Facebook, like nuclear technology, is a tool that can be used for good as well as evil. And there are clearly some people who lack the ability (or desire) to use either responsibly. One of my all-time favorite Facebook stories involved a recent college graduate backtracking it to the old Alma Mater (it wasn’t Tucker Max) on a recruiting trip. He went to a neighborhood watering hole, flashed some of that first-year cash and, later, worked on his night moves with a fine, young coed. Unfortunately, he knew she was going to Facebook (it’s a verb now) him and he still had a few days in College Town, USA. So, he did the prudent thing and changed his status to Single. He and his old old girl were on the rocks and he thought he’d enjoy the rest of the trip. This was how now ex-girlfriend found out. She was dumped by Facebook. And because this is neither Vietnam nor the Wild West, we decided to implement some rules of etiquette for Mark Zuckerberg’s handiwork. After the jump, the top 10 rules of etiquette for using Facebook responsibly in and around relationships.

Slate advice columnist Dear Prudence got a doozy in her mailbag this week. A son wants to know if he should tell his father that he carried on an affair with his stepmother for years. Karma’s Bitch Boy writes: “When I was 17, Mom and Stepdad had to move to another city, so I moved in with Dad and Stepmom. My father’s new wife was a much younger and very attractive woman. The atmosphere was more relaxed than in my previous home. So much so that my stepmom (she’s about 15 years older) and I developed an attraction and started an affair.” Gulp! When Dad was out of town, son and stepmom got it on a couple times a month. The affair continued when Karma Boy went off to college and after; finally, he ended it two years ago. Now, his father is divorcing his stepmother for cheating on him—with somebody else—and his stepmother has informed him that unless he gets his father to concede on a financial matter that’s beneficial to her, she’s going to tell his father about their affair. Prudie advises the son tell his father what he’s done. What do you think he should do? [Slate]

A member of the extended Frisky family told me the best advice she’d ever gotten was to actively fall in love with four people every day—that if you put your mind to it, it can be done and be incredibly fun in the process. I decided to give it a shot. Here’s the four people I fell in love with today (before lunch even!). I hope you’ll share yours!

1. Our Mind Of Man, John DeVore: A picture of him in high school came into my possession, so to speak, this morning. He looks adorable, but he’s wearing hilarious ‘80s old man style glasses in the photo. I promptly sent the photo around to everyone we know (sorry, he would kill me if I posted it here), which made him mad (in other words, his latest column may come in late!), but what he doesn’t know is that I kind of am in love with High School DeVore! At least for today.

Just because you lead a busy life that doesn’t mean you should put “have sex with significant other” in your PDA! If you want to keep your sex life spontaneous, you need to begin to see even the most mundane activities of your day in a more sensual context. Remember, what’s really sexy is not always being available, but when two people lead independent, exciting lives. Follow these suggestions and you’ll keep sparking each other for years to come.

Six months after putting up a Facebook profile, I’m utterly bored. I’ve said it. I’m sure I’ll be assaulted by the Facebook cultists, but it’s true.

Finding the perfect partner may soon be as easy as sharing a little love potion cocktail with some random guy at a bar. Scientists have identified two hormones, oxytocin and vasopressin—the hormones released during sex—that make us feel bonded to another person. Tests in sheep found that a single injection of oxytocin was enough to make a mama lamb form an immediate bond with baby lambs that were not her own. Such research suggests that love could be nothing more than a “cocktail of brain chemicals.” The idea that chemistry matters way more in the search for love than, say, common interests and mutual attraction “raises important issues for society,” according to Larry Young, an expert in the neuroscience of social bonding. “For one thing, drugs that manipulate brain systems at whim to enhance or diminish our love for another may not be far away.” As a result, Young says, “It won’t be long before an unscrupulous suitor could slip a pharmaceutical love potion in our drink.” Theoretically, the same love potion could be given to couples who want to “rekindle faded passions or diminish problematic feelings.” Sure beats spending thousands of bucks on a marriage counselor, right? [Guardian.co.uk]

I was pissed when my uncle announced at our rehearsal dinner, “You know you’re taking your honeymoon during hurricane season, right?” Well, duh! But it was my honeymoon, which meant that everything was destined to be perfect. Unless a certain relative opened up his yap and jinxed it all. Which is exactly what happened. That’s right, I’m blaming Uncle John, not seasonal weather systems moving through the Caribbean, for Hurricane Omar ruining my honeymoon.

Men’s Health has a list of the “The 30 Hottest Things To Say To A Naked Woman,” but the majority of lines on the list are actually what guys should actively avoid saying to a naked woman. After the jump, what’s on the list—from the sleazy to the cheesy to the creepy to the desperate—that naked women really don’t want to hear.

I’m still adjusting to single life since my breakup, but I’m making a lot of progress, and it’s gotten me thinking about what kind of person I want to be with in the future. For most of my life, instead of approaching relationships with a checklist, I was flattered someone—anyone—was interested in me, and I didn’t stop to question whether we had much in common. In some ways, my ex was perfect for me, but in others we weren’t so compatible. Both the good and the bad taught me about what I want next time.

The year 2008 AD was another barn-burner for celebrity breakups, hook ups, make-ups and hiccups. Some things were only a matter of time (Hugh Hefner’s harem heads home and George Clooney breaks Sarah Larson’s heart), some were a bit shocking (Christie Brinkley’s husband paid that girl how much to keep quiet?) and some we really should have seen coming a mile away (Oh, David Duchovny’s character on “Californication” is an aspiration, got it), but here we have chosen the top 10 celebrity-related love stories of 2008.

When it comes to saying “I love you,” one writer reports, men are universally conflicted. If asked how many times they’ve been in love, some men can’t make up their minds. He loves you? He loves you not? Sometimes, he’s not too sure. After all, it’s not easy for either sex to differentiate between love and lust, intimacy and infatuation, what the mind wants to believe and what the heart insists is true. When Mick Jagger was asked how many times he’d fallen in love, he deemed the question “stupid.” Boy George, in contrast, said his number was zero. So, how can men and women tell if they’re really, truly in love? When “the words ‘I love you’ tumble from you like obscenities from the mouth of a Tourette’s sufferer.” Sounds like true love to me. [Telegraph]

For about four years in my mid-twenties, I dated and lived with a guy who was as wrong for me as a double-breasted blazer. He certainly wasn’t the only guy I ever got involved with who wasn’t Mr. Right, but he’s only one I stayed with about three years longer than I should have. I could cite plenty of reasons why it took me so long to leave him: he was comfortable, I was afraid of being alone, I got free turkey sandwiches at the restaurant he managed, but if I’m being honest, it was my financial dependency on him that made it so hard to end the relationship. Even now, I’m embarrassed to recall how I, an “independent woman,” allowed myself to be dependent on a man, but the truth is I was lazy and spoiled.

Dear Ladies: Before you don’t return my call, allow me to explain something: I am a rebel.

Not long ago, I had a boyfriend. Now, I’m single. Again. I’d been feeling like my relationship wasn’t working for a while, but that hasn’t made the breakup any easier. I miss my ex, but even more, I miss the idea of us having a future together. At the same time, I’m getting into the idea of being single, and trying to embrace that rather than rushing to find someone to replace him. (There are few people I’ve had my eye on.) I’m reminded of “Single Girl” by Lush. It starts with “Single girl/who would want to be a single girl?” and ends with “I’m so happy I’m a single girl.” In the interest of focusing on the latter rather than the former, here are the top 10 reasons I’m happy to be single.

I flew out to San Francisco for 34 hours this past weekend. The trip was meant to be a day longer, but I had to fly home for a friend’s wedding, and instead of canceling the trip altogether, I decided to act like a rock star and do it all. Ostensibly, I was headed for California to attend CupcakeCamp2, but I also needed to go to have a heart-to-heart talk with my long-distance boyfriend. We haven’t been the best at the difficult conversations; there are a lot of “I don’t know”s and “What are we going to do?”s, and there’s never really a good answer. The last time I was in town our grand plan was to move to Costa Rica and be a writer couple with a pool and a maid. It’s a nice fantasy, but highly impractical and unlikely.

Not long ago, I met a guy that reminded me of that sexy NPR storyteller Ira Glass. Instantly, I fell in nerd-love with this doppelganger. After dating for a while, though, we realized we had only one thing in common: sex. So we decided to be friends with benefits. According to a Michigan State University study, sixty-percent of college co-eds have been involved in an FWB relationship, and plenty of my thirty-something girlfriends were doing it to stay satisfied, so I figured I’d give the laid back, no-romantic-attachments approach to getting laid a whirl. A year later, faux-Ira and I still hang out and hump. After our most recent rendezvous last weekend, I began to wonder what I’m doing. What are the real benefits to friends with benefits? Sure, now I have an in-case-of-sexual-emergency-hit-Glass-lookalike. At the same time, I’ve started to realize my situation is causing me to question the meaning of friendship, challenging my chances at romances, and wobbling my emotional stability.

Candlelight, red wine, freshly made pasta. Flirting at a small table in a corner infrequently visited by the waiter. Such are the makings of a great date.

But not if you can’t eat what they’re serving. What if you must start with a 10-minute interrogation: Can the scaloppini be prepared without a dusting of flour? Can I forgo the bed of pasta and just have the red pepper salmon? Does the chef use anything to thicken the risotto? Embarrassing. Your waiter takes a few trips to the kitchen to speak with the chef, and your date progresses in fits in starts. And–let’s be honest–you might seem a little high-maintenance (think Sally Albright, the picky heroine who ordered everything on the side in the romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally).

2006 was a year of unprotected sex for me. No, not every time, but I started off the year with a fling with a slightly older man I was besotted with, who didn’t speak a word about condoms, and, in response, I didn’t either. I wanted to trust that he had some magical knowledge that somehow I was missing, that maybe the world had overturned itself and they were no longer necessary. I was wrong, and after a pregnancy panic as I searched for Plan B—this was right before it was so readily available—I escaped unscathed. Then later that year I met a guy I fell absolutely head over heels with, sure that we were destined to be together.

Hi, I’m single. Like, what’s up with that? Word. Can I buy you a vodka tonic, super fox?

Okay – let me interrupt for a second, and preempt our regularly scheduled programming to get some things off my hairy, muscular, barrel chest. I’m guessing you heard that the guy with the lizard neck lost the presidential election to the guy with the lady fingers, right? So…

I normally make a conscious choice to reject the idea of identity politics, which is to say, to gravitate towards politicians who are just like me, either ideologically, or, on a more base level, culturally. I am instantly distrustful of politicians who tell me they drink beer just like me, or listen to the music I listen to, or who suggest that I vote for them because their biological fortunes confer an expertise others cannot possibly claim. These notions are nothing more than cheap, aspirational lies.

I like to think of myself as a fair, open-minded individual. I have my opinions, sure, but I certainly don’t begrudge anyone for holding a different set of views than I do. In the past, I’ve dated plenty of guys with whom I don’t always agree, like the guy who counted Phil Collins as a personal hero, or the dude who thought yellow was “his color,” and then there was the guy who wouldn’t drink Belgian beer because he said it was “un-American.” Un-American! He had a refrigerator full of Budweiser that I overlooked because that’s just the kind of flexible, open-minded person I am.