Virtual Adultery has real impact

January 13, 2006

Virtual Adultery Where a husband or wife has an emotional affair with another person over the Internet can be just as harmful to their union as physical adultery, say marriage experts. As Australias Sydney Morning Herald reported recently, these liaisons are increasingly a gateway to divorce.

Never before has the dating world been so handy for married men and women looking for a fling, University of Florida researcher Beatriz Mileham told the BBC. The Internet will soon become the most common form of infidelity, if it isnt already.

With cyber sex, there is no longer any need for secret trips to obscure motels. An on-line liaison may even take place in the same room with one’s spouse.

The lure of virtual adultery is the ease, anonymity and affordability with which it allows men and women to cheat on their spouses. A few clicks can gain them access to hundreds of thousands of chatrooms, on-line pornography, on-line dating services, friend-finding web sites, as well as sites that cater specifically to would-be adulterers.

I accidentally fell into a cyber affair with someone who personally emailed me from a mailing list I belong to, says one woman, who told her story on a website. The intensity of this e-affair rapidly escalated over several months and got to the point where we discussed getting together. It becomes a real person you’re dealing with.

This womans experience is no isolated phenomenon. Cyber lovers, the Herald noted, quickly move from chat to photo-swapping, intimate confessions and cyber sex. It can become as consuming as a real relationship.

Yet many married couples seem unaware that virtual adultery can be just as intense and destructive as a physical affair. This week, Columbia News Service reported that according to a new survey by the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, 15 per cent of married women and 25 per cent of married men said they have committed adultery. But when virtual adultery is factored in, those numbers increase by 20 per cent.

Dr. John Gray, author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, says that since women are more likely to associate love with emotional support, they find an emotional affair more threatening – whereas men will not usually regard an affair as infidelity until it becomes sexual.

But marriage counselor Peggy Vaughan argues that emotional affairs can be just as damaging because both involve one spouse cheating on the other. It is a big deal because of deception, regardless of if it becomes sexual, she says.