A UK divorce site claims that almost one in five divorce petitions filed cite Facebook as a factor in the demise of the marriage. My reaction? Yeah…that sounds about right (no, really). I’ve blogged a lot about the way that technology has wormed its way into my own marriage. In fact, my BlackBerry alone was something Jack and I used to argue about regularly (I’m proud to say that I’m paying less attention to it and more attention to Jack these days). But when it comes to the ability to flat out devastate relationships, nothing compares to the Pandora’s box that is social networking. Neither one of us is terribly sucked in by these sites -- but it seems like we hear horror stories daily. Whether it’s my single girlfriends who use it to cyber-stalk exes (or, more often, the guy that said he’d call but totally ghosted) or my married girlfriends who use it to reconnect with (and then moon over) their exes -- it’s an emotional trapdoor that many a smart person has fallen through.
I’m lucky. I’ll admit that all of my serious exes have at one time or another found me on FB. Thing is, I am still crystal clear on why each and every one of them wasn’t “The One,” so none represented any real temptation. But the flip side of the digital playground is that any improper interaction creates a serious paper trail. In other words -- it’s easy to get busted.
What do you guys think about this statistic? Any Facebook horror stories of your own?