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Kristin O'Neill blames Facebook for her recent breakup. O'Neill, a financial worker from Quincy, created an account on Facebook.com this year after hearing about the social networking site's popularity from her boyfriend and friends. What she found on the site was the stuff of a bad Lifetime channel movie: Her guy had created two separate profiles. He posted salacious comments on other women's photos, and he claimed he was in an open relationship. With printouts of his photo comments, O'Neill confronted her boyfriend of two years. He confessed. She dumped him.

O'Neill, 25, has experienced firsthand Facebook's power to sour relationships. "It can be misused and abused," she said. "It's an easy way for guys to try and not get caught. Girls too. It gives motive to snoop. It's just awful."

Facebook has introduced millions of people to new friends online and expanded social circles. But the site is also creating new social dilemmas for couples: What do you do when an old flame finds you on the site and requests to be friends? How does that sudden blast from the past affect your current relationship? Do tensions arise when you see an old boyfriend or girlfriend or an unfamiliar face listed among your significant other's friends?

The topic is gaining currency as former high school classmates, college crushes, and exes increasingly rediscover each other online. As Facebook mushrooms in popularity - there are now 120 million active users - so has the number of these instant reunions, which are causing headaches and annoyances for couples.

For some people, learning that a partner is chatting with former love interests is too close for comfort. With its awkward intersection of the present and the past, Facebook has become a third wheel to real-world relationships.

"It's easier to find people," said Charles Lindholm, professor of anthropology at Boston University, where he teaches a class on romance. "You can have these extensive networks that you didn't have in the past. When your old girlfriend in high school can look you up and start a conversation with you, it might be from a distance but it is still a conversation. It's part of a larger thing, the networking of the middle-class world."

These Facebook flirtations are stirring debates online. At least a dozen discussion groups on the site and on personal blogs deal with the topic. Message boards declare: "Facebook Ruins Relationships." In one forum, a member confessed: "A three-year relationship ruined . . . if it weren't for Facebook, I would have never known he was sneaking around with other girls. . . . It's pretty much the new form of cheating."


Throw'd TV Presents : Facebook Breakup
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