ALL UR FLINGS IZ BELONG TO Me. Via Bryan Veloso @ Flickr.
Are you using a social networking site? Is your significant other? Call your divorce lawyer now! According to an alarmist recent article from an Oklahoma news station:
Nearly half of all Americans use social networking site, but some counselors suggest that going online could be hazardous to marriages.
“We see about 40 percent of the couples coming in, there is a link to Facebook or to MySpace that has caused a breach in their marriage,” said licensed marriage and family therapist Tara Fritsch.
Apparently all those social networking sites facilitate your being in touch–or getting back in touch–with too many people–and therefore might lead to cheating hearts. Or wandering eyes. Or roaming vaginas.
The Edmond therapist said most connections start off innocently enough.
“An ex-love, an old flame — there’s a nostalgia there. There’s memory of the simple days or maybe excitement of new romance,” she said.
She’s not the only one who believes this. One of my girlfriends once kind of blew my mind last year by fuming over the fact that her (middle-aged, completely decent and faithful) boyfriend had a Facebook page. Many of his Facebook friends were women he went to college with, and she actually told me that looking at his friends list upset her because “if he’s in touch with them he’ll maybe see that they’re still attractive and maybe eventually he’ll decide he’d rather be with them.” Uh, maybe. Or maybe he’ll realize that he’s dating the kind of jealous control freak who feel threatened by his Facebook page. But maybe this therapist from Oklahoma would agree with her. Is having your significant other out there on the internet dangerous to your relationship?
Chris Rock once famously said of cheating: “A man is only as faithful as his options.” Which is simplistic and sexist and smacks of dudely privilege, but there’s a grain of truth there that applies to both sexes. Having choices does make it easier to choose a different situation, or partner. But cheating doesn’t occur–or very rarely occurs–completely spontaneously.
If your relationship is on the rocks, or emotionally estranged or just plain unfulfilling, you’re much more likely to cheat. No surprise there. But if you’re discontented and you have a wide circle of friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends…you’re a lot more likely to find someone to stray with.
The therapist in this article suggests keeping a tight watch on your spouse’s on-line networking:
Her recommendation is that couples set guidelines for using social networking sites.
“If it’s not something you want your spouse to know about, don’t do it. Have open communication with your spouse. Share your Facebook or MySpace sites. Have one another’s passwords. Talk regularly about who you are chatting with,” Fritsch said.
I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit. It’s appropriate to monitor your child’s on-line use. Not your partner’s. Adults in a relationship have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
In the past I’ve been friended with my boyfriends on Facebook, but I would never dream of asking for the password to their accounts, any more than I would expect to have access to their e-mail or text messages. And if they’d asked for access to my Facebook account, there would have been trouble. Sure, they might be using social networking–or e-mail or phone or text or fax or whatever–to facilitate cheating. But you can’t wall off your partner’s exposure to other people, or monitor their communications, and expect that your relationship will automatically be infidelity-proof. Blaming social networking is just an easy distraction from addressing the real causes of cheating.
I totally agree with you on the monitoring thing. You’re supposed to trust the person you’re sharing your life with. This seems like good advice, though:
“If it’s not something you want your spouse to know about, don’t do it.”
But it goes for most of life, not just life on the net. It applies equally to the conversation you have down the pub or that purchase you want to make, methinks.
I think it is 100% reasonable to be “friends” on facebook or myspace with your significant other, but having the password? Pretty unnecessary. A lot of people feel very threatened by these sites. Not only is there the problem of vanity involved in choosing your own profile picture, or pictures you’ll allow yourself to be tagged in, but there’s the added dimension of “oh dear if we’re In A Relationship or even if It’s Complicated (which slays me, btw) then her or his friends are going to click through and see me, I hope I measure up.”
I’m also not sure how many people have these problems. From my limited knowledge of Oklahoma sociogeography (a word? Is now!), Edmond is pretty ritzy, and there is a university there, so this therapist’s clientele may skew wealthy and young. The young part would correlate to higher levels of insecurity, I imagine, and if you’re economically stable I imagine you’re more likely to worry about facebook than if you have more immediate material problems.
What I find fascinating about articles like this is the “stay married at all costs” idea. If your relationship is on the rocks police each other’s accounts rather than seeking help or parting ways.
I look forward to the day when we get over the glorification of marriage rather than putting forth crazy (imho) ideas about how to stay in one.
Oh noes! I have a MySpace page, and my husband has a Facebook page! And we have friends with different naughty bits on them!
Looks like I have to go cancel my internet access! It’ll save my marriage for sure!
And if the only thing keeping you and your SO together is policing their Facebook account, wow, that’s a deeply committed relationship.
I’m not sure it’s entirely bullshit. I mean, we don’t have to give each other our passwords b/c both of us have them saved on our shared computer, but my husband and I have a strict policy of openness about our internet activities. My general rule of thumb is that I don’t want to give him a reason to be worried, because I love him, and he feels the same. When his ex-gf friended him on Facebook (he’s the only one of us who has any ex’s!) we had a talk about boundaries, and agreed that all communication should be on their “walls” and out in the open. He didn’t seem to think that was unreasonable, and I don’t see why it’s bullshit to keep things out there like that. We’re just not super nutty about privacy– my gmail and his yahoo are pretty much always logged in, so if I hop over to yahoo or he goes to google, we’re likely to see each other’s inboxes. NBD.
@funnyface: Sounds like you guys have a reasonable set-up, expectations out in the open, etc. I like when you post because I just get the freshness of your relationship, does that make any sense? I am an old road-weary chick who has been to hell and back with my ex (I should start my own blog) and I’ll never be able to go back to open, honest and trusting, and NBD!
In regards to Facebook accounts, I am off the grid, invisible to any searches, friends with only my close friends. I dont’ want to be contacted by my middle-school crush or my mother, for that matter. The guy I’m seeing isnt even on my friends list! He doesn’t ask. I don’t tell. Just as I believe in separate accounts for the rest of my life no matter what happens, I dont think I would ever put a boyfriend on my friends list. Perhaps I am a little overboard!
Kithkin, you’re spot on. I live in Edmond (born and raised), and the demographic here is extremely narrow. It took moving out of state for a few years for me to see how very narrow it is. But even in high school when the band or sports teams would play other schools, we all knew that we as a town had a reputation as snobs.
And you can add conservative and white to your assessment of young and wealthy. *sigh* This therapist’s words make me rage. How much privilege is wrapped up in that statement, anyway?! Disgusting. Other commenters said just what I was thinking regarding privacy and the need to be a part of a couple no matter what, so I’ll just go fume quietly.
In this case as with the Craigslist killer thing, obviously the technology is not the root of the problem and it is silly to say so, but I think it is fair to acknowledge that some people may have to sort of adjust our coping mechanisms to deal with new modes of communication.
Funnyface I also think it is pretty hard to maintain much internet privacy in my relationship unless I become a freak about my own privacy which, I just don’t have the energy for. But I would never intentionally seek out my partner’s online communications. I think sometimes people do that kind of open technology thing (you can check my texts, email etc at any time) AFTER there has been infidelity of some kind in order to help rebuild trust and help the philandering partner stop compartmentalizing their lives, and in that context, it makes sense for some people.
I do think that the internet can allow people to develop new sorts of intimacies and modes of communication with others that can take some negotiation just because it is relatively new and we don’t have sort of social scripts for it all. There are all kinds of variables, including the fact that people often feel free to say things online they would never say in person, because it feels “safe” and the other person is not physically there. The actual suggestions here do sound pretty silly to my ear and sensibilities, but I don’t think it is nuts that people have to sort it out with each other and make arrangements about it like anything else in a relationship. Obviously some couples’ “arrangements” about technology are insane and hyper-protective, but I tend to think that about all kinds of aspects of others’ relationships. To me it seems natural and pragmatic to think of concrete solutions for conflicts in relationships rather than necessarily parting ways. Isn’t this article the result of couples “seeking help?” I agree though is annoying that the article is so marriage-centered because it seems like these issues could come up in any relationship.
I’m thinking that this at least:
“If it’s not something you want your spouse to know about, don’t do it.”
Is a pretty good idea. I’ve always strived towards open door policies with everything in my relationships and doing that, being open and communicative, helps foster trust. Particularly if you’re someone who has been betrayed before.
I don’t share passwords with my partner, but I do tell him that if he asked, I would gladly show him any email or communication I’ve been having with anyone. He says the same thing. Strangely enough, just knowing that, I’ve never felt like I had to ask.
Re: the marriage-centeredness of the article, I wonder if that has to do with Edmond culture, too. Amanda would know better than me, but again, from my limited knowledge, people feel pressured to marry pretty young out there. Two young women from Edmond I can think of off the top of my head were seriously distraught to be almost 21 and have no proposal.
Requiring sharing passwords is downright creepy; it’s an invitation for your S.O. to snoop, and I’m not okay with that. It really bothers me that a therapist would suggest handing over passwords as a means of IMPROVING communication and trust. It smacks me as having the complete opposite effect.
I’ve left facebook comments while accidentally logged into my BF’s account and vice versa, but we don’t demand the other person hand over the key.
Is it possible that some of these couples’ lives are too wrapped up in social networking? Before I was on facebook, a friend of mine told me it’s like I “wasn’t a real person.” She was only half-kidding. After my wedding, other friends told us it wasn’t official until we changed our facebook status. Again, kidding, but… not entirely. It was like: say vows, cut cake, change status. If you’re very invested in facebook etc–or your partner is–I can see why online connections with exes would bother you. To which I say: log off facebook and go read a blog or something.
Spark, I definitely think some people have gone off the deep end re: Facebook. I have seen people change their status update whilst they’re in the middle of giving their kid a bath. People are more interested in documenting their lives than they are in living them.
And I can see young, immature people who are super obsessed with Facebook letting their online “lives” and personas get in the way of their spousal relationships.
this interests me as I don’t have a facebook account, nor does my husband, however I do have more than one password to various friend’s facebook accounts which allows me to spy on people i know in an entirely immoral fashion without ever having to go online and commit myself to being tracked on a social networking site.
Hmm so i don’t really have a point as such except that I inherently distrust social networking sites.
As to everything else it’s never occurred to me to look at my husband’s email or internet history but I make him read my emails so that he can tell me if anything interesting has been sent to me because I basically an anti-social and lazy person and thus use him as the human equivalent of a screening machine.
I feel like if it gets to the point where facebook is making you paranoid, you have bigger problems.
Emily, I love when you talk about what a homebody you are. I should start using my husband that way.
Hope this doesn’t feel too threadjacky but XX (grrrr) had an interesting article today about “moms” on facebook and about how some women feel the need to “hide” behind their children online. The author compares it to being called Mrs. John Smith or whatever. I http://www.doublex.com/section/life/get-your-kid-your-facebook-page
I’m not on faceboook so I don’t know how common this phenomena really is. But with all the issues about identity, performance, and the different faces we wear to different people, I think it is a legitimate source of conflict for a lot of folks.
Kithkin, it’s great as it also enables me to pretend that i am ultra famous and employ a PA, albeit one who spends much of his time betting on the horses.
jdregent, i definitely think there’s some truth in this – when I spy on people on facebook I do notice this tendency towards people writing endlessly about their kids or defining themselves as ‘so and so’s mum’.
Interesting article, JD! However despite the author’s assertion: “The mystery here is that the woman with the baby on her Facebook page has surely read The Feminine Mystique in college, and The Second Sex, and The Beauty Myth,” most of the women I know whose Facebook pages are basically just proxies for their children, it seems, have decidedly NOT read those things. I mean, I’m sure when I have a kid, they will show up on my Facebook at least as often as my beloved dogs, but I feel (or hope?) that I’m too much of a feminist to basically turn my Facebook into a shrine for my kids (or my husband, or my dog). A huge fear of mine about having children is that I will somehow lose the ability to talk about books and movies and shows and events that interest me and turn into yet another babbling mommy with no interests other than her kids.
I have no problems being “friends” with the person that I’m dating on Facebook, and I fully expect to be. It was a huge problem for me that the last guy I dated wouldn’t confirm a friend request from me. It was like, what are you hiding? Who is writing on your wall that you don’t want me to see? It wasn’t like I was asking him to announce our love via a relationship status or anything. I dated someone for a long time and we never put ourselves “in a relationship” on Facebook. I just left that status blank. But we were still “friends.”
However, if my partner EVER asked for my passwords to my account? Um, no. Also, no, you can’t have my email password. And no, you can’t read my blog. You have to trust that I’m not doing anything that you wouldn’t approve of. My ex used to ask why he couldn’t read my blog (they know *about* the blog, but not where to find it) and the answer? Because it’s pretty much like a diary or journal. I want to be able to vent when I’m frustrated about something and not have it turn into a big deal. If someone could read my mind and know everything that I was thinking all the time, they wouldn’t like it. I’m allowed to have a private place to write my thoughts and work stuff out. You wouldn’t ask your partner to read their diary, if they kept one, would you? And if you say yes to that, you’ve got some serious trust issues.
It’s the same way that I get pissed when someone goes through my phone or my texts. If you feel the need to police my email accounts, my text messages, or my Facebook page, then you clearly don’t trust me and there are much bigger issues in our relationship.
@Emilyanne: Ha! I also used to go undercover using someone else’s facebook account to spy.
The Double-X piece is too overly generalized for me (all women today do this… all parents in the older generation did that), but her point about women using their children’s portraits as part of the work of desexualizing/mommy-fying themselves is interesting. If Funnyface is too much of a feminist to let her profile turn into a shrine to her children, I’ll probably be too much of a narcissist.
Britni, re the diary – or you could just be very, very nosy. I mean I probably wouldn’t ask someone if i could read their diary but in my heart of hearts I’d definitely like to read it, not because of trust issues or anything to do with that (I’ve never been bothered by the idea of what boyfriends etc might be getting up to) but because I am truly and terribly nosy and I like what diaries reveal about people’s characters. I would stress again that i would never actually either read it or ask to read said hypothetical diary but I can’t pretend that reading it wouldn’t interest me.
Vadge, anyone could find your blog if they want to,including your mom, your exes, your enemies, and the police. Just be careful and protect yourself and don’t assume they aren’t reading! Sorry DangerMouse, I am totally paranoid about the internets. I blame the fact that myspace and facebook pages are used as evidence in like half the criminal cases I have seen lately.
oh and also i’m not sure that you can compare a diary and a blog because a written diary in the form of a book is in your possession and in your house or on your person whereas a blog is out there on the internet and actually anyone can read it so you’ve already decided by the act of making it a blog and not a diary to forgo a level of privacy, or am I just horribly old fashioned where technology is concerned?
jdregent, so am i – in my case because as a journalist we use them the whole time in nefarious ways. We paranoid people should unite against the internet conspiracy in my opinion, now excuse me while I go and check on my tinfoil windows.
JD, I know this. My ex did a very extensive search and found it and I had to delete it because he was going to print shit out and use it against me. Which is why the URL now has my name in it. If they really want to find it, they’re going to anyway so I’m not going to make it so hard to find. I technically have nothing to hide anyway, as I’m as open in real life as I am in my blog. I just like to have a place to vent and if the person I’m dating happens to find it, so be it. Chances are, if I was going to be saying awful things about them that I never wanted them to know, I wouldn’t be dating them in the first place.
So, this photo is totally relevant to being friends with people you are dating on FB and it cracks me up:
http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v3760/223/62/1802414/n1802414_39140608_7791453.jpg
And re: parents on FB, my mom just friended me. I added her on “limited profile” so that she can’t see my status updates and links, mostly because the majority of them involve sex or queer issues. She also can’t see most of my profile, because my mother does not need to know that my interests include “crotch banging.”
I hear you Britni. I think it is totally legit to say “don’t read my blog” and have it anyway but i just didn’t want you to actually be putting yourself at risk in any way.
My husband and I have access to each other’s email and facebook accounts because they’re open on our respective computers. The idea of demanding such access horrifies me. We have access because we trust each other, we don’t need access to trust each other, if that makes sense.
In regards to the Facebook moms thing, I know lots of moms who do this. I don’t think it’s a bad thing for a few reasons. First, a lot of my Facebook friends are my friends specifically because they want easy access to pics of my kid. My gramma didn’t join Facebook to hear about the movie I saw last night. Second, a lot of moms of young kids use Facebook to connect to each other. Talking about non-kid things is important, but so is talking to other women who are going through exactly what you are right now. Having a picture of your kid as your own profile advertises that you’re a mom and you want to talk about it.
Third, posting cute pictures of your kid is bragging just as much as posting pictures of yourself. Being proud that your kid is the cuter than bunnies and kittens isn’t ignoring your own identity. It’s just admitting that your toddler is cuter than you are. Which he is. Trust me.
Funnyface, I definitely rage against people who see me as only a mom. It was a real problem when I was pregnant, before I quit my job. My coworkers were awful and I wanted to scream at them. But it didn’t take long to find people who wanted to talk about books and TV and politics. And other moms are almost always grateful to be able to talk about both their kids and all that other stuff.
Hmm. I’m getting married soon, but I still keep all my online stuff as private as possible. I mean, the bf and I are “friends” on Facebook, but we don’t have each other’s passwords to anything. He doesn’t necessarily need to know the contents or recipients of every e-mail I send, just as I don’t need to know all of his. If some ex-girlfriend sent him a catching-up e-mail, I don’t really want or need to know about it. (If he started showing outward signs of emotional or physical betrayal, that’s when I’d get worried.) I think access to too much information can make people paranoid.
This is such an interesting post. Social networking is changing so many aspects of relationships and this is an interesting one to consider.
I agree that it is insane to expect your SO to give you their password, and vice versa. I don’t mind my SO seeing my e-mail if I’m logged in and he’s around, and same goes for fb. But unlimited access, anywhere, without my knowledge? Not ok. We’re separate people! I think Kivrin is right about, “I think access to too much information can make people paranoid.” It wouldn’t be healthy for me to feel like I need to or should be checking on my SO’s every facebook move. Intimacy isn’t knowing everything about a person, it is wanting to share almost everything with a person.
And I don’t know, don’t you want your SO to retain some mystery? A lot of my e-mail is pretty mundane, and when we were first dating my SO would tell me I was such an “enigma.” Of course I’m not, and we have been together long enough that he doesn’t think that much either, but it was sweet of him to think so and unraveling from enigma to real girl was a pleasure for both of us. If he had unfetted access to my online persona, we’d have lost that.
Oh, JD, I mean paranoid about your relationship and your partner cheating, not paranoid about the internet! I am all sorts of paranoid about the internet!
I understand that everyone needs to set boundaries that are appropriate for them in their relationship and their boundaries may be great for them but wouldn’t work for my relationship. This article though is trying to establish a trend that MANY couples should be worried about. That I don’t buy.
That article seems to point to the flaws in MARRIAGE so much more than the flaws in social networking. I read it as, “Technology offers more proof that you can’t promise to love someone forever.”
Sure, your husband/wife might reconnect with an old flame on facebook and leave you, but they might meet a nice person at the corner store and leave you as well. If we are truly committed to ensuring another person’s happiness, shouldn’t that include things that might make us unhappy? Why does it all have to be so black and white?
@bellacoker. I think you said it well. I think once we go down the path of “if I can just control this one more thing THEN I’ll be guaranteed this relationship will last” it can become a slippery slope. There are no guarantees and it is certainly not a black and white situation.
As for the marriage-centricity of Edmond, I may not have a very good perspective. It does seem to be Expected-with-a-capital-E that every young person will marry and live happily ever after. Married relationships are given a much higher value. But I don’t really think it is worse here than average. When I lived in Utah, marriage was a much more important part of the local culture. (Try being unmarried in the maternity ward there… even with the father present the whole time, the disapproval was tucked around me like a scratchy hospital blanket.)
[...] High Fidelity – The Pursuit of Harpyness http://www.harpyness.com/2009/05/14/high-fidelity – view page – cached #The Pursuit of Harpyness » High Fidelity Comments Feed The Pursuit of Harpyness Honorary Harpy: Kate Winslet Coraline, Live! Brides Before Babies! (in every sense) RSS 2.0 RSS .92 Atom 0.3 — From the page [...]