Social media has made starting an affair easier than in previous generations. There are many ways that social media has contributed, with social media sites for cheaters and swingers like Tinder, Ashley Madison and Victoria Milan.
Since I’ve dealt with that threat in the past, I will not belabor their impact. From my informal surveys on social media and infidelity, the biggest social media threat to marriage identified by you readers is facebook.
Facebook is not just about sharing recipes, prayer requests, and pictures of food. It’s also a meat market that parades through your home.
Facebook poses a threat to you by allowing the cheater to re-connect with old flames along with connecting with new flames. My experience is that old flames pose the more serious of the threat, since their influence can be more powerful.
When you and your spouse are not getting along, they may view such times as an opportunity for re-connecting with old lovers.
The danger of old flames is that in interacting with them, the cheater ‘turns on’ old neural circuits. When old circuits are switched on they grow in power and influence.
Those old flames also ‘power up’ faster than someone new. You also have the danger of exes as well.
New flames are also a threat to you, yet their impact is not as deep as old flames. Whether you are faced with a new or old flame, facebook provides the gasoline that ‘rev-up’ any flame. Other social media can do that as well, facebook just happens to be the biggest threat.
One way to know that you are heading into trouble with facebook is when the cheater does not allow you to see who their friends are, or deny you access to their account.
Denying you access to facebook is not so much about ‘trust’ as it is about the cheater keeping secrets. Keeping secrets about old friends and who the cheater is connecting with spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E in a major way.
You may need to talk with your spouse about each of your facebooks, allowing each other to see the friends and have some veto capability. This may seem to be a tough way of doing things, but it goes a long way to reduce the risk of cheating behind your back.
It is one thing if the cheater sneaks a peek at an old flame, it is quite another when they start up a relationship. The danger of relationships is that they often pick up where they left off.
For more on dealing with affairs, consider joining the support community at ‘Restored Lifestyle’.
Best Regards,
Jeff
