For the love of facebook

Nancy, a second-year student at a local university, blames Facebook for her recent romantic breakup. She created an account on facebook.com last year after learning of the social networking site’s popularity from her friends.

What she found on the site was the stuff bad experiences are made of: Her boyfriend, whom she met through the site, kept posting salacious comments on other women’s photographs, and he claimed he was in “an open relationship”.

Armed with printouts of his photo comments, she confronted her boyfriend of 7 months. He confessed. They broke up.

Winnie, 25, has also experienced Facebook’s power to sour relationships.

“The site can be misused and abused. It’s an easy way for guys to try and not get caught. Girls, too. It gives one a motive to snoop. It’s awful and hard to quit,” she says.

With every new online fad have come stories of people wandering away from their relationships to a new cyber love interest. The media have spotlighted tales and trends of online affairs, starting with Facebook chat rooms, MySpace, Second Life and others.

Facebook is one of the most popular social sites. It has introduced millions of people to new friends and expanded social circles. But the site is also creating new social dilemmas for couples:

What do you do when an old flame finds you on the site and requests to be a friend? How does that sudden blast from the past affect your current relationship?

Do tensions arise when you see an old boyfriend or girlfriend, or an unfamiliar face, listed among your significant other’s friends?

This subject is gaining momentum as former high school classmates, college crushes, and past lovers increasingly rediscover each other online.

As Facebook mushrooms in popularity, so has the number of these instant reunions, which are causing headaches and annoyances to those in serious relationships.

Facebook flirtations are stirring many debates. A dozen discussion groups on the site and on personal blogs deal with the topic. Message boards declare:

“Facebook ruins relationships.” “Don’t let Facebook break your relationship”. In one forum, a member confessed: “If it were not for Facebook, I would never have known he was sneaking around with other girls... Facebook is not a place for those in serious relationships.”

For most people, learning that a partner is chatting with a former love is too close for comfort. With its awkward intersection of the present and the past, Facebook has become a third wheel to real-world relationships.

Dr Lukoye Atwoli, a consultant psychiatrist and a lecturer at Moi University, says that since Facebook provides people with an opportunity to interact with each other and the possibility of users revealing many intimate details about them, the site could be a new form of cheating.

“Just like other computer-based social networks, Facebook provides one with a false sense of security, an illusion that one is alone when in reality one is communicating instantly with millions of other Internet users.

What you state about yourself to others in Facebook enters the public domain and it is difficult to erase. So if you are married yet your status reads “single”, and if you keep flirting, then you will be telling others you are available,” says Dr Atwoli.

Anthropologist Chebet Chepkok agrees that Facebook is slowly changing the dating scene.

“It’s easier to find people. You can have these extensive networks that you didn’t have in the past. When your old girlfriend or boyfriend in high school starts a conversation with you, it might be from a distance but it is still a conversation. It’s part of a larger thing, the networking of the middle-class world. In its current form, Facebook is becoming a big threat to marriage,” she says.

“If you are married and your Facebook profile indicates your full names, your address, your birth-date, your employer information, your hometown, your cell phone number, your email addresses and a lot of other personal information, you are inviting strangers to ruin your relationship. Leave Facebook to singles, teenagers, idlers and jokers. Try to get a social life elsewhere,” she says.

But Sam Wambugu, a monitoring and evaluation specialist, says blaming Facebook and other social networks for a failed relationship won’t help.

“In some cases, Facebook encounters have resulted in commitments to strong relationships! And as far as I know, Facebook gives you exactly what you are looking for. If you are looking for friends, you will get thousands of them. If you are looking for an old flame, you will get him or her in a click.

“As for failed relationships, Facebook is not to blame. It is the choices we make online and offline in cyberspace — and in real life — that count,” says Wambugu.

Some users of Facebook say they don’t mind if their better half engages in conversations with former romantic interests. They believe the initial rush of reconnecting with an old friend fizzles out after a few exchanges.

Elizabeth, a cyber attendant, knows that her boyfriend of two years chats with ex-girlfriends and old crushes. It doesn’t bother her, because she is alerted whenever he befriends someone or posts a comment. Still, she considers the site an online busybody.

“It can be a little invasive,” she says. “If we had been dating for just a few months, I wouldn’t feel so confident. It really depends on the relationship. When you are in the first part of a relationship, you pay attention to little things.”

Alex, a Nairobi-based web designer, uses Facebook to keep track of his past love through a stream of updates. He regularly catches up with her in spite of being in a committed relationship.

“I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing,” says the 29-year-old.

“Poking” or flirting with various people, especially of the opposite sex, is just one way of relaxing when you are stressed up. "I love the fact that Facebook lets me do that.”

For Patric ole Ntete, 23, a pharmacist in Kajiado, Facebook is destroying his existing relationship.

“My former high school girlfriend is making life unbearable for me. She keeps sending salacious messages and tagging sexy images on my Facebook wall.

“But I am trying to ignore her. Removing her from my list of friends won’t help because she has all my contacts. I am lucky that my current girlfriend is not on Facebook.”

While Facebook is becoming one of the most popular social sites on the Internet, it doesn’t have to be a cyber threat to relationships. Relationships are vulnerable to all kinds of online and real-life threats.

Couples should set up proper boundaries of protection and accountability. Ultimately, it is up to those in relationships to make good decisions and have open lines of communication with their mates, whether online or offline.