Weinergate: 5 Ways To Avoid Being A "Weiner" In Your Relationship

What do you get when a high profile Congressman named Weiner gets caught sending a picture of his junk via Twitter? The funniest story of the year, filled with endless one-liners, countless double entendres and hilarious unintended puns that naturally come up in the news reports.

And everyone is getting in on the action. It’s as if the inner 10-year old boy is being awakened in people, girls included. But the real lessons to be learned from Weinergate are for the men, any and every man who uses social media.

Whether you’re married or single, here are five lessons to learn from Rep. Anthony Weiner about online relationships.

1) Keep Your Junk in Your Trunks (and no pics please) – At his mea culpa news conference, after ten days of lying about pictures and posts on Twitter, Rep. Weiner finally broke down and confessed, "This was me doing a dumb thing, doing it repeatedly, and lying about it." Set up guard rails to protect yourself and your relationships, create some healthy boundaries with what you will and won’t do online, and in all cases, use common sense. Avoid the inevitable embarrassment that comes from getting exposed, don’t do anything that would bring shame to you or your loved ones.

2) Stop or You’ll Find Yourself in a Real Pickle – If you’re caught up in sexting one, two or six women… STOP! Whatever is typed, texted, posted or emailed never fully goes away. Your tweets, texts, emails and posts can and will resurface. And what do they reveal? A desperate guy chasing after a series of internal chemicals activated by a combination of taboo sexual excitement, a sense of pseudo-anonymity and the risk of getting caught. If you’re doing anything using technology that crosses a moral line (either for you or a loved one), then it’s not worth doing. Stop!

3) Lie About It and You Will Get Roasted – A missing keystroke (the letter “d”) exposed one man’s lying ways to the whole world in a millisecond. But Weiner’s pride, cockiness and fear blew this below-the-fold, buried on page 13 news article into a full-blown, headline story on the front page of the world’s most popular newspapers (not to mention bazillions of tweets and Facebook updates and blog posts). If you’re doing something you shouldn’t via phone, computer or online site…and you get caught…man up, take full responsibility for your actions, and make changes to make things right.

4) Claiming that It is Not Cheating is Bologna - Rep. Weiner admits that he didn’t have physical relations with any of the women. His connections with the women were through shared messages, photos and chat sessions. And while some say this doesn’t count as cheating, based on the amount of apologies he made to his wife during the press conference says something different. If you’re online and connecting emotionally and/or sensually with someone other than your wife or significant other, it’s a betrayal of your commitment for exclusivity and fidelity. Sorry to be such a buzz-kill, but it’s cheating. Deal with it!