Here is what South African women aged 18–55+, who have signed up to AM, say cyber infidelity means to them:
The women’s definitions differ from the men’s. Flirting online or signing up to a dating site is not such a big deal, but talking sexy is. And you may be surprised to see that, like men, women do not think that viewing pornography online is CI. But sending nude photos or sexting really is overstepping marital boundaries; as expected, emotional connection is second on women’s list of what defines cyber infidelity behaviour, with going offline almost unanimously agreed on as no-brainer infidelity. Note that 72,9% of these women consider Facebook to be CI. This becomes important when we look at what women are actually doing online.
The answers of my respondents on www.AshleyMadison.com reflect current research. Whitty says that women focus on the emotional consequences of online infidelity more than men. The hurt, the loss of trust, and the time that men invest outside their relationships all wound women badly. Men are more likely to classify physical activities with another person as infidelity.56 In other words, she wants to own his heart and he wants to own her genitals. As I mentioned earlier in the discussion about The One, this is a typical evolutionary response. She needs to ensure that his attention and love are not diverted from her, or she loses him as a primary resource, a provider for her and her offspring. Women may perceive that if a man develops an emotional bond with another woman or man, he may choose to spend his resources on her or him instead. He needs to keep an eye on her genitals to ensure that those babies he works hard to support are really his.57
Well, you may be thinking, this evolutionary theory is all good and well for people living in real-life, face-to-face suburbia, where physical sexual encounters can easily happen. But people engaging in CMC are highly unlikely ever to meet, and since they are not having ‘real’ sex, what is the threat to either of the sexes? Why all the fuss about sexting, cyberflirting, or cybersex? And seriously, how can she feel jealous about his porn viewing? He’s never going to have real-life sex with Miss Amateur Porn Star from his favourite porn site. Maybe this simplistic thinking has justified your own online hook-ups? This is how real CMC is.
Jed, aged 49, and his wife Elaine, aged 46, were stuck in a hurtful conundrum when they consulted me. They had been married for 20 years and were settled into a comfortable and predictable domestic rut. Her son had introduced Elaine to an online gaming site. She spent three to five hours a day playing. Her pleasure was gained from the group chats. She got to know one man particularly well. He was 20 years younger than she, and lived in a different town in the same country.
It awakened something dormant inside her. She and Jed had not had sex for 18 months. Soon, she and her young cyberbuddy were WhatsApping, then sending genital and nude images to each other. Their graphic sexting turned her on – she lost 10 kg and felt alive. She asked Jed for a divorce. She had stayed, dissatisfied, in the marriage for many years because he was ‘a good man’. Oh, and five years ago, she had caught him Skyping an old school friend. This emotional cyber infidelity nearly broke her. When Jed secretly scrolled through her WhatsApp messages, he was devastated. Elaine had been sharing her daily life with him, her thoughts and emotions. But he was especially devastated when he saw the sexting of each other’s genitals. Elaine disclosed that she was also chatting to a married man in Norway. She said that this was only cybersex, that she just enjoyed talking to an older, more experienced man about sex.
The conundrum Jed was facing was that since the discovery of the CI, they’d been having the best, most honest and disinhibited sex that they’d ever had. He did not want to give this up. He knew it was fuelled by Elaine’s online lovers but was willing to accept this in exchange for keeping his wife horny and having real-life sex – which he wanted to happen only with him. Interestingly, Jed defined his wife’s cybersex, cyberflirting and emotional sharing with the local man as very threatening and constituting infidelity – he was real, too accessible, and their relationship may become physical58 – but found her chatting or sexting with a man living in Europe acceptable: it was only sex chat, and he was far away. It was unlikely that they would ever meet.
In case you need some extra scientific proof that CI is ‘real’ infidelity and evokes the same hurtful responses as real-life physical sexual interaction, a recent study examining Internet infidelity found that of the 61% of the participants who engaged in a cyberaffair in which sexual activity was limited to non-physical cybersex, 20% separated or divorced as a final consequence of their actions.59 Women’s reactions to CI are similar to them discovering that their partners have had an emotional affair in real life. It makes women feel that their relationships are threatened and that they may lose their primary resource. Like Jed, men feel strongly jealous on discovering their partners are having sexual chat or sexting online. As in Jed’s case, it may well be that men believe that their partners will eventually take the interaction offline – there go her genitals, to be shared with another man.
As you will see, this is exactly what you are doing: taking your ‘emotional’ cyberaffair and making it real with your genitals. Especially you women.
The cyberworld is sexy. Very sexy. Chatting, flirting, sexting and watching porn all feel so good that you may still be wondering how this fun stuff could be called infidelity. After all, it’s not like you’re having sex or anything – which is why I want to invite your partner in right now. Let’s see if he or she feels that your online definitions of CI match his or hers. I’m giving you both more chances to think about your definitions of CI and to decide for yourselves whether you are having a cyberaffair.
Ultimately, it’s imperative that you and your partner create a definition of CI for yourselves. Once you’ve done this, turn to Chapter 6, which offers you a guide to this process. Then you won’t be surprised when you land unceremoniously with your ass, and a few bags of clothing, on the pavement. You’ll know you’ve violated an agreement. However, I bet that right now you’re not talking to your partner about your online peccadillos because they belong in a private world that you feel entitled to have for yourself and, also, because you really don’t believe you’re being unfaithful.
The most outstanding result of this finding is how many men really do not know how their partner defines CI. Most men tick all of the boxes as their partners, rating cyberflirting, having cybersex, sexting and meeting offline, plus having real-life sex, as CI. Notice how much more clarity they have about their own definitions: they know they are breaking their own rules but they’re not quite sure whether their partners will see their actions as CI. This confusion of values and new cybernorms facilitates the expression of CI. What are these men’s responses to this confusion? They stay on AM and play. They don’t say, ‘Mmm … I know my wife will brand this as infidelity, so let me creep back happily and stay in our bed.’ They stay logged in to their profiles and play!
And