In full disclosure, both my wife and I use Facebook for our personal lives and our ministry along with my dad.  Facebook has not proven to hurt or negatively impact our marriage, but I could not resist posting this very interesting study done in the United Kingdom:

Facebook is bad for your marriage according to research carried out by an online divorce service in the United Kingdom. Divorce-Online scanned their divorce petition database for the use of the word “Facebook” and found 989 instances of the word in over 5,000 divorce petitions sampled.

This means that just under 20% of all the petitions filed through the company had references to Facebook within the text of the divorce petitions.

Managing Director Mark Keenan said “I had heard from my staff that there were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was I was really surprised to see 20% of all the petitions containing references to Facebook. The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to”.

Notes to Editors:

About http://www.Divorce-Online.Co.UK

Founded in 1999, Divorce-Online is the UK leader in online divorce services and solutions that help people obtain an uncontested divorce without the need to visit a solicitor. Divorce-Online.Co.UK has helped over 60,000 couples achieve an amicable divorce.

About the research

Research for Divorce-Online was carried out on 20th December 2009 with a sample size of 5,000 divorce petitions.

So why would Facebook be mentioned in 20% of divorce petitions? My guess is that these couples were abusing the use of Facebook in several different ways:

1. Their spouse may be developing inappropriate friendships with the opposite sex. Or maybe, they are even reconnecting with old flames via Facebook.
2. Their spouse may be simply using Facebook too much.  I’ve heard of people using Facebook for over 6 to 8 hours a day! That would be way too excessive.  I think getting on Facebook for about 30 minutes in a day is decent, maybe pushing the limit, but certainly not abusive.
3. Their spouse is airing out their dirty laundry through status updates.  I’ve certainly heard of people hurt by what their spouse put on Facebook as a status update.  An inability to communicate properly could tempt someone to handle their conflict through a social media as opposed to with their spouse.

What do you think? Why else might Facebook be hurting marriages, and have you been hurt by Facebook in your own marriage?

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We are all aware in the media as well as  through personal contacts of relationships that seem to have failed in the aftermath of tragic loss, combat stress, natural disaster or trauma of some kind.  It makes us wonder -Can a couple survive trauma? Can they hold on to their bond in the face of  unimaginable pain and loss? The answer is “Yes” . While a couple’s relationship will often suffer the greatest blow in the aftermath of trauma – it can often be the greatest source of support, resilience and recovery. This is the theme of the blog ” Healing Together for Couples.”

via Can Couples Survive Trauma? | Healing Together for Couples.

Thought this might be helpful to all those stressed out in their marriage or parenting lives:

1. Avoid stimulants and sugar.

Here’s the catch-22: the more stressed you get, the more you crave coffee and doughnuts, pizza and Coke. But the more coffee, Coke, doughnuts, and pizza in your system, the more stressed you get. It’s not your imagination. When you are stressed and have low levels of serotonin, your brain produces cravings for sugar and simple carbohydrates, which primes the beta-endorphin system to want more and more. The same with caffeine. It’s a powerful drug that affects a number of neurochemicals in your brain, which means it produces withdrawal symptoms that can make you very very very very irritable.

2. Compare and despair.

The last thing you should do when you’re stressed–which I always do when I’m stressed–is start looking around at other people’s package (job, family support, balanced brain) and pine for some of that. I grow especially jealous of non-addict friends who can enjoy a glass of wine with dinner or those with moms nearby that offer to take the kids for sleepovers.

via 10 More Stress Busters | World of Psychology.

What an interesting article in the NY Times.  This was sent to me from Jenny Reid, one of our Marriage Consultants for our Marriage Restoration Intensive program:

LET’S say you have what you believe to be a healthy marriage. You’re still friends and lovers after spending more than half of your lives together. The dreams you set out to achieve in your 20s — gazing into each other’s eyes in candlelit city bistros when you were single and skinny — have for the most part come true.

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Christopher Silas Neal

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Two decades later you have the 20 acres of land, the farmhouse, the children, the dogs and horses. You’re the parents you said you would be, full of love and guidance. You’ve done it all: Disneyland, camping, Hawaii, Mexico, city living, stargazing.

Sure, you have your marital issues, but on the whole you feel so self-satisfied about how things have worked out that you would never, in your wildest nightmares, think you would hear these words from your husband one fine summer day: “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.”

But wait. This isn’t the divorce story you think it is. Neither is it a begging-him-to-stay story. It’s a story about hearing your husband say “I don’t love you anymore” and deciding not to believe him. And what can happen as a result.

via Modern Love – Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear – NYTimes.com.

My friend, Jeff Fray, over at the Marriage CoMission, shared the link to this TIME magazine article.  It is a very informative article and will give you a lot of insight in to the latest research surrounding the importance of marriage and some of the recent scandals (Gov. Mark Sanford and others):

In the e-mails exchanged between the governor and his girlfriend, they trip over themselves to praise the other’s virtues. She was “special and unique,” “glorious”; he was a man of emotional generosity who “brought happiness and love to my life.” These two humanitarians were engaged not only in worshipping each other’s high-mindedness but also in destroying another woman’s home, hobbling her children emotionally and setting her up for humiliation of a titanic proportion. The squalor and pain that resulted from the Sanford and Ensign midlife crises make manifest a bleak truth that the late writer Leonard Michaels once observed in his journal: “Adultery is not about sex or romance. Ultimately, it is about how little we mean to one another.”

Read the rest here.

Would you ever subject yourself to the “Love Lab”?

A HEAVY-SET young man slumps in his chair, looking bored and disengaged, as his wife ticks off a list of complaints about him. In particular he had forgotten a plan to go on a picnic, which was typical of his failure to listen to her.

As the wife whined on, the man’s eyes shifted, as if searching for an escape route. But he was trapped in John Gottman’s love lab, behind a one-way mirror, being filmed and recorded as part of a 30-year research project. The study has explored what most of us want to know: what distinguishes happy, lasting marriages from those that disintegrate into bitterness or loneliness.

Just over 10 years ago, Dr Gottman published some startling findings of longitudinal research that made him famous. After watching couples interact for a mere 15 minutes in the love lab, he could predict with about 90 per cent accuracy if they would divorce within six years. This week Dr Gottman and his wife and therapist partner, Julie, were in Sydney to run workshops organised by Relationships Australia. “Look for the repair attempt made by the husband and see if she rejects it,” he tells the audience of 150 relationship counsellors as the miserable couple loomed into focus on a big screen. “Gottman is the guru of marriage research and counselling,” says Anne Hollonds, chief executive of Relationships Australia. “It’s like the Pope coming to Sydney.”

via Wedded abyss: how to avoid a bitter, lonely marriage. – National Comment – Port Lincoln Times .