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Breakup in marriage? Blame it on social networking sitesJEDDAH, Apr 30, 2011 (Arab News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- The famous social network website Facebook played a role in the fall of several regimes, such as in Tunisia and Egypt, or at least caused them troubles, as in Libya, Yemen and Syria. However, Facebook sometimes also contributes to the dissolutions of marriages. Occasionally, husbands use the website for adventures: to make friendships with members of the opposite gender. This doesn't always remain unnoticed by their wives, who then start spying on them. They refuse to let their husbands add any female friends to their friends' list. Some wives discover that their husbands are having a good time making friendships with other women and lie about their social status. This leads to extreme situations, in which they ban their husbands from Facebook. Others make fake accounts and add their husband, so that they can catch them red-handed. "A wife that allows her husband to have a Facebook account is crazy," said Fatima Shaker, a housewife. Fatima suffered a lot because of her husband's adventures with other women on Facebook. She said that she wished to delete his account. He promised her when he first joined the social network to use it the right way, but slowly it got out of control. She said that her husband started to behave strangely, like spending a long time on Facebook or adding only women on his friends' list. What was worst in her opinion, was that he mentioned in his status that he was single. "It came to the point that I asked him to delete all the strange girls in his list, but he refused. He tried to convince me that this stayed only on Facebook," she added. Ahmed Rashed, a private company employee, created his account to play games. He started to add friends with the same interests. "When my wife found many female friends on my list, she became angry and asked me to remove all of them. I tried to explain to her that this is a social network and does not relate to what is happening in reality," said Rashed. Rashed was forced to add his wife on Facebook so she could have an idea about the social network. "However, this did not convince her and at the end -- for the sake of my small family -- I was forced to delete the account." Reem Hossam, a private company employee, discovered her fiance was flirting with many women on Facebook. She separated twice from her fiance because of this problem. "I borrowed my fiance's laptop, because mine was damaged. I was logged in to his Facebook account because the password was saved. I was curious about his activities on Facebook, and shockingly discovered that he had many women on his list and was involved in more than one relationship. He was exchanging romantic letters, phone numbers and pictures with them," said Reem. When she confronted him the first time, he promised to delete the account. She added, "I was surprised to find out that days later he created a new account. One of my friends discovered him. I logged in using a fake name and picture and added him. I was astonished by his behavior, because he offered me his phone number and picture and asked me to call him. He even told me that he was single and not engaged. The next time I confronted him, I told him about my decision to break up the engagement because a man with this behavior would never change." To see more of the Arab News or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.arabnews.com. Copyright (c) 2011, Arab News, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. |