Earlier this summer I was contacted by Irving Bible Church in Las Colinas, TX to write an article on technology for their monthly magazine. After talking with the editor at length we eventually agreed upon a topic that we thought would be of importance to the readers — We came up with Is Facebook Making Your Marriage Vulnerable for the October 2009 issue of Chattermag.
I thought/think is a very important topic, and will only continue to grow, but I have been amazed at how this topic has been at the heart of many conversations that I have been a part of (unbeknownst to them that I even wrote this article). I have had several more friends convey stories to me about how their friends actions on Facebook were the cause of the demise of a marriage.
I even received a call from a local TV producer who is working on a story about this topic. In our conversation we talked about the growing concern over this topic, but the difficulty in pinning down what the real issue is. And with these incidents being so early in a new trend (i.e. social networking’s effect on marriage/relationships) it is hard, if not impossible to get people to step forward and discuss the situation.
So I figured that over the course of the next week I’m going to post several times on this issue, looking at what is going on, and what lies behind this issue.
But for today, I wanted to repost my article and get any feedback from you on the issue.
Is Facebook Making Your Marriage Vulnerable?
In the spring of 2005, I found myself in an endless battle with my college students (whom I was pastoring) over the issue of MySpace. Should our college ministry have, or not have a MySpace group? I had questioned the wisdom of it for a long time since I was not happy with much of the salacious content on the site, and I knew I would have little control over it. I finally gave in and was quite pleased that a week later new students showed up to our Wednesday night worship because they had found us on MySpace. But I soon realized how much I had to learn when the fall semester rolled around and my college leaders had gone ahead and created a Facebook group without my knowledge. It was then I decided that the best position for a pastor to take was to be involved with his/her online community. At least then I might have some influence.
That was my big concern 5 years ago. But like most of you, I have since adopted online social media—so much so that it has just become a way of life. I spend time daily writing on my blog, communicating with others on Twitter, updating my resume on LinkedIn, as well as checking out the latest photos and stories from old and new friends on Facebook. And that’s just a few of the hundreds of social media sites vying for my daily attention. But as time passes, I have fewer questions about whether I should or should not be active in these online spaces, but rather, questions about the boundaries I need to establish for them.
Recently, a couple of friends and I were lamenting about two of our friends’ marriages that had ended in divorce. One partner in each of the marriages fostered online connections on Facebook, which eventually led to full-blown affairs. One affair began when a partner reconnected with an old high school friend; the other affair began when one spouse initiated an online connection after meeting a person earlier that week at an event. What had begun as a simple hello on Facebook left in its wake two shattered marriages—devastated spouses and angry children. If you think this is out of the ordinary, just Google the words “Facebook” and “affairs” to find the growing amount of literature on this topic (for instance: here). Maybe this shouldn’t come as a surprise since most of the Facebook rumors tout that it was created to make it easier for college students to “hook up.” I buy into the theory that technology in our lives is not neutral (as my good friend and technologist John Dyer has helped me better understand). Rather, when we use technology, it will affect us in some way. And as married couples, we have to ask ourselves how the current social media is influencing us. Continue Reading…
