Writes Elizabeth Bernstein,

We need new rules now. How about these? You can look, but don't make contact. Strike an agreement with your current partner that you will each disclose any Facebook friends you have slept with. Or, like Katie Robinson, limit your online "friends" to people of the same sex. "It is hard enough to have a relationship without the intrusion of people from your past," says Ms. Robinson, a 33-year-old artist in Memphis, Tenn. Some couples share their passwords. "If your bank accounts are common, why not your Twitter and Facebook accounts?" asks Clemson Smith Muñiz, a Spanish-language sports announcer in New York. Sound scary? Mr. Smith Muñiz discovered one of the drawbacks when he checked his Twitter following-which he spent months trying to build-and discovered an alarming trend: It kept shrinking.
At first, he worried that people found him boring and were dropping out. He tried harder to be clever, "tweeting" about Cuban baseball players and his dental problems. He even pleaded for readers: "Follow me and I'll follow you." Then he discovered his problem: his wife."She told me she was going on my account and taking off women she thought were coming on to me," says Mr. Smith Muñiz, 51. She didn't care if they were old girlfriends or porn stars. "She said she doesn't want temptation to be there," he says. (His wife declined to be interviewed.)

Wait, what? This is weird, right? Look, I admit to being somewhat lax in these matters (the one concession I've ever demanded was that a boyfriend not friend a one-night stand with whom he'd cheated on me) but I can't help but wonder: when do rules start to rule you? (Yes, that took a few minutes' thought.) All-female friends? Secret un-following? Hell's no. That's sacred. Trivial and pointless, perhaps, but sacred in some sort of modern irreligious way. Granted, this piece deals exclusively with Boomers who all seem overly involved with the newly-discovered gadgetry and don't share our tacit reluctance to appearing cyber-desperate ("Follow me and I'll follow you?") But seriously, is this a thing? And not just amongst those weird couples who seem to get off on the delusion that their partners are wildly desirable and everyone's constantly hitting on them? I'd always understood these sites to be more-or-less public information; as such, hasn't enough personal editing gone on that more isn't required? And as for those threatened by the presence of exes - well, better the evil you know, surely? As one more cynically-minded friend put it, "it's not like you'll be able to friend them yourself!"

That said, I know reading about cracked fillings in 140 or fewer has me hitting "Direct Messages" every time, so maybe she has a point.

When Old Flames Beckon Online [Wall Street Journal]

The Washington Post's Monica Hesse brings up a very real issue of modern manners today: how to react when a companion begins texting. While it seems the rules would be pretty clear-cut - Don't Do It - like cellphone mores, it seems like this is something we're going to need to hash out.

Texting mid-sentence, even on the most urgent of BlackBerry business is, obviously, rude. Unless it's accompanied by copious apology and a very convincing explanation of the text's importance, it's pretty much inexcusable. Need to text a friend our location? Fine. Just explain first. Excuse yourself, even. Hesse's point, however, is that there is no stopping the phenomenon: all we can do is react appropriately. And what's appropriate? Says Hesse, "Should you stay, or should you go? Should you cool it, or should you, perhaps, blow?"

There's a crotchety deli near my house that has one of those signs reading, "if you're talking on a cell phone you're obviously too important to be here." PDA stuff is trickier, because there's not the same obvious noise-pollution issue, but to a companion it's almost worse. I'm a luddite hard-liner who's always looking for an excuse to turn off my connections to the world, so I find it hard to understand why it's not basic policy to retire technology for the duration of a social function. In this I differ from my steady, and I frequently find myself talking to the rapidly texting hand as he ascertains where some random band is playing later in the evening and whether someone's friend from high school is in town for the night. Initially, I took this hard and personally. Eventually I figured out that the man actually didn't know that this bothered me! Because it had never come up, it hadn't occurred to him! And maybe a lot of people are like this. As such, perhaps they should be pitied, spoken to slowly, rather than censured. The truth is, anyone this oblivious is going to be equally untouched by pointed cold silences and other instruments in the passive aggressive poison arrow arsenal. As such, we need guidelines. We need dialogue. Preferably of the spoken variety.

Text Is Cheap [Washington Post]