Guest Blogger A. Jarrod Jenkins on the impact he feels sites such as Facebook has had on our perception of relationships, sex and sexuality.

The Internet has unquestionably changed the way we perceive relationships and sexuality. You can go onto dating sites and instantly connect with like minded people. We can watch unlimited pornography for free and we’ve realized that there’s more “hot girls” on Facebook than we have time to look at.
Although sites like Match.com have encouraged long term relationships, the net result has been that the Internet, namely social-networking sites such as Facebook leads to promiscuity. Simply put, the Internet has transformed the pool of eligible mates from one’s physical proximity (i.e. school, work, church, etc.) to the entire world.

Take Facebook as an example; it’s no secret that Facebook doubles up as a dating site. David Kirkpatrick’s new book The Facebook Effect seems to confirm this fact. The most important element of a Facebook page is the profile picture because it is what draws others to the page. Generally, people don’t put up profile pictures that make them look bad. In the case of women, you’d be hard pressed to find a woman that is going to put a picture that makes to look fat or like they just rolled out of bed.  Women also know that men are more likely to visit a profile page if they post a sexy picture.  Not all women, like my girlfriend, want men to notice them. However, those who want to be noticed have an incentive to stand out amongst the millions of women on Facebook (or at least the couple hundred on a guy’s friends list).  And if they are really looking for the attention of men, they’ll put “Whatever I Can Get” on their relationship status.

And without exception men will respond. Men try to act macho, but in reality no man likes being turned down. As such, men nowadays are more likely to send a woman a Facebook message than to approach that same woman when she’s walking down the street. There’s always the sufficiently, ambiguous “poke” feature for the true cowards in cyberspace.  If she doesn’t respond, at least your ego’s still intact. And guess what, there are a couple million more women where she comes from. You can’t say the same thing about real life though.

In the event that she does respond, he’s less likely to want to pursue a romantic relationship with her. Men respect and want to marry modest women.  When a man sees a woman in a sexually provocative pose on Facebook, chances are; he is thinking about is having sex with her. In order to build the foundation for a monogamous relationship, one must respect the woman. It’s hard to respect a woman, however, if you’ve viewed her as a sexual object from the start.  It’s very unlikely that this relationship will go anywhere. Once the couple breaks things off, the man will just repeat the cycle of sexual promiscuity until he finds a woman he can respect (whether on Facebook or in real life).

But the temptation doesn’t stop at marriage. If you haven’t learned how to stop sending private messages, poking, or eye-humping attractive women on Facebook before marriage, it’s unlikely to stop after you say “I do.”  According to Divorce-Online, 20% of divorce petitions cite Facebook as the cause of divorce. This is due to people not having the self control to prevent themselves from sending private messages to old flames or new love interests.

It is imperative now more than ever for men to develop self control over their eyes and their tongues. It is extremely easy to send a flirtatious message for instant gratification. The private decisions that we make, however, have real public consequences. Sexual promiscuity destroys families and leads to sexually transmitted diseases. A woman’s profile picture speaks volume about her character and attitudes toward sex, so you may want to think twice before sending a message to that woman posing doggystyle on her bed.  Like my mother always said, everything that looks good to you isn’t good for you.

Do you agree with what A. Jarrod Jenkins is saying? Do you think guys look for different things in women they want to have sex with and women they want to marry? Does the same thing happen when women are looking for a man?