Rule 1: Your Facebook should be a completely open book for your husband or wife.
You need to “password-protect” your marriage. No joke. This means that your husband or wife should be able to log onto your Facebook account at a moment’s notice, any time of the day or night, especially when you are not there. Aside from, perhaps, planning a surprise party for your husband, if you are keeping anything “secret” from him in terms of your online interactions with other men, you are heading down a slippery slope.
How to avoid it? Simple: He should know your password and, of course, if he has a Facebook account, you should know his.
This rule isn’t intended to foster “snooping” or paranoia, but it will help you ensure transparency and honesty with your husband or wife when it comes to your dealings with others online.
Guys, knowing that your wife can at any time read anything you write on your Facebook page will have a very clarifying effect on what you write. In other words, abiding by this rule will help you avoid situations in which you might be tempted to say something you wouldn’t want your wife to see.
One solution (aside from cancelling your Facebook page altogether) is to simply share one Facebook page between the two of you. Doing this can help fire-proof your marriage against an unscrupulous old flame.
Rule 2: Don’t flirt on Facebook.
Not even a little bit. Not even in jest. What you think of as harmless could actually be a stumbling block of temptation to someone else. We all know what it’s like when something we’ve written in an e-mail, something intended to be completely innocuous and friendly, is misconstrued by the recipient as snarky or mean.
Correcting negative miss-impressions resulting from misunderstood text can be tricky. Just imagine how much more difficult it can be to fix a problem caused be someone who thinks you’re flirting with her, especially if she is receptive to it and starts reciprocating.
And ladies, my hunch is that this is even more true in reverse. Your intentions may be entirely innocent, but under the right wrong circumstances, a man could easily misconstrue your witty repartée in a way you didn’t intend it. Don’t be brusque, of course, but do be circumspect in what you say.
We all have to remember that Big Things start out small. When it comes to temptations to flirt on Facebook, the safest course by far is simply to refuse to let the small things get started in the first place.
Rule 3: Don’t waste time on Facebook.
This doesn’t mean don’t use Facebook, but definitely don’t waste time on it. And as someone who uses Facebook, I know this is easier said than done. Most of us in the modern digital age know from experience the temptation to fritter away valuable time online.
Facebook can be a huge and even dangerous time-drain. Why dangerous? Because if you aren’t careful, wandering aimlessly from page to page, profile to profile, picture to picture, can quickly lead down the path of undue curiosity that can just as quickly lead to lustful thoughts, which can, if you’re not careful and willing to discipline yourself, lead to worse things.
The old adage is certainly true: “Idleness is the devil’s workshop.” Or, as the famous wit wit Samuel Johnson once wrote: “If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.”
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