Should Facebook Play a Role in Your Marriage?

The New York Times had an interesting piece about how some couples use Facebook as a tool to air their relationship dirty laundry. The article talks about two soon-to-be-married 22 year olds who have a habit of embarrassing themselves with childish Facebook tiffs and melodramatic status updates. The two also frequently change their relationship statuses from “Engaged” to “It’s Complicated.” They laugh off all these theatrics and assure the paper they still plan to marry this May. Mazel Tov!

The Times is in awe of this phenomenon, partially due to the fact we all know the type. Each one of us has a stormy duo nestled in our Facebook friend list whose schizophrenic statuses make our newsfeed feel like a social networking soap opera (which is why we used that handy and oh-so-brilliant “hide” feature).

Should your hubby’s inability to take out the garbage (or satisfy you emotionally) be something everyone on Facebook knows? Is there any benefit to over-sharing? Like in the case of the new show The Marriage Ref where marital fights are weighed like court cases, does it truly take a village to raise a relationship?

This is the era of Too Much Information. People blog about their one-night stands like they do the weather, we double-click on panty-less celebrity shots, and thanks to the tabloid magazine industry we know all about Tiger Woods’ affinity for hair-pulling and spanking. We’ve grown desensitized, and maybe even a little bored, of these details.

However, the real story here is our culture’s narcissism. To blast personal details willingly (and even proudly) doesn’t say so much about the actual relationship as it does in our assumption that the world (or our 400 facebook friends) cares.