Читать книгу Cyber Infidelity - Dr Eve - Страница 10

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 partner, but chatting in real time to a real-life person. There is real-time interactivity:66 I write ‘Hi’, and get a ‘Hi’ in response. Simple. But I feel heard, as someone has reciprocated – in real, synchronous time. This distinguishes online activity from any other form of imagination. In my therapy room, individuals weep about the lack of reciprocity in their real-life relationships. He says, ‘I text her during the day telling her I feel like sex with her later. She never responds. It hurts me.’ I smile, as a woman who has lack of attraction for her partner, low sexual desire and a myriad other reasons that women have for a lack of sexual interest will find this particular kind of engagement from their partners a turn-off – offensive, even. However, get her online, have a cyberlover she has never met say this, and she gushes with excitement from her heart and her genitals as he or she reciprocates in real time to every sentence she writes. She feels desired; they feel mutual attraction. They disclose intimacies to each other that surprise them and make them feel oh-so-close. It’s a powerful aphrodisiac, especially as neither has to put effort or resources into having these feelings: no dressing up for a sneak date, no need to spend money on mutual wooing. The intimacies are so easy to slip into their online conversations – you know, those that you are already having on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. You simply need to show up online. At any one time, there are millions of people online, willing to chat and reciprocate and share imagination with you. It’s easy, immediate, interactive and egalitarian, which means that your age, appearance, gender, race and religion are scarcely relevant online.67

In other words, each one of you is vulnerable to CI, despite the risks. As Ze’ev states, ‘online relationships seem to be the first real alternative to face-to-face relationships’.68 A radical idea, but one that reflects your modern-day need – you want to stay married, but you also want to feed your fantasies, stimulate your imagination and interact with someone in real time. The intimacy is salaciously seductive. Your mantra is, ‘I’m unhappy/we fight a lot/he treats me badly/he cheated so I’m going to have an affair’. Having an affair has become the fall-back position, the solution to conflict or unhappiness in a relationship. Before the Internet, people would turn to each other and work it out – or get divorced. Now, they externalise and seek comfort and short-term healing via CI.

Let me give you evidence for why I think you are inevitably going to go online and break some kind of traditional sacred vow that you took when you married, and committed to, one partner. I invite you to answer these questions, which I asked respondents on AM.

•What is the length of your current primary relationship or marriage?

•I am happy when I spend time with my primary partner or spouse.

•I have no emotional connection to my primary partner or spouse.

•I am considering divorce or separation from my primary partner or spouse.