How The Dark Side of Facebook Has Become a Marriage Killer

With Facebook having just reached two billion monthly users, the media giant continues to be the most popular social network worldwide. People use Facebook for a wide variety of reasons. Some people like to use Facebook to reconnect with old friends. Small businesses use it with dreams of reaching the community and creating sales.

Virtually nobody gets on Facebook with the intention of using it to do harm to the relationship with their spouse. However, the latest research shows that Facebook is a contributing factor in one-third of all divorces.

As a digital marketer, I work with entrepreneurs on how to use Facebook to grow their brand. However, when I read Dave Worthen’s book, Facebreak, it gave me insights into the other side of Facebook. The dark side of Facebook goes well beyond just not getting enough likes on a post you thought was great or getting unfriended. Facebook can actually do permanent damage to relationships with the people you care about the most if you cross certain lines while using it.

Dave has been helping individuals and couples overcome relationship barriers for 40 years. His book left me wanting to learn more, so I was excited to reach out to Dave to get some additional insights and share them with you:

White: Your book hooked me after the first page, and by the end of the first chapter I knew I had to read the whole thing. For those reading here, can you tell us in nutshell what Facebreak is all about?

Worthen: Thanks, John. Chapter One is the foundation of the book. And that is simply this: Because we are hardwired to be curious, people will log on to Facebook and get curious about other people including ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends, ex-husbands, ex-wives, and what happened with Eileen or Jason from college. Not a problem.

Except if you are in a committed relationship. And once you go down that yellow brick road and your partner is unaware of it, well, you will run into what I coined a “Facebreak.” And that is a break in affinity, reality, and communication with your partner as a result of secretive behavior while online.

White: This is the “Invisible Line” you speak about in the book, yes?

Worthen: Yes. The “Invisible Line” is that invisible line inside all of us that really is just our own personal integrity. If you’re sitting on your laptop at home and your wife is doing dishes in the kitchen and you flip over to Megan’s profile you know from work, and then scroll down and start ogling her bikini pictures from her vacation in Cancun, you have crossed this line.

How do you know? Because when you hear your wife come into the living room, you immediately click off that page and back to your Fantasy Football page. You then look up at her a bit sheepishly like a teenager who just stuffed a Playboy under the couch cushion.

White: Wow! Sounds like your book has exposed some truths for people they may have given little or no importance to, yet as I was reading it I realized that this situation is much bigger than I ever imagined.

Worthen: Yes, it is a huge situation. In fact it was so big, I could not not write this book. There is no other book out on the market like this. It has become the “norm” to just go look at another’s profile or pictures because hey, you’re not breaking any laws. Well, you’re not breaking any laws looking at Megan’s bikini pictures, but if it’s not something to hide, then there’s no need to flip off her page when your wife walks in, right?

In fact if you and your wife are good, you shouldn’t mind her sitting down next to you when she asks “What are you looking at, honey?” and show her Megan posing in that itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polkadot bikini.

White: Ha! I never looked at it like that.

Worthen: Exactly! And let’s flip the tables so you get the other point of view. You’re watching football, and your wife is in the den doing the family finances on her laptop. At a commercial break, you get up to go give your wife a kiss.

You know, to break the mundane task of her doing QuickBooks. You walk in unexpectedly and say “How’s it going, babe?” She looks up nervously, turns a darker shade of red, and replies, “Oh you know, numbers, numbers, numbers…” as she clicks off the page of your friend Jack who is showing off his abs in a gym video he does on his site. Your wife has the hots for Jack. Well, at least his abs.

Because well, you last saw your abs when you watched a Jack LaLanne video. Your wife does that whole David Copperfield thing, so that you have no idea where that elephant went, and you just nod your head to her “...numbers, numbers, numbers” comment and walk over and give her a quick kiss. All is good in Nottingham Forest, yes?

White: I’m curious. What prompted you to look into this and research it as you mention in your book?

Worthen: Great question, John. To be honest, I had no real interest in going down this rabbit hole until these types of situations started appearing more and more in my clients’ businesses and in their married lives.

I have been counseling and consulting professionals for over 40 years. I pretty much knew this landscape.

But with advent of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc., this kind of conduct began to raise its head and cause disruption not only in their marriages, but in the workspace as well.

White: So you end up finding these personal issues that then have disrupted the flow of the business and because it’s hidden and done steathily, executives and businessmen miss it? They assume something else is going on?

Worthen: Exactly! And let’s take the example of someone who is married and in the workspace also sexting or flirting with someone via Facebook while at work.

If Ed is sexting Mary Ann over in Marketing and she is flirting back, it’s all “fun and games.” Again, this is just off the rails but it’s going on every day in businesses all over the world. And even if Ed and Mary Ann “get away with it,” that storyline never ends up good. Never. They meet in a hotel for sex without anyone knowing, but in this day and age that’s nearly impossible. So someone from work “outs” Mary Ann because she’s a hardass boss and then the whole thing explodes.

Ed’s business might have been doing great, except now all that profit is paying divorce attorneys. Speaking of which, here is a statistic I hope readers take notice of because it’s a stunner:

“A survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers found that Facebook is cited as evidence in 66 percent of divorces in the United States. Also, more than 80 percent of divorce lawyers reported they ‘have seen an increase in the number of cases using social networking evidence’ during the past few years.”

White: So, did you give advice as to how to handle these situations that people were opening up about in your book?

Worthen: Yes I did. In my book I state right from the beginning that I’m not here to preach or moralize or lay down some kind of hard dogma about how you or anyone interacts in the online world. But since my goal in life is to help professionals flourish and prosper in both their personal and business lives, in each chapter I offer suggestions from my 40 years of training and working with couples.

My book is actually a guide for when you and/or your partner run into something where either one or both of you have crossed that “Invisible Line,” that you have some sage advice as to how to correct your course and get back on track.

White: Wow, that’s fantastic. So if a person reads your book and they realize their relationship is gone beyond their ability to handle, how can you help them?

Worthen: I actually offer a free phone consultation to get a real understanding of their particular situation. Because in truth, John, separation or divorce starts long before they get to the courthouse. When either partner begins to even entertain the idea of a separation or divorce, they’re already in trouble.

They may stay together but in truth they are a million miles apart emotionally and spiritually. And that, my friend, is a facebreak of major proportions. In my free consultation I take the time to truly help them isolate the exact areas of difficulty and give them real answers to the problems they have right now.

And I stick with them until they are in good communication and their relationship is back on track.

To learn more, you can find Dave’s book on Amazon here and connect with him on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and beBee or just give him a call at 303-641-6647, like I did.