These women get it. They know that their partners will define whatever they are doing online – including on Facebook – as infidelity. The statistics show that 97,2% of the women said that their partners would define their behaviour on Facebook as infidelity. And ‘emotional infidelity’ rings true, with 97,9% of these women admitting that their partners would be wounded by discovering it and 99,8% knowing that having real-life sexual activity would break their partners’ hearts. Note these women’s synergies – their definitions of CI match what they think their partners’ definitions are. In other words, when you sign up on a dating site, sext, cyberflirt and emotionally share, you are aware that you are breaking marital vows.
This is pretty revolutionary: we are at a time in marital history when betrayal in a relationship is not restricted to physical or sexual contact with another person.60 In fact, as you can see from the survey responses, there is a distinguishable difference between emotional and physical affairs, and the Internet has become the seductive space in which emotional or non-physical affairs blossom. In your quiet and honest moments, think about whether you define what you are presently doing online as CI.
As you decide your definition of CI, consider that these are the three primary elements:
1.Sexual and emotional exclusivity are expected, even required, in your Western-style marriage. Monogamy, sexual fidelity and commitment form the moral, religious and cultural fabric of marriage. You have pledged your heart, genitals and soul to the One and Only; you will be completely honest in your thoughts and actions and fully disclose all of these to your partner. Violations of these are considered unacceptable and are defined as infidelity, both offline and online.
2.CI is kept secret from your partner, giving online behaviours a quality of being forbidden. You lie, sneak around and grab private opportunities.
3.Your partner feels betrayed, angry and hurt when he or she finds you out, as hurt as if skin-to-skin infidelity had occurred.61
A definition of Internet infidelity needs to be broad enough to take into account the nature of the connection with the other individual, whether that connection is sexual or emotional and romantic. Internet infidelity, therefore, is defined as a secret romantic or sexual contact facilitated by Internet use that is seen by at least one partner as an unacceptable breach of the marital contract.
One last thought for you as you create your CI definition: if your online activities are harmless fun, how do you explain the need to hide them from your partner?
| 4 |
Are you at risk of committing cyber infidelity?
Your vulnerability
I have joined the site in the hope of making friends. Although I am in a marriage and do love my wife dearly, there has been no intimacy between us for the last few years. I am not here to look for sex, but friendship, people in a similar situation to mine. Would like to chat with like-minded people and maybe learn from them; who knows, I might just find a solution here to change my current situation.
I do feel it may be easy to chat to someone here, but I’m not so sure what will happen if the chat and friendship moves to another level. The risks involved are something I have not really put thoughts to, but I am sure time will tell.
I have never done this before, so I am still an Internet virgin as far as this is concerned.
www.mycybersecret.com
I invite you to check your own vulnerability to having a cyberaffair. Select all the items that apply to you:
•I need space in my relationship
•Revenge for partner’s CI/offline affair
•I know someone who has had an affair
•I’m talking and thinking about it
•I have been married for a long time
•We have an open marriage
•I struggle with real-life, face-to-face conflict with my partner62
•Something is missing in my relationship
•I want to avoid intimacy in my relationship
•I lack sexual satisfaction
•We have a communication problem – I can’t discuss problems with my partner
•We have ongoing unresolved problems in the relationship
•I feel lonely in my marriage
•My relationship is in a rut.63
If most of these points apply to you, you are at high risk for CI, as well as if you’re unemployed, have a psychiatric disorder , lack enjoyable activities in your life, are socially isolated or have so much marital conflict and so many differences that you’ve lost sexual attraction.64
Are you unhappy emotionally and sexually in your current significant relationship? You are if you feel that most of the items above apply to you, according to a body of research.65 I beg to differ. While we know the Internet has made the act of infidelity much easier, it does not cause you to cheat. If you are unhappy in your relationship, I agree that you are more likely to go to the Internet to look for someone with whom to explore, play and have fun. But there are factors specific to the Internet that make this process way too seductive even for the person who is happy and has a ‘good enough’ relationship.
‘You broke the rules,’ Bob cried. His partner of 20 years sat sobbing, bewildered and ashamed. ‘You’ve always encouraged me to look for other men on Grindr for us. What’s different about this?’
‘You had intent to cheat. You set up a time to meet offline. This is the first time you’ve done this. See, I have the dates, days, times of each chat on Grindr as well as all the WhatsApp messages you two exchanged.’
‘But I showed them all to you. I never hid them from you.’
‘Agreed,’ said Bob, ‘but we did it together. We spent evenings sharing messages and commenting on men’s photos. If this man had agreed to meet, you would have given him a blow job, not so?’
‘Yes … I can see this is cheating. It felt like a natural progression. After months online it seemed the most sensible next step to take.’
‘And you also broke the rules when you sent that video of yourself masturbating and then setting up a joint online cyberwank with another guy.’ Exasperated, Bob’s partner replies, ‘But that was online … why is that breaking the rules?’
‘Because you got sexual gratification from that without me around.’
Bob and Wayne define themselves as a very happily married couple. Independently, they say that they are emotionally and sexually satisfied in their relationship. They felt safe and never imagined infidelity would happen to them.
Wayne was vulnerable to committing CI. He was lured by the seductiveness of the Internet. Like Wayne, you may even describe yourself as happily married – but you may not want to pass up the chance of exciting and interactive engagements with one or more people. From the moment you log in, you become a different person. Your imagination goes wild. It makes no difference who you are, what you look like and what your financial or marital status is. In return, as you become your own fantastical hero or heroine, so does your online partner. You imagine this person to be extraordinary, projecting all of your hopes and dreams. It feels so easy to fall in fascination and even in love.
The seduction of the Internet is that you are not only using your imagination, not just lying in bed fantasising about your ideal mate or sexual