seems to me that people feel less hesitation to go in and read someone's e-mail, maybe because it's right there when you use the computer.
With Facebook, the problem seems to be more spending too much time on it. That could happen with all kinds of computer applications. And if it does allow flirting, it's pretty public flirting that you sweetie could see, unlike real life flirting.
facebook (and myspace) allow for private messages as well as the public posts. They make it easier for people to find you as well. I don't know that cell phones make cheating easier (I wouldn't use a cell phone to cheat, because of records), though email certainly can. It takes nothing to set up an account that your sweetie knows nothing about, and use that.
I am having trouble with the causal relationship between Facebook and infidelity. In my view, the reasons one would seek the comfort of another in the first place are more important. Facebook can certainly be vehicle for infidelity but so can the workplace, the gym etc. So I don't agree with the claim here,
i don't believe elisabeth is making a case for cause and effect--she has does a great job of framing the potential for communication breakdown that can occur in a relationship when one partner is spending enormous amounts of time and energy on social networks. that breakdown in communication may lead to infidelity on multiple levels. FB and other networks are clearly important and here to stay-but caveat emptor.
Thanks for that last bit, I enjoy finding new terms I didn't know before!
I agree that her basic approach is a really good one, the basic principles of which can be used towards many types of marital issues. My issue comes more from what I tend to see as a "sensationalistic" approach. Communication breakdowns can occur when one partner is spending enormous amounts of time and energy on almost anything other than the relationship. Right now, social networks are just the flavor of the moment. The next big tech surge will probably show many of the same problems as the social networks now.
I know the "hook" is what grabs attention so that the article gets read, and giving infidelity the face of something easily recognizable makes it that much easier to get a basic point across to a mass audience...its just something I've never cottoned to. But if it helps people out with their relationships, I'm pretty much for it!
I'll agree that social networking sites like FB provide opportunity, but they are not a cause. The issues that Elisabeth brings up aren't symptomatic of using FB...using FB for these purposes is symptomatic of other issues in the individual and/or the relationship.
New forms of media have always gotten a bum wrap through out history. Every new form. Ancient greeks foretold the onset people who won't be as well educated because of the creation of the written alphabet! Books at one point where seen as a threat to teaching through story telling, movies and tv as a threat to reading books, and now social networking as a threat to real time relationships.
True, Elisabeth never really comes out and says that FB usage causes infidelity, just that it is a new way to act it out, to let it happen. Doesn't mean that FB on the whole is a bad thing. That would be kind of like saying that all movies should be banned because they promote pornography. Film can be many things, just as social networking sites can be. Jus because a few people have chosen to use for the dark side doesn't mean that the entire thing is bad.
Ok, in a way I think it is. Not only Facebook, but their is lots of others out there that is in this too. For example, I am on that site and some others that some friends and I joined just to past pics and talk. Under my name in big letters it tells everyone I'm married. Do you have any idea how many guys hit on me? How many ask if I want to go to a movie or just meet for coffee? Yes I agree that is you are going to cheat then you will cheat. I think lots of these guys come onto this site looking for women who are married to see if they can pick them up. There is lots of lonely married women out there. Lots of married men who are unhappy with parts of their marriage. Or some reason they are together but not in love anymore. So, yes I think that Facebook and some of the others are helping in affairs. Not that they are in it for that, but yes it helps. How else can you meet so many women? And men?
Facebook isn't CAUSING people to cheat. If someone's not going to cheat, then they won't cheat, facebook or not. If they are, the they will, Facebook or not. It may provide an opportunity, but so do bars (so does WORK). None of them CAUSE cheating
You said it, sister!!! Cheaters are cheaters...it has nothing to do with Facebook, myspace or anything else online...that's an insecure person's excuse.
