Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Can Facebook wreck a marriage?

Since March this year I’ve spent so much time on Facebook – catching up with old friends, looking for old buddies and of late playing games too. This has inevitably taken some of my precious time away from my loved ones. I ask myself today, is this affecting my relationship with them?

Out of curiosity, just now I googled “Facebook and marriage” and I was dumbfounded to find 4,360,000 results on this subject, to be exact. Apparently it has ruined and ended so many marriages around the world. It’s shocking to learn this fact, isn’t it?

Based on my brief research, the most common denominator of the problem is jealousy. The spouse gets in touch with his/her old flames and some old feeling may resurface. Another underlying issue is the spouse is flirting (or assumed to) with newly acquired friends.

I don’t know about the rest, but the main reason I joined the largest social networking community is to reconnect with old friends. I have successfully tracked down a large number of friends whom I have not met since high school, college and university, plus ex-colleagues that I’ve worked with in the past. To me, it’s a wonderful tool to find long lost friends, keep in touch and mengeratkan tali silaturrahim. At the same time, I have also ignored so many friend requests from strangers, particularly men out of respect for my husband.

But when you dedicate too much time on Facebook and other stuff on the internet (blogging is another good example), you may invite some discontentment and disapproval from the people you love the most. You may be seen as ‘neglecting’ them while you are pursuing your new ‘hobby’. I have personally gone through this phase. May be it’s about time for me to spend less time in cyber space and spend more time with the human race.

I say, life is such that we can never get everything that we want and we can never please everybody. Bak kata pepatah Melayu, dibuang mati emak, ditelan mati ayah.

Glokalmama is signing off.

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