Does Facebook Make Cheating Easier?

I found the messages on a Tuesday morning. A morning that happened to be my daughter's first day of school, a morning of excitement and new beginnings.

The message was from my husband. "We have to lay eyes on each other," it said. "...glad you liked the picture today, really was thinking of you."

He was talking to a woman with whom he had gone to high school, someone he hadn't seen in seventeen years.

He had reconnected with her on Facebook.

The summer had been full of the petty kinds of arguments married couples sometimes lose themselves in. Money was tight since he had gone back to school and switched careers. I was working on a novel, doing a little freelance writing, and hardly bringing in any income. We didn't make time for each other.

Over the weeks, he began to spend a lot of time on the computer, staying up late when previously, his job led him to retire early in order to rise by 4 a.m. Never having had a moment's suspicion or jealousy of his relationships in our nine years together, I let it go. When I finally had enough suspicion to check his inbox on Facebook, I discovered a relationship--not physical, but highly emotional and personal--that had gone on for two months.

Revisiting an old flame. Or even just an old acquaintance. That girl you were always afraid to ask out. The guy you had a crush on sophomore year. It's exciting to reconnect with these people on Facebook. I visit Facebook several times a day to post messages, look up old friends, and take several of the inane quizzes, things like "Which Smurf Are You?" It's fun. And it's an easy way to keep in touch with people you may never have contact with otherwise.

But is it too easy?

After my experience, heartbroken and confused, I searched the Internet for help, for similar stories. To both my comfort and my dismay, I found quite a few.

Affairs with people from one's past is apparently common enough to coin a new term. A retrosexual.

"Retrosexuals are people who rewind their own lives, digging into their past to emerge with a current romantic partner," says Deirdre Fulton, in her article Are You a Retrosexual? in which she cites specifically the use of Facebook by one woman who "mined her past for present romantic encounters."

Amy Hatch, in her article Does Facebook Encourage Adultery? poses a situation frighteningly similar to my own: "Say you just happen to be goofing off, looking for the profile of your ex-boyfriend on a day when your husband forgot to pay the electric bill and refused to help you do the dishes. And say that ex-boyfriend just happens to carry a torch for you. Say he asks you out for coffee, just for old time's sake. Wouldn't you be tempted (remember the fight over the dinner dishes?) to say yes?"

Even more frightening is the scenario in which talking becomes physical, and marriages are broken. Richard Edwards, of The Telegraph, reports that a jilted man broke another's jaw after his wife and "her former boyfriend had become reacquainted through the social networking site Facebook and began texting, emailing and talking on the phone."

As for my situation, no one's jaw was broken. Fortunately, I was able to let go of my initial shock and anger, talk through it with my husband, and ultimately our marriage is stronger for it.

Facebook doesn't cause cheating. But I'm left to wonder, had I never acknowledged my suspicion and checked his messages that morning, how much longer would the "just talking" have continued? What else might have "just happened," because Facebook had made it so simple, so natural, and so easy?

Sources:

Are you a Retrosexual?

http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Life/75527-Are-you-a-retrosexual/

Does Facebook Encourage Adultery?

http://www.parentdish.com/2009/02/09/does-facebook-encourage-adultery/

Jilted husband attacked love rival after 'Facebook affair'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1949635/Jilted-husband-attacked-love-rival-after-Facebook-affair.html