The Facebook Diaries

“My wife filed for divorce today and I don’t know it yet. To all my friends – I have been cheating on my wife for three years…. This is what Facebook will do to weak people.”

Damn.

It was past my bedtime and as I went back to Facebook to comment on a reply to one of my posts, hit the home button instead and BAM! This was the message I saw posted on my friend John’s* page. I stopped for a second and said out loud “What the hell?? This must be a joke” but when I clicked his profile, I realized it was far from being a joke.

As I quickly scanned the page, I noticed several other posts and two things immediately jumped out at me: first, that one of the previous posts actually had the name of the woman John was planning on sleeping with during his 2 week break from military deployment. Second, the grammar was horrible and I know John was a pretty decent speller, plus these posts were written in ALL CAPS.

A light bulb turned on.

This wasn’t John writing this confession of his indiscretions or admissions of how badly he’s screwed things up. It was his wife.

That light bulb got a little brighter- Another UFT – Unauthorized Facebook Takeover.

Soon, everything started to make sense and the poor souls who were commenting and telling John to “take this mess off of his profile”, “pray for forgiveness” and “try working things out to salvage his family”, didn’t realize it wasn’t him until much later. In fact, it wasn’t until one of his male friends said “Uh… A man would never do anything like this and if he did, he would NOT mention any names. This must be his wife.”

We will never know why this woman needed to take it there or how in the world she gained access to his password, but its obvious that she sure as hell found whatever she was looking for. Access to all of the Facebook messages he had sent or received, seeing his plans with “several” women, including the one she outed (using her first AND last name) in a wall post. The wife had seen everything and made it a point to go through all of John’s previous wall posts as well.

So as I’m reading through 50+ comments to the fake confession, something else came to mind- the types of messages John would sometimes send to me. For a married man or one who is in a committed relationship, he was a little too friendly at times for me. Such that he wasn’t that far from being the next in line for deletion, but once I ignored him enough time, he got the message that I was not entertaining whatever he was trying to develop via Facebook.

Light bulb is burning pretty warm right now. Is this how he started with this woman or the other women? A “Wow, you look sexy in that new photo” or “You make a brother weak in the knees looking at you; not the types of messages I would consider innocent banter. I wondered what she thought of his messages to me?

There are so many other things that come to mind and yes, the bottom line is that he c-h-e-a-t-e-d.

John was, as his wife posted “weak”, and used Facebook as a catalyst for being unfaithful. While several of his friends commented that no one should be judging him unless they were God, I’m not understanding where the judgment comes in. For three years, he had been unfaithful to his wife and while she’s waiting for her honey to return home from somewhere in the middle east, John is making plans for a fluid exchange festival with another woman. Who’s judging? Its wrong, period.

This man may have thought his messages to lord know how many women were innocent, when in reality he was committing the act of cyber cheating.

Did Facebook really enable John to cheat more easily than if he was NOT on there? Oh hell yes! A man in the military who often, has more time on his hands to just surf and browse for women’s profiles? Yes, Facebook makes it easier. People are more accessible and it is easy to do and for some reason, I think people who initiate, plan and follow through on cheating somehow think they’re invincible.

The Guilty Party: John, the cheater.

He was weak and demonstrated a lack of good judgment and of course, completely ruined the concepts associated with his wedding vows. You know the silly little things like being FAITHFUL, COMMITMENT and TRUST.

For men and women like him who are using Facebook or any other type of social media to increase your exposure to people but in the wrong way, cut it out.

Stop making excuses that the woman or man you’re involved with needs to be confident and not intimidated by the number of friends you may have. Are you naive or even stupid enough to think that having nearly 70% of your friends on Facebook consist of the opposite sex is not a little risky or tempting?

John’s wife posted that she had mentioned to him that Facebook. She even added that she had told him recently that this social media outlet was not needed and would only lead to problems in the end. While it is certainly true that he could have relied on the good old telephone (calling or texting) to do his dirt, John’s accessibility to a computer was easier most of the time. Besides, he could easily view photos and wall pots to check on his “women”.

If you are married or in a relationship do you really believe think that stalking person’s profile to get a rundown on everything they’ve been doing, then in-boxing and asking if she enjoyed the party or activity? Do you really think comments to their in box about how sexy a photo looked is harmless?

If people like John are truly trying to say that this is all just harmless dialogue, then why the hell are you doing it behind he scenes?

Surely, I could go on and on. We know it’s wrong but I would be willing to bet that as I’m writing this, a man (or woman) somewhere is having some inappropriate in box dialogue that will likely result in a mashing of body fluids later.

Oh, but what about the wife?

She’s not being let off the hook.

The obvious is that she was wrong, wrong, wrong for accessing the man’s account. Completely wrong. She probably had no idea she would find all that she would about John’s philandering’s so in a way, the hurt, pain, anger and frustration was self-inflicted.

Putting all of her business out there for all 426 (yes, the wifey pointed out the number he could rely on when SHE was done with him) of his friends to see made her look silly, immature and irrational. Posting as if it was him, impersonating another person?

Yes, all bad. Making this God-fearing, church going family man who was well loved and respected look like the devil’s spawn? Man, if anything, she did the most damage here.

Still, I have a certain level of sympathy and understanding. Four years ago, I was that same seemingly raving lunatic on a mission to draw blood. I didn’t go looking for anything and had no reason to believe that my boyfriend at the time was being anything but truthful. Let’s just say the information fell in my lap. MY laptop, that is.

When I realized I had the key to the world – translation, access to Mr. Jekyll’s Facebook AND Hotmail account, I reacted the exact same way as THIS woman. I did the EXACT same thing.

I’m not condoning this woman’s actions and I certainly cannot blame Facebook for John’s actions but again…. I understand.

I guess one day I should share how it went down for me…

Until there’s a cure for the hangovers…

Carmen