Reverend Cedric Miller says if you’re married, get off Facebook. The holy man is blaming the social networking site for nothing but heartache and marital problems, citing secret communications and ease of reconnecting with an old flame.
Miller told the Associated Press that in the last six months, 20 married couples have come to him because their relationship crumbled, and they all blamed Facebook.
So, in his next sermon, Miller will reportedly tell the entire congregation: if you’re married, close your Facebook account.
“The temptation is just too great,” he said, referring to how easy it is to have cyber relations with someone else, or to expose extra-marital affairs that are going on. Facebook can expose, or at least seem to expose, a different life of someone you thought you knew.
If you really need to keep your Facebook account, Miller concedes, then you should share your log-in credentials with your spouse. Keep the transparency there, and don’t have anything to hide.
Of course, many might see blaming Facebook as a copout. Facebook isn’t making anyone be unfaithful or lie. It just makes it easier to do so, but the desire to do it in the first place has to stem from somewhere else.
It is true that in the Facebook era, we’re spending less and less time talking to people around us in real life. Maybe that should be the real message here. You can have a Facebook account, but if you’re unhappy with your marriage, seek out positive ways to deal with it. Talk to your spouse. Don’t turn to Facebook to complain about it and do something you might regret.
