Cheating online? Facebook will catch you out

If you’re being unfaithful to your partner but haven’t been extremely careful about your Facebook profile, you are very likely to be caught out.

And rightly so.

Divorce lawyers are ditching the old-fashioned methods — private detectives and the like — in favour of snooping the social networks to catch out cheating spouses.

A careless status update or a series of compromising photographs could be all that’s needed to catch someone out, making them look less favourable in court.

Not only can social networks be used to catch cheaters, but they may also be responsible for extra-marital affairs in the first place.

Some of the recent privacy concerns surrounding Facebook in particular have meant that people are often unaware just how far-reaching their information may be shared, or easily found by those specifically searching for it.

It’s not just you who needs to be careful, either. If anyone else — the person you might be having a liaison with, or mutual friends — publishes something online about you, it could still land you in hot water.

That is, if you’ve got something you want to hide, of course.

“Attorneys advise users of Facebook and other social media who are headed toward a divorce or custody battle to edit their profiles, be cautious about updating statuses and double check to see who is really a “friend.”

Or to make things easier — at least until the trial is over or a settlement is reached — just get off Facebook completely.”

Via (Photo credit)

Larry King ready to divorce seventh wife

Brits may not recognise the name Larry King, unless they are avid fans of American chat shows, but the talking point here is just how many wives he has got through.

News today suggests that he is ready to divorce his seventh wife (and in fact has filed for divorce eight times).

In fact, with his seventh wife Shawn Southwick he’s done rather well as (celebrity) marriages go — managing 13 years and having two sons with her.

However, it all sounds pretty acrimonious now, with reports that King is petitioning a judge not to award 50-year-old Southwick spousal support or transfer of property to her.

He’s also seeking joint custody of the kids, while his wife wants sole custody.

The guy is getting on a bit, though, and as Southwick was only 28 years his junior, perhaps he’s looking for a younger model to take him into his octogenarian years.

Sandra Bullock: Cheat on her, you get nothing

It turns out that the near-ubiquitous prenuptial agreement that every celebrity couple now arranges before the wedding day has worked in savvy Sandra Bullock’s favour.

Perhaps you’d expect the potential breakup of Sandra and husband Jesse James to net him a handsome chunk of her fortune, but the fact is that he messed about with another woman (women) — something expressly forbidden not only by the marriage vows but also by the pre-nup.

When you can’t stay faithful — five times — to your wife and still expect something in return, you’re deluding yourself.

Via

Election 2010: Tories’ plans for marriage-friendly taxes questioned

With the country still tentatively coming out of recession, it’s been difficult getting exact budgetary figures from any of the major political parties.

We know that the Conservative Party has been talking about family values for a long time now, but now that the General Election is looming, its plans to introduce taxes that benefit married couples are being scrutinised.

The Financial Times reports that the party has refused to comment on its speculation that £1bn would be ploughed into benefiting married couples.

Speculators believe that the Tory party could scale back the plan to give all married couples a single transferable tax allowance, instead opting for something that benefits newlyweds or those parents with under-3s.

Unfortunately, it seems likely that we won’t get any specific answers from any party until after the election, and even if we do, things often change once they get into power.

Improved marriage counselling can cut divorce rate

That headline sounds almost obvious, right?

We know that you can prove most things with statistics, but having said that, some interesting new figures have come from the UK’s Office of National Statistics…

The number of divorces in England and Wales decreased 5% in 2008 compared to the previous year, while in Scotland it was a 10% drop, and 4.8% in Northern Ireland.

Though the figures can’t paint the whole picture, experts believe that better counselling may have improved the figures.

It’s worth bearing in mind that these statistics don’t include couples that are living together unmarried, and there could be a range of other factors involved. However, it would be good to think that struggling couples are seeking advice and help, and that in an increased number of cases it’s working.

What we don’t know is how the economic crisis will affect rates in subsequent years. There have also been suggestions of a two per cent rise in the UK divorce rate this year.

English schools’ revised sex education curriculum to focus on family

The Evolution of Sex Education

I’m no expert on how sex and relationships education in schools has changed over the years, but stereotypically things have become more liberal of late, with a focus much more on the process and physical repercussions of sex than on moral and societal issues surrounding the subject.

I can’t say that this is absolutely true, because schools can teach things in different ways, with more or less emphasis placed on issues beyond “how sex works”.

However, thanks in part to the way society has changed, particularly over the last decade or so, in its attitudes to sex and its portrayal in the media, the UK government on both sides is now looking at promoting familial and stable relationships.

Yesterday, the standard curriculum for sex education in English schools was updated to place more value on the moral and relational aspects of sex.

Delaying Sex

In an age-appropriate way, children will now be taught that it’s OK to delay having sex, and that they shouldn’t feel pressured by friends or the media into becoming sexually active as the “normal” thing to do.

Stability

Marriage and other stable relationships will be heralded as the “bedrock of family life”, with education on “the challenges and responsibilities of parenthood”.

Bullying and Pressure

Sexually-motivated bullying is sadly becoming more common. Mobile phone technology can be used to send compromising photographs which, apart from being illegal in the eyes of the law, could cause great distress to those victims caught on camera.

Other advice will warn about overtly sexualised imagery now prevalent in most types of media, including television, magazines, advertising and the Internet.

Comment

Children’s Secretary Ed Balls said, “Young people today grow up in a very different world to the one their parents knew as children.

“New technologies and a 24-hour media mean that young people are increasingly exposed to images and content that can make them feel pressure to be sexually active before they are ready and can give them misleading information about relationships and growing up.

“We also want young people to understand the importance of marriage and other stable relationships – these are the bedrock of family life, the best way to bring up children and the kind of relationships we want young people to develop as they get older.”

What do you think of the changes?

Photo credit: Made Underground

Via

UK divorce rate could rise 2% in 2010

According to the same online agency that told us Facebook is bad for marriage, the UK’s divorce rate could rise for the first time in a decade.

MD of Divorce-Online, Mark Keenan, expects to see at least a two per cent rise in divorce in 2010, with the recession generally to blame for much of this.

Britain’s annual divorce rate, at around 12 per 1,000 based on current figures, is still one of the world’s highest despite the fact that the rate has dropped over the past ten years.

Interestingly, some reports from last year thought that couples might stay together because of the poor financial climate, yet Keenan reckons a rise in property prices means couples can sell a house and move on without large debts.

Facebook bad for marriage says new research

Social networking phenomenon Facebook is at least partly responsible for one in five marriage breakups, if you believe the latest research from a British online divorce service.

By scanning their divorce petition database, they found that the word “Facebook” was used in 989 out of 5,000 cases sampled.

It seems that virtual infidelity, often starting with “inappropriate sexual chats”, have caused the most upset.

Of course, the research isn’t perfect by any means.

Firstly, this is from a scan of their own database, and therefore implies that their clients are technologically savvy.

Secondly, it only scans for one term, and doesn’t imply that use of such Internet services are wholly responsible for people filing for divorce.

Perhaps if there are already problems in a marriage, one or both partners may make problems worse by their online behaviour, but generally I think this would be a byproduct rather than the initial cause.

Having said that, it’s interesting that seven in ten Brits say online flirting is acceptable.

We also have interesting, albeit sensationalist, stories like that of a couple driven apart by online games.

So, I’m not surprised that Facebook and other online activity can play a part in marriage breakdowns, but it’s certainly not the sole cause in most cases.

Bad economy: divorce down, domestic violence up

Last year, when the scale of the economic crisis was still dawning upon us, the UK’s Office of National Statistics found that the slowing property market could be reducing the divorce rate.

That doesn’t mean that relationships have suddenly got significantly better. In fact, financial turmoil places a real strain on relationships, and new statistics from US-based LegalMatch paint a much more worrying picture.

While this year’s divorce rate increase of 12% was much less than in previous years (28%), cases of domestic violence had increased over previous years.

Added to this, in November 2008, the National Domestic Abuse Hotline, headquartered in Austin, Texas, reported a 21 percent increase in calls compared to last year.

While I’m a strong believer in marriage, the numbers suggest a sad story: that many in relationships where one partner has violent tendencies are even less able to leave now that the financial situation is so dire, and yet that same predicament is obviously leading some people to higher levels of aggression.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can provide a greater sense of security.

What’s really important is to talk to your partner straight away when it comes to dealing with financial problems.

Young people still want to live “happily ever after” but lack skills for marriage

If you believe everything the media says, you’d be forgiven for thinking that marriage is on the way out, with commitment a dirty word.

However, research from the Healthy Marriage Resource Centre amongst 18-30 year-olds suggests that four in five do still want to get married and stay married.

At one level that’s encouraging because it means that a large number of people want to commit to a long-term relationship. However, the Centre suggests that there’s often a wide reality gap between the perception of marriage and the reality.

“Once married, conflicts may arise over money, parenting, and other important issues,” said project director Mary Myrick.

“We want to get people talking about the complexity of healthy marriages and provide tools and tips for making relationships work during challenging times,” says Myrick. “We are targeting young adults because they are the group most likely to be considering marriage for the first time and are most likely to access an online resource like TwoOfUs.org.”

Though it’s so easy to get married, it’s most definitely worth investing time in some form of pre-marriage course or counselling.

Though there’s some evidence to suggest that people in a good marriage can have better health, financial stability and life expectancy, no-one wants to be trapped in a bad marriage that was ill-conceived.

Taking time to sit down, ideally with a more experienced couple, and discuss aspirations and expectations, may seem unromantic in the excitement of planning a wedding and new life together, but I believe it’s vital. I certainly value the course I attended with my wife before we married.

Get that computer out of our bed! Virtual reality drives wedge between couple

There’s nothing like a bit of tech sex to sell tabloid newspapers, so the recent report that a wife wants to divorce her husband because he took part in virtual gay sex in the online game Second Life isn’t much of a surprise.

I reported on the threat of virtual adultery over three years ago, with some counsellors agreeing.

It’s easy to blame the Internet for all sorts of relationship problems, but as far as I’m concerned the reality is that anything can come between a husband and wife if the communication channels become blocked.

The trouble is that, while a husband’s uncontrollable urges for football or fishing or snooker or cars – or whatever other pastimes may take his fancy – can still be limited to some extent, computers and the Internet are available 24/7 and offer access to a huge range of things that could help to undermine a less-than-happy marriage.

Take the case of Lisa Best, as reported in the News of the World (not the most reliable of sources, granted, but let’s use this as a case study).

Lisa woke up in the middle of the night to find her “computer-mad husband … having virtual sex with another man on his laptop while he was in bed with her.”

For the uninitiated, Second Life is a type of virtual world where you adopt a character (called an avatar) and embark on adventures and relationships with other people. It’s escapism. It’s a fantasy, and one that many people find themselves increasingly hooked on.

John, her husband, said that there was no issue because it wasn’t real life.

She said “As far as I am concerned, having virtual sex with a man is the same as having sex with him in real life.”

He said “Second Life is just an escape and my avatar was just exploring things that I’d never sample – or want to sample – in real life.”

So who’s right?

Well, though I have my own views on this, I’ll attempt to sit on the fence and say that there’s no absolute right or wrong answer.

However…

If a wife (or husband) is unhappy with how their spouse is behaving, then there’s a problem.

It’s not for me to say whether John Best fantasises about being with other men, though it seems strange to me that you’d entertain such things – even in a virtual world – for so long without having some desire for them.

For me, that’s not the main point of the story, though I can sympathise with Lisa that it must be causing her a great deal of stress, confusion and inner turmoil.

The main point is why is one member of the marriage so attached to something that their marriage is suffering?

Granted, John may not have realised that his marriage was in trouble until that fateful night – he seemed keen enough to brush off the incident when confronted. However, anyone with such an obsession is in real trouble of messing up significant real-life relationships.

The article notes:

[Lisa] blames John’s computer obsession for destroying their sex life and any social interaction they had.

“Sex became less and less until in the end he just didn’t want it any more. In the past six months we only had it once-and that was after I pestered him for it,” she said.

Houston, we definitely have a problem.

“Over the course of 18 months I basically turned into a computer widow. He was more interested in his Facebook and MySpace friends than in me.”

Think this is extreme?

At one level, perhaps, but don’t believe that you could never fall into such a trap.

I know that, in my own marriage, we’ve put in boundaries and safeguards so that neither of us ends up neglecting the other.

For me, it’s ensuring that I don’t continue to work late into the evenings.

It’s also about maintaining communication. Spending time on Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, or indeed anything else in itself isn’t a problem. What is a problem is when it becomes obsessive or secretive.

What do you think?

Babies aren’t bad for marriage, but starting a family won’t save a couple

Having a baby won’t save a bad marriage.

In fact, some couples report reduced satisfaction in the relationship with their partner after starting a family.

That may sound depressing, even fatalistic, but the truth is that parents who plan a family and collaborate with parenting are much less likely to experience this dip. It’s even likely to lead to a happier marriage and better-adjusted children.

Thinking about it for a moment it may seem obvious, but I’m sure there are still plenty of couples teetering along their precarious relationship path that believe that having a child together will improve their marriage.

Very unlikely.

A New York Times article by Tara Parker-Pope quotes from the most recent studies that point to the time bind facing new parents and the burden on women resulting from increased household work as factors in reducing marital bliss. She holds out hope to her readers by reporting the finding from a 50-year longitudinal study of Mills College women that couples are likely to reconnect once their children leave home.

For parents of young children, that’s a very long time to wait. And it’s not good news for the children either, because children are more likely to have social, emotional, and academic problems when their parents’ marriage is in distress.

Many of these findings on marital distress in the early childrearing years are based on the uncritical use of averages. More in-depth examination reveals that the averages hide considerable variation. Detailed interviews with 96 couples, followed for 6 years after their first babies were born, revealed four different pathways that couples take in deciding to become pregnant and carry the pregnancy to term:

• First are couples who agree about when to begin trying to become pregnant (about half of the sample).
• Then there are the couples who “find themselves pregnant” and decide to “accept fate” and go ahead (about 15%).
• Another set of couples (about 20% of the sample) are still ambivalent when they reach the 7th month of pregnancy.
• Finally, for some couples who are at serious loggerheads about the decision, one spouse agrees to become a parent only because the other threatens to go it alone (about 10%).

The average decline in marital satisfaction was almost completely accounted for by couples who

1. slid into having a baby without planning
2. were still ambivalent about becoming parents in late pregnancy, or
3. disagreed about having a baby but went ahead and conceived without resolving their difference.

About half the planners showed increased marital satisfaction or maintenance of their initially positive level in measurements taken when their babies were about 18 months old. All the couples where one partner had given in (usually the man) were either separated or divorced by the time their first child entered kindergarten.

The study concludes that it’s very unwise to rush into parenthood before both partners are ready. Partners need to start by having a discussion or a series of discussions – by making a decision. If both partners can express both sides of their feelings, it is less likely that one partner will carry all the ambivalence for the couple.

When both partners feel they are part of this major family decision, they are more likely to be able to meet the challenges of balancing the needs of both partners in terms of work and family. All this bodes well for their developing relationship with each other and with their child – and ultimately for their child’s sense of security and well-being.

www.contemporaryfamilies.org/

Next Page »