Facebook can seem harmless enough for people new to the social networking site.

Something Jason and Kelli Krafsky discovered is there are pitfalls to using Facebook particularly for married couples.

The couple who moved to Maple Valley seven years ago came across a situation a little more than a year ago that got them thinking. In fact, it eventually led them to write a book that was released in early April called “Facebook and Your Marriage.”

Part of the inspiration from the book came from the fact both of them are active on Facebook.

“What happened is I did friend an old boyfriend,” Kelli Krafsky said. “It made Jason uncomfortable.”

“It was a first love!” Jason Krafsky said. “After 14 years of a strong marriage I was feeling feelings I had never felt before. It was new to us.”

Jason told Kelli about his discomfort at the idea of her communicating with the man.

“After thinking about that for a while I realized, he was right, there was no reason to do that,” she said. “So, I de-friended (the former boyfriend). There are probably some couples who don’t do that and tell the person to deal with it.”

Jason said that most of their experiences on Facebook had been positive, but they wondered if other couples had encountered anything like this.

An example Jason offered was that of a couple where the wife mentioned to her husband that some of the conversations he was having on Facebook made her uncomfortable.

“Rather than talk through it, he de-friended his wife,” Jason said. “If you’re doing something you’re not supposed to do, it’s easy to get defensive and clamp down.”

As they got more experienced with Facebook they began establishing boundaries.

“Then, a year ago we wrote two articles on his Marriage Junkie blog,” Kelli said. “We got a tremendous outpouring of e-mails. It was at that point we sat down and said, ‘We should do something about this.’”

They realized with former boyfriends or girlfriends there were things that could happen that people could not foresee that would not be good for a current relationship.

“It really is a slippery slope,” Jason said. “There was not really anything written up about it. Nothing to help people who are going down that path that said, ‘Alert! Alert! Let’s put this thing in reverse and help you have safe boundaries.”

Together they wrote articles that took two different positions on Facebook and where it fits into married life called, “Is Facebook a Cyberthreat to Your Marriage?” and “How Can Facebook Help Your Marriage?”

As they figured out boundaries for their own use, including discussing how to maximize time on the site, how to do different things like remove a person from your friends list, block them, among other things, and after the articles were written the next step just seemed obvious.

“The book kind of started writing itself,” Jason said. “As you go through the book, it’s sort of a sequential layout, but you don’t have to read it cover to cover.”

Their book looks like “Facebook on paper.”

“If you’re in a section and you don’t find what you’re looking for, it can point you to related threads,” Jason said. “We want to get people where they’re at and their comfort level with Facebook.”

Helping couples tackle issues in marriage is nothing new to Jason, a former pastor, who formerly spent 10 years with Families Northwest.

“I had a real heartbeat for relationships… to help people do better in their marriages, to help people do better in their personal lives,” he said. “Because of my background I would go into communities and get all the pastors together and say, hey, you’re dealing with the same (marriage) issues. Why don’t you pool your resources together?”

For the past three years he has been working with a non-profit in California that provides workshops and classes for couples to help build stronger marriages.

Jason had previously written a book called “Before ‘I Do’” to help churches and counselors with premarital counseling work.

This new book took a year from concept to publication, Jason said, and they’re also working on a companion site that will be “the place where the practical how-to’s take place so that the book doesn’t become obsolete with the changes Facebook makes.”

“We think it’s like a resource guide,” Kelli said. “When we first both got on (Facebook) we kind of had our own internal boundaries that we just had in our marriage. But, we had not sat down and talked about what our boundaries are online. For a lot of couples, that’s a discussion that just doesn’t happen.”

The book outlines how to have that conversation in a productive way.

And, going back to the original inspiration, it’s important to understand that there are things like becoming friends with old flames that just isn’t a good idea.

“One of our big messages is it’s OK to have those nostalgic memories, but it’s not OK to act on it,” Kelli said. “The research… is that in relationships like that (first loves) there is no closure. Are you searching for closure? Or, are you searching to feel those feelings?”

For more information on the book, look it up on Facebook under F A C E B O O K and Your Marriage.