Just read this summary from Church Leaders Intelligence Report:

Dave Carder, a California pastor and psychologist who has studied adultery prevention and recovery for more than 30 years, spoke last week at a Smart Marriage conference in Orlando, FL. In his latest book, Close Calls: What Adulterers Want You to Know About Protecting Your Marriage, he details a new adultery risk created by social networking, such as Classmates.com and Facebook. “There’s a new phenomenon—the idea that you can locate and recapture old romances, old flames, old boyfriends and girlfriends from adolescence…in (this) case, the infatuation is already stored in your brain. So if you get back in touch with a person like that—a person you dated, that you kissed, maybe a first-love experience—some 10, 15 years later … Well, the saying in my field is, ‘Thirty days of regular contact with an old girlfriend/old boyfriend and you create an infatuation explosion. And in 30 more days, you will find a way to be with each other.’ So it’s 60 days from the start, because infatuation is a mood-altering experience. It’s a huge drug of choice and will sweep you off your feet.” Carder warns that, especially in times of unusual or sustained stress, a “surprise adultery” can occur where the affair is really an attempt to heal, distract or support yourself from the stressful situations. He encourages couples to watch for the danger signs and “risk factors—certain seasons of life, certain ages, certain life experiences, certain marital stages, personal histories you bring to the marriage—that can set you up for an affair. That doesn’t mean you are going to do it, but like in the disease model, there are risk factors.”

The Washington Times 7/8/09

Social networking sites are a wonderful way to connect with friends and even share the Gospel.  However, we shouldn’t be naive.  Satan can use these connections to tempt us to be unfaithful to our spouse.  We have easy access to relationships that can be unhealthy to our marriage.

April and I made a commitment when joining Facebook that we would never “friend” someone with whom we had been in a relationship before.  It’s been awkward having to explain to high school classmates why I won’t accept their friend requests, but I believe that my marriage is just to important to risk the temptation of rekindling any kind of feelings that were in the past.  What do you think?  Please leave your comments!

David Harsanyi is a staff columnist with the Denver post who claims to be “an atheist and secular kind of guy.”  He writes in an opinion piece for the post, “I practice moral relativism regularly. Still, I’ve always struggled mightily with the ethics and politics of abortion. Apparently, I’m not alone. ”

Take a minute to read his article and let me know if you think that our country’s opinion of abortion is truly changing.