What's Your Status?

Read an interesting article from the Today Show today called, "Reasons to Unfriend Your Spouse on Facebook". My husband was actually reading it this morning while eating breakfast. He read bits and pieces out loud. I was washing the dishes and caught little tidbits here and there. Later, I decided to read the full article myself and then to present it to you guys for your thoughts.

The gist of the article discusses how in the social networking age of Facebook, Twitter, and yes, even Blogger and every other like-minded site, there's no mystery left to the imagination. Everyone just puts it all out there. From what they ate that morning to sometimes their deepest and most private convictions. Sex therapist, Ian Kerner, argues that before this tell-all age, there was actually an element of excitement to romance and getting to know people. The unknown, as scary as it could be, also ignited that giddiness that relationships thrive on. We all remember how much fun and nerve-wracking it was to wait for that special someone to call. But now with everything being instantaneous, are we heading into a life of tell-all over-kill? Complete boredom with the expected?

I must admit, I still mourn the old-fashioned love letter. When you had to wait for the mail, heart thumping as you opened up the mail box, praying that you'd find a letter in there with that special someone's handwriting. Now love letters are typed out and sent instantly. And you can reply instantly. Of course there's always the choice to wait before responding, but it's still not the same. When opening up a letter, you can feel the ink, smell the person, even kiss the paper! There's something very romantically tangible about that.

Now back to Facebook, Dr. Kerner, warns couples of allowing Facebook and these other sites to fizzle out their romance. The article also gives a few testimonials with people expressing their facebook disdain and why. One man complains he doesn't need to know when his wife goes for a second cappuccino or is feeling bloated! I can relate to the article. I've heard many friends complain that their spouse is on Facebook too often. It's very addicting. Some friends even complained their spouse was taking their computer into the bathroom with them to play on Facebook while "handling their buisness"!

I guess we must ask ourselves, where's the fine line? As the article mentions, Facebook allows for some great catching up, sharing and even serves as a temporary outlet for people. But when is it too much? Is Facebook postpoing our intimacy? Would we really rather be updating our status more than spending valuable time with our spouse and children?

Sadly, the answer is sometimes yes. And when that's true, what is it about Facebook that's so much fun and fills that void, big or small? Can we find that missing link and put it back into our marriages during those times?

When my husband comes home from work a lot of times I am a complete Chatty Cathy. I want to tell him everything that happened that day down to the minutia. I'm just so happy to see him and after spending all day talking to an infant, I'm craving adult interaction. But a lot of times the stuff I want to tell him is so trivial and pointless. It's just me unloading all of my random thoughts throughout the day. I must say, he's usually very patient and listens quite well. But I'm sure many times he'd rather put some duct tape on my mouth and turn on the game and veg out! I'm now trying to bring it down a notch. Is this something he has to know? Or does he have to know that very minute? Me not telling him something doesn't mean I'm "hiding" it or keeping secrets from him. And what I'm describing isn't "omission". Simply, prudence. It's a lot like "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". After so much jibber jabber, people are going to start tuning you out and possibly miss out on the really important stuff.

So instead of updating our status moment to moment this week, maybe we should try updating our

Sex lives
Marriages
Quality time with children

and whatever else we've been neglecting in the name of social networking!