Once you exchange vows, you’d like to hope that something as silly as Facebook wouldn’t be the thing (if any) to tear you apart, but you hear about it happening all the time these days.
A new study from Slater Gordon has found five ways Facebook can split even happy couples up.
It makes it easy for spouses to snoop …
Facebook really puts a couple’s trust to the test, and sadly, a lot of them fail. A big 58 percent of partners know their spouse’s passwords, but their partners don’t alwaysknow they know. (Uh-oh.) Instead of communicating about their insecurities, lots of spouses simply resort to snooping.
… and to cheat.
You would hope that your spouse is just using social media to keep in touch with friends and family, but some have a different agenda: As many as 14 percent use it to cheat on their partner. (This, of course, leads back to the first point.)
People fight over it. Really.
Some things are worth fighting about, but is Facebook really one them? Well, a lot of couples think so! The same study found that almost 25 percent of the 2,000 married couples surveyed had at least one argument a week about social media, while 17 percent say it happens every day.
People find Facebook threatening.
We live in a world where Facebook and other social media are almost inescapable, but deep down, people don’t trust what they read and see. A whole 15 percent of couples believe social media is a danger to their marriage. So which platform do they think is the most dangerous one? Facebook, followed by WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram.
Facebook usage in itself can kill marriages.
It may seem unlikely, but social media can really push a marriage to the breaking point. The study found that one in seven people have contemplated divorce because of how their spouse utilizes Facebook, Skype, Snapchat, Twitter or WhatsApp.
But think about it: Maybe, just maybe, Facebook is a problem in your relationship — but perhaps your insecurities and infidelity were there all along, and Facebook just made them more obvious. Hmm.