When you live with your significant other, you get to frequently put into practice the cardinal rule of kindergarten: Share. Now, I’ve been living with my fiance for quite some time and believe I’ve got the basics down. But if you are currently living solo and getting ready to move in with your spouse-to-be, take note that the slight nuances of sharing aren’t always so clear.

Take Facebook, for example. Your Facebook account is clearly something you probably want to keep separate.

Fiance and I were recently both looped into a discussion in Facebook between his brothers and sisters regarding what we would be doing for the holidays and when we could all get together. Fiance navigated to the social networking site to respond with what our plans entailed, but got sidetracked by the box in the upper right hand corner of the home page that suggests other people you may know and desire to add as Facebook friends.

The first person listed was his brother.

“That’s funny,” Fiance said to himself. “I could have sworn I was already friends with him.”

He clicked the “Add Friend” button and moved on to the second person in the list: his sister’s husband.

“Huh,” said Fiance. “I thought I was friends with him too.” So he added his brother-in-law as well.

Facebook then suggested he may wish to friend one of his coworkers. Fiance obliged.

Fiance continued in this manner, friending five of six more individuals he believed he was already Facebook friends with.

When he finally felt tapped out on adding friends for the day, he moved on to responding to his family regarding our plans for the holidays. He typed out a short message, hit “reply all,” and then saw his message appear on the list – with my name and image.  With a sinking feeling, Fiance realized the source of all of his Facebook-friend-deja vu and what he had done.

Apparently, I was the last person to use the laptop and left my Facebook account logged in. Fiance had been sending friend requests to people that, yes, were already his Facebook friends, but whom I maybe have met once or twice (with the exception of certain members of his family) and therefore not quite in the realm of proper Facebook friendship. Other Facebook users will certainly understand and relate to this breach of etiquette.

So the lesson of the day is ALWAYS log out of your personal accounts on a shared computer. The end result wasn’t too detrimental, I suppose. Everyone he/I “friended” accepted my request. So at least they don’t all think I’m a total weirdo, and I gained some additional Facebook clout.

I learned that the word “friended” is actually a real verb because spell checker didn’t pick it up. “Friending” too! Who knew?