Facebook a Factor in a Third of UK Divorces 189
hypnosec writes with an excerpt from an IT Pro Portal article: "A recent survey conducted by a UK based divorce website disclosed that 33 percent of behavior divorce petitions filed cite Facebook as a cause for filing for divorce in 2011. In 2009 this figure was 20 per cent. 5000 people were surveyed by Divorce-Online, the UK divorce website, during 2009 and 2011 covering Facebook as a means to check behavior of spouse with the opposite sex and spouses using the social networking platform to comment about their exes post the separation. Three reasons that came out on the top for listing Facebook in divorce petition were inappropriate messages sent to the opposite sex, posting nasty comments about exes, and friends on Facebook reporting about spouse's behavior."
Not suprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
The more we are in contact with each other the more evident flaws are.
Re:Cited in, not cited as the cause of. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is supposed to be one of those dumb watercooler stories. People who don't get the internet are supposed to roll their eyes at the big, bad internet making things worse. Cheesy morning radio shows read this stories like this.
Re:People still haven't learned... (Score:5, Insightful)
Go read the story. You don't even have to have a Facebook account to get mentioned by third parties.
Next thing you know your ex cites a Facebook posting by someone you dont even know.
Re:Facebook and divorce, it writes itself! (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! How many times can the same story be recycled over the course of two years?
Before Facebook was created... was there analysis done to see if Telephones, The postal service, Credit cards/ATMs,Cars, Prostitution, Hotels and Mobile phones were factors in divorces?
I suspect a lot of divorces ended due to cheating; and driving to a cheap Hotel to meet with someone...
And yes... the car is an enabling technology, but it doesn't cause the behavior that leads to divorces; it's just a channel enabling communication (including destructive communication).
Not Facebook of course, but the publicity (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe it's because I've been online for about 20 years now and I've learned my lesson, but I never got into the whole social networking thing. The notion of posting every triviality in my life on the web without regard for the privacy or embarrassment of myself or my friends boggles the mind.
My theory is that as reality TV has become so mainstream and so many famous-for-being-famous celebs have found wealth regardless of their lack of talent and charisma, lots of regular folk are clamoring for their 15 minutes of fame that could make them the next millionaire Snookie. I created a Facebook page just for people to find me and I purposely don't stay logged in. I was embarrassed to see the rants, self-pitying pleas, flaunting, and exhibitions posted by people I barely knew. I guess like any other new technology, it'll take time for people to learn how to manage it in their lives.
Re:Not suprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
Having an affair is not a flaw. Snoring, forgetting to take out the trash, grabbing the remote too often, those are flaws. Things that you accept or overlook or compromise over. An affair, goes waaay beyond, when it comes to that, then you have nothing. No, you have less than that, you have lost years of your life to a stranger.
Re:Cited in, not cited as the cause of. (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't even say that anything particularly interesting was cited from Facebook. Lawyers often pad these kinds of filings with just-to-be-safe evidence, and Facebook is probably an easy source of evidence for all sorts of mundane things that wouldn't necessarily even be challenged at all. "Bob is, as of our last knowledge, in possession of the couple's former Honda Civic [attach a printed out & dated Facebook photo of Bob washing his car]" and that kind of stuff.
Re:Kinda... but not really (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost agree. Minor nitpick: The religious angle isn't of importance. There's been long-term formalised bonds between husband and wife across a wide spectrum of different religions and cultures, enough so that I'd argue that the concept of "marriage", along with "funeral", "name-giving-ceremony" and "coming-of-age-ceremony" are near-universal in human culture.
Marriage is a formal announcement of a couples intention to stay together long-term. With this announcement comes certain duties, and certain priviledges. If you're cynical about it, you could say that you should marry if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks - I did, but religion wasn't a relevant part of that question (we're both atheists)
Re:Kinda... but not really (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, the marriage itself is irrelevant. Actually, not entirely, I live in a country other than my own and the marriage initially made that possible. But that's not the reason we got married. Marriage was very important to her and her family... who are Christians.
There are no duties or privileges that are not applicable within a responsible relationship that requires marriage to make so. Also, a formal announcement and a legal binding are two entirely different things. In fact, I'm a strong believer that people should be able to get legally bound in every way that marriage suggests no matter what their sex, religion or even how many there are. I think if four old ladies are living in a house together and they are all that each other has in the world, they should be able to get "legally married" so that from every perspective which the government is concerned, they are as codependent as a married couple. If one decides to leave, they can choose to hire a lawyer or sit before a mediator to decide what that person should take away from the relationship.
It's so sad and pathetic that we live in a world where marriage and divorce is a concern of the government. What's even more humorous is that the people who are most adamant regarding marriage and the government are the ones who are also most vocal about wanting the government to be smaller and have a lesser impact on their lives.
Re:Kinda... but not really (Score:4, Insightful)
I find your comment completely misogynist and dumb.
Even if marriage WAS designed to protect women in the past, it doesn't mean that it cannot get a new significance with new times.
I agree that a lot of people get married for the wrong reasons. And that it'd be better if they didn't. I feel that you are mistaken in almost everything else you say, though.
Your statements are suprisingly dumb for a +5 comment... "I'll make a promise to this lady because I love her and I don't want her to ever worry about where her next meal is coming from" ... "I'm too weak to care for myself and I need some legal protection that makes it so he can't just run off to be with someone else without some form of legal and financial repercussion." ...
Marriage goes both ways. You fail to see that a man can also need the support of a woman. If a man is disabled for any reason (be it physical or psychological) then having a wife will mean having a person by his side to support him no matter what.
For me, marriage means: "I'm committed to you, I'll stand by your side, in the good times and the bad times, I'll respect you and care for you until death do us apart".
[I'm a married woman, I earn the same as my husband, I didn't marry him so he wouldn't run off, nor did I marry him so he would support me economically]
People are so fucking stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Before, the guys would go to the pub, or hunt, or fish, or play soccer, whatever, with their friends, complaint about their wives to each other, harmlessly flirt with a girl or two. Girls would go shopping or have a drink, or go to the gym, whatever, with their friend girls, complaint about their husbands, check out some good looking dudes, no problem.
Everybody needs to blow some steam once in a while. It's really, really hard to keep a marriage. It takes lots of patience and you need to go out and decompress or else looking at your spouse's face every fucking day will become unbearable. People used to talk to friends and have a few drinks, words would be forgotten overnight. Now, every little fucking detail of what you do or say gets recorded forever. This is not the way normal life is meant to be.
I don't know who is more stupid. People having behaviours online that can put them in trouble, knowing they'll be publicly available forever, or their spouses, spying on them and them overreacting to things that would be perfectly normal if they hadn't happened online.
Divorces are painful and destructive. You basically have to turn all your life inside out. You destroy your children's world. Is it worth it because of pesky things like Facebook blabbering? If you don't have the stomach to put up with a lot of stuff you should never have gotten married and had kids in the first place.
Re:Kinda... but not really (Score:4, Insightful)
Even in many countries today a man caught being unfaithful is punished with a fine while a woman being unfaithful is punished with death. This isn't mysogynistic, this is reality.
That's a really, really disturbing thing to read from someone 'civilized' enough to sit and a keyboard and type.
Can't it be reality AND mysogynistic? Must you be 'culturally sensitive' to the people stoning the woman to death? Really?
Re:Kinda... but not really (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. I think most women do understand it. The fact that it's a new possibility doesn't mean that we should still live like it isn't possible.
[citation needed].
Just of the top of my head I can think of books like "Little Women" or "Jane Eyre" that happen about 150 years ago, where women are already able to work and support themselves, even if society is still not accepting it as "normal".
130 years ago, women were already accepted as university graduate students in the US.
100 years ago, Marie Curie earned her SECOND Nobel prize (1903 and 1911).
Yes, it's still fairly recent, but it's NOT 75 years. At least for some countries, I'd say women have been able to support themselves for 150 to 200 years. There are of course places where women still do not have this possibility.
[citation needed], again. You describe how marriage was handled among nobility in Europe. That DOESN'T mean that marriage was handled the same way everywhere, for the "common folk", as you say. Maybe you are referring only to big weddings, and you are most probably forgetting what is called "Common law Marriage".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law_marriage [wikipedia.org]
Yet another [citation needed]. "Originally" where? when? under which laws?
As already stated in another comment, reality can be misogynistic, and in many places in the world it is. This doesn't mean that you should accept it as valid, and that you shouldn't take a stand against it.