Facebook endangers our relationships as a couple
There has been a long talk about whether the Internet and new technologies keep us isolated or not. It is natural, considering that the image of someone lending all their attention a screen is very iconic and striking.
However, there is a debate that has opened more recently: can social networks like Facebook endanger our romantic relationships, regardless of whether or not we break the rules we have set with our partners?
Some research, such as that published in the journal Cyberpsychology & Behavior, points to the possibility that Facebook is acting as a driver of couple conflicts and episodes of lattice that would not appear if this social network did not exist. Let's see the reasons that can make this so.
The seed is insecurity, in social networks
Insecurity and bad self-image are, by themselves, ingredients that can lead to very intense couple crisis . The fact that you do not have too much confidence in yourself can also cause you to lose trust in others, leading to think that being above us will take advantage of the opportunities they have to deceive us.
In the case of couple relationships the same thing can happen, but with an added problem: the fact of distrusting others and feeling insecure or insecure , and the stereotype of couple roles as a dynamic of relationships in which one has to control the person one wants, can cause a false sense of legitimacy to appear to try to control the other person. Of course, this not only damages the relationship, but also leads to committing actions that threaten the couple's freedom and produce a suffering that can not be justified.
Too much information?
What does Facebook have to do with this? Well, basically, that this social network can be an enhancer of insecurity, anxiety and distrust.
On the one hand, Facebook floods us with information about the other person. Information that we probably would not have "discovered" in a context of face-to-face interaction with the other person, but which is also extremely ambiguous, as it is not in context.
The fact of having a lot of information that is also insufficient to understand what it refers to, can be the bomb that detonates all the insecurities and promote distrust, because forces us to mentally complete incomplete data that reaches us ... which does not always lead to pleasant conclusions. Somehow, the fact that the most pessimistic and alarming explanations entail a greater excitement and emotional charge makes the nicest hypotheses eclipsed and lose prominence: they may be the right ones, but ... what if they are not? ?
Some examples of couples that break
In a study published in 2011 in Anthropological Quarterly you can see some examples of how insecurity and the fact of having incomplete information can lead to generating love conflicts. In this research, a series of interviews was conducted with several people who have declared that Facebook has been harmful to their relationships (some of them, even eliminating their profile in this social network for that reason).
Some of the answers given refer to photographs, which most of the time appear in context for most people. This leads to thoughts like: "When and where did you take this picture with her?" or "Why have you been at his side to take the picture?" You can also think about the fact that the person in question has still added to his ex-partner or interacts with one of his publications, and it can even produce anxiety that the other person knows and interacts regularly with an unknown person which we consider very attractive or attractive.
These are situations that by themselves do not lead to mistrust, but that can lead to a dynamic that forces people to consider all options to fill in the missing information. And, as soon as it seems the first pessimistic explanation, doubts already appear: Ockham's rationality and Razor have little power in the face of irrational fear.
