Facebook can threaten relationships?

A Canadian report finds that postings on the social media site can trigger escalating feelings of jealousy between romantically involved individuals.

Never mind the perils of cyber-stalking, cyber-bullying and posting photos that could endanger your future job prospects:Facebook could be ruining your relationship and driving you toward compulsively jealous behavior.

Social psychologists from the University of Guelph in Canada queried college students who were in romantic relationships about their Facebook use. Their preliminary findings, described in the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior, suggest that rather than enhancing communication between romantic partners, Facebook use may be fueling wild flights of jealous investigation, as users in relationships perceive hints of potential infidelity and then scramble to find evidence of a partner's unfaithful thoughts or behavior.

Invariably, it seems, they end up feeling more jealous.

Read the full story at the Chicago Tribune by Melissa Healy

Your Wife May Be Cheating On You Right Now

And "it's happening where you least expect it." 'Let’s get something straight: You are not some fedora-tipping Man of the House who comes home from the office expecting the rump roast to be on the table. Nor are you an aging frat boy who sits in front of the flat-screen with an Icehouse while wifey irons your Red Wings jersey. You are sensitive. You were raised by a working woman. You wipe down the counters after you make the kids’ lunches. No decent woman would cheat on a man like that, right? That’s what Rob (not his real name) thought, anyway. The 41-year-old financial analyst had a house in the D.C. suburbs, two kids, and in his own words, a “goody-two-shoes” wife from a nice Catholic family. Last fall, Rob’s wife began to seem depressed, “like something was bothering her and she wouldn’t tell me what it was,” he says. In December, after stumbling across some e-mails, Rob found out exactly what was bothering his wife: She had reconnected with an old flame. She’d been reconnecting with him for five months. “It’s far worse than you can possibly imagine,” he says.""Today's wife knows nothing of the isolation of her mid-century counterpart. She has Internet chat rooms and cell phones. She has personal trainers, yoga instructors, and mommy groups. Mommy groups? Why would any man think he had reason to get twitchy about his wife's going to a mommy group?"

read more | digg story