The line between private and public has always been thin. Now, it seems like it is fast disappearing. Social media websites including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and blogs are increasingly infringing on people’s private lives. They usually air their dirty laundry by choice but in certain cases, they are the unwitting victims. Take the example of Facebook. How will you react when your wife talks about the intimate details of your marriage and its problems among her “friends” in the social network?
Lauren’s Facebook Divorce Case
This is exactly what Lauren, a 36-year old homemaker from Austin, did to the consternation of her private husband. She documented every stage of her divorce and what she was feeling from it. Among the things she wrote include, “Lauren would cry, but then he wins” and “My house is a mess. My life is a mess.”
While some of the statements she made may refer to her husband, it doesn’t help that in his grief-stricken mind, he would assume that every negative thing Lauren writes is about him. So the divorce proceeded and the grief became almost unbearable for both of them. He also told her that he intended to “un-friend” her on the social site.
Impact of Social Networking
Most know about the positive benefits social networking sites bring in terms of hooking people up, letting long-lost friends find each other, and enabling people from different cultures to interact in a neural setting. But what they fail to pinpoint is its capability to destroy lives and relationships. The extent of its impact depends on your individual tolerance of recriminations, argument, and teary confessions.
Even if you’re publicity shy though, don’t kid yourself. Even the richest and most powerful people are not immune to its power to destroy. A simple example is how the ex-girlfriend of Prince Harry embarrassed him by simply ending her public status in Facebook to “single.” It was quick and it was to the point. For people who have a long history though, the wounds this will leave behind will take a long time to heal.
New Legal Frontier
The damage that Facebook and other social networking sites are doing to personal lives is still up for legal debate. Divorce lawyers see it as a gold mind because they can gain snippets of information from their opponent easily. Currently, there are no binding precepts, contracts, or principles regarding its usage.
The bizarre fact is, if you divorce yourself in Facebook, it is probably going to be more public than the actual one. This is because it can potentially have thousands of witnesses who saw that the relationship has run its course.
The effects that this so called “Facebook” can bring to our families and/or relationships is devastating.
Facebook is nothing else but an easy tool to find hook ups online, there are millions of guys and girls on this site looking for a potential partner, most of them will not care if they are married or engaged they will just start working towards getting what they want.
Everything start just by a simple “LOL” interchanges, gradually changing to a few personal life sharing, then they will go from their “I missed you so much and I love you” to “I can’t wait to chat with you again” Then they go at it the whole day and they are addicted to be with that person online, they forget about the rest of the world……. JUST TO BE CHATTING WITH THAT PERSON ONLINE.
Then they go a step forward, “Let’s go have some coffee together” then they Go to watch a movie together.
When you less expect anything……. BOOOM…….Stabbed right in your heart, she is leaving you because she found someone else.
Facebook killed my marriage and destroyed my life.
THANKS A LOT FACEBOOK!!!!!!!!!!
You’re an idiot to blame FB for your failed marriage. Excuse me, but if you had done something prior to try and help the marriage, say, take your wife out to coffee, etc, then maybe she would not have had to drown her sorrows in someone else who was willing to give her the time and energy that you ,sir, could not afford. Its obvious. Take responsibility for your failures b4 you point the finger at a social media website.
This can happen on many sites its not just facebook my husband started talking to some girl on line in a cyber sex thing.
eventually all our savings and extra loans were taken out so he could give it to her. I went out a few days before fathers day to get him a gym membership (he had been asking to join) and when i went to pay for it there was no money??? I went to the bank and found out that after 19 years of marrage he gave everything we saved away and I had no Idea about it. needless to say I got a good lawyer. I don’t have anything but I dont have to pay off the loans he took out.
I do have to start life over but thanks to facebook I found an old friend and we are starting to get closer it has been lots of fun and I have a big thank you for you…its hard when your husband finds a 20 year old and takes everything you have ……but i found facebook tytytytytyty I am forever grateful.
Hugs
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I do believe that if your are divorcing you need to keep it to yourself my divorce will be final on friday and facebook will find out then that i am divorceing at the molement only a few select friends even know im getting divorced.So all I want to say is use facebook but be responsable
No Charles, your bitch of a wife killed your marriage. And there was probably something lacking on your end too. Man up, take some responsibility for your actions, and quit blaming others for your problems.
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I have been doing a lot of on line research about facebook. I don’t have a facebook acct and my wife does. She is not the same anymore, Facebook is destroying our marriage. I gave her a ultimatum, facebook or me funny she still has facebook and our marriage has been on the rocks for months. That website should be ban.
dwh, I too am having the same issues. It started in November… and he is now on female friend #4. We have gone to counceling, and he says he knows he should back off FB, but nothing really has subsided. He stays up until 1, 2 3 in the morning. I wind up being angry when he comes to bed now. Any attention he gives to me, I dont feel is even for me anymore and wonder if he is fantasizing I am someone else. We have 3 children, youngest being 10, and they are all seeing how his addiction is effecting our marriage and our family. He told me months back to join FB… I was like, why??? finally I did, but it seems now only a monitoring tool for me to see what hes been up to… its almost pitiful on my part as well… It is now at the point if he wants a divorce, he will have to initiate it, however, I have the goods on him, so he will have to live in the hole he has dug, not in my house….
Snap! I had been with my partner for 11 years, we had up’s and down’s like everybody else, but towards the end we’d been rocky for several months for no reason at all, or so i thought, but looking back, all the alarm bells where there to be seen, but like a fool in love your blinded. You have a quick thought passing through your mind, nah.. then the trust agreement you’ve verbally agreed kicks in and all is well as you shrug it off as nothing. Those nothings begin to add up and form the start of a jealous paranoia state, then you begin to doubt! You notice she’s wearing more provocative underwear to work, the one’s she’s uncomfortable wearing for you, not any more, you’ve noticed she’s had her hair done and she’s catching up with old friends that she hasn’t seen for years, not even a phone call in months, now there like family, you’ve not been invited once, it’s like your not even there anymore, you try to talk but you know her mind is elsewhere, what’s going on!!!!!! She was so sly, she’d been addicted to an online arcade game and whilst i thought she was playing it, in the background she’d been messageing this guy from work, she was on this for several hours at a time, completly forgetting her the real world around her, one night she never came to bed carrying on into the early hours, my alarm clock went off, it’s 8:30a.m. she’s not there, i check the next bedroom, nothing, so i go down stairs, she’s fallen asleep with the laptop on the floor in hibernation mode, at the time i was suspictious but wasn’t prepared for what was to come, i turn the computer on, boooom, up it come, the entire nights messages, gut wrenching is an understatement, she was kicked out there and then still in her PJ’S, I will never look back……. the social network we have today is destroying our real lives, what are we to do!!!!!!!!!!!
I feel for you man. I went through a similar situation with my soon to be ex-wife. You are right, seeing those messages is beyond gut-wrenching. The icing on the cake is that she is going to get half, so it is as if she is being rewarding for being a dirty, lying pig of a woman.