Читать книгу Cyber Infidelity - Dr Eve - Страница 8

I am a professional musician and meet many women on the road. I’m a happily married man to a gorgeous wife. She’s pretty involved with the kids and leaves me to travel alone. I gave one of my fans my mobile number and she began texting me. Sexy stuff. Suddenly I felt sexy again. My wife and I hardly ever have sex as I’m tired and also admit I drink too much, so usually fall asleep quickly. We began this very hot sexting. I shared very private thoughts and fantasies with her. My wife discovered all of this and was pretty upset. I’m not sure why as I will never leave her or even want to have sex with this other woman. I just enjoy the fun of talking sexy to another woman.

www.mycybersecret.co.za

I invite you to consider and construct your own definition of cyber infidelity (CI). Read through this conversation, answer my questions and make up your own mind. Then discuss things with your partner and invite his or her response. Getting onto the same page about what constitutes CI is the first vital step to understanding and managing your cyber relationships.

Michael and Judy have been married for over seven years. Michael discovers that Judy has developed a relationship with someone else over the Internet. Judy explains to Michael that the relationship is not romantic and that they are only friends. She did not think she had done anything wrong – after all, this man was only a friend who existed in text. She said their interactions were merely flirtation or just a bit of fun. So what if she flirts a bit with someone who lives far away? Michael, at first, brushes it off – it’s only the Internet, and there’s no harm in having fun. But over time, he becomes more and more unsettled about it. He confronts Judy.

She denies and defends and tries to explain that he is just a faithful companion, that the only feelings she has are not real as this man is just words on a screen. She then reassures Michael that he should not take it so seriously or worry about it because it is an online, and not a real, relationship – that online relationships mean nothing because there, everyone lives in a virtual reality. Michael accuses her of having an affair.

Judy retaliates, asking how she could be having an affair without even having met the man. She tells Michael to calm down, and says that although she chats regularly she has never offered to meet him, nor has he suggested it.

‘I’m not cheating. It’s not like we’re having sex or anything. There has been no physical contact,’ she says.

Michael disagrees. ‘It is cheating,’ he says calmly. ‘It’s emotional cheating.’

‘How so?’ she says, getting annoyed.

‘Cheating isn’t necessarily physical. That’s just one side of it … I know you haven’t met him yet, but I’m still a little annoyed, Judy.’

‘Don’t be mad. You’re the one I love. You’re the one I have sex with. So how is it emotional cheating?’

‘You’re keeping stuff from me. Relationships are about trust! How can I trust you if you keep stuff from me about this Internet man?’46

On a 10-point scale ranging from ‘not at all’ to ‘definitely’:

•Would you consider Judy’s behaviour to be cheating?

•Do you think Judy’s online behaviour would be a betrayal of your relationship?

•How similar to face-to-face infidelity is Judy’s behaviour?

•How upset would you be if you discovered your partner in this online relationship?

•How likely is it that you would break up with your partner due to this online behaviour?

•Would finding this out cause you and your partner to fight?

This story is based on a study on Internet infidelity.47 A total of 234 people – with an average age of 24.36 years, 66% women and 34% men – participated. The majority of them saw this as a real act of infidelity – and as having as serious an impact on the couple as a traditional offline affair. The most significant finding was that Judy’s behaviour was seen as emotional infidelity and was considered as serious as sexual infidelity. Perhaps you think Judy’s behaviour constitutes infidelity. Here are the reasons stated by study participants who do not think her behaviour is infidelity. See which ones make sense to you:

•Just friends

•Just flirtatious and fun

•It’s a computer – not real

•Don’t know the person – never plan to meet

•No physical sex.

Here are reasons given by participants who do think Judy’s behaviour is an act of infidelity. See which ones make sense to you:

•Can’t have a relationship with more than one person

•Emotional infidelity

•Sexual infidelity

•Secret.

Stay with me. Here is another list I want you to tick off. In an Internet-based Experience and Relationship Survey, 123 university students considered the items on this list to be ‘unfaithful online behaviour’.48 See if you agree with them:

•Sexual chat that includes masturbation while having cybersex

•Emotional involvement that includes deep disclosure to another person

•Meeting or planning to meet someone in person

•Talking dirty or flirting

•Watching or looking for online pornography

•Betraying the confidence of a partner.

Confusing, right? Clinicians and academics have not yet come up with a definitive, universally agreed-upon definition of CI. There are common themes that we recognise are central to this behaviour. I like this definition as it contains all the central themes of CI, which are in bold text: ‘Cyber infidelity is a process in which people in a committed relationship seek computer-synchronous interactive contact through electronic conversations that occur through text, chat rooms, e-mails and dating sites.’49 These contacts may be emotional, sexual or pornographic. They are always secret. They violate the very principles upon which traditional marriage and relationships are built, namely monogamy, sexual fidelity and commitment.

Simply put: you’re married or in a committed significant relationship. You switch on your mobile or laptop. Nothing unusual. You spend 70% of your time online. Social networks are used by women more to maintain connections and to communicate. Men use them mainly for entertainment such as online games, online shopping (can you believe it?) and sexual content.50 You login to social media – like Facebook or Twitter, a dating site or www.AshleyMadison.com (AM) – on which you’ve created a profile. You’re seeking to interact with a real person in real time. This is called synchronous communication51 as it occurs at the same time – you’re both in a chat room engaging in live chat, texting or Skyping simultaneously. You long for this private place in which you can anonymously release your imagination. Allow your fantasies to go wild, both sexual and emotional. Or watch porn. The chat begins. You develop a picture of the perfect lover in your head, and your fingertips take over. You chat, flirt and sex people who are strangers but rapidly feel as if they have become real lovers and friends. It feels more intimate than your real-life relationship. You even fall in cyberlove. This might be happening in a virtual space but it feels as real as the two (or more) flesh-and-blood people pounding away on their keyboards somewhere in the real world. These live interactive chats may be enhanced and expanded to include asynchronous communications,52 which are not in real time, such as sending e-mails or WhatsApp messages. Here, you get a chance to think about every word you write and savour the responses you receive. Remember that feeling of reading and re-reading old-fashioned love letters received in the post? Perhaps you’re shy, so asynchronous communication feels more comfortable for you. Or, maybe – according to your definition of fidelity – you don’t think you are breaking any marital vows as the communication is not in real time.

However – and most significantly – you keep this synchronous and asynchronous communication a secret from your partner. The potential of such cyber relationships – call them cyber cheating, online affairs, Internet affairs, Internet infidelity, hook-ups, friends with benefits, cyber buddies, or cyber affairs – is to create lasting damage to your primary relationship.53

And, as you know, no matter what form of communication you’re using, a very natural progression occurs; it feels organic to take this offline into real life. I wonder if you’d be surprised to see that you are not alone in moving from your computer or mobile to the hotel bedroom. As you’ll see, both men and women do this with ease and without guilt.

This is the new seduction. This is cyber infidelity: a very real private cyberspace that allows you to split off from your real world and be in full control of an alluring and, perhaps, salacious world. You may not see this as infidelity because technology and new media have become the fabric of your everyday life. Of the world’s more than seven billion people, just over two billion are online. About 78% of North American citizens (approximately 245 million) are regular Internet users.54 Your world has expanded because the opportunities for connecting online have increased your likelihood of developing deep and personal relationships with others, to the exclusion of your primary partner. This almost feels like your ‘new normal’ way of relating so why, in goodness’s name, is there such a fuss about a little chatting to, flirting with and sexting known and unknown people online? Perhaps you even feel offended that your sharing emotional experiences, time and dreams with someone online could be considered infidelity. In your head, infidelity is about sex. Sex is usually and universally considered to be penetration and an exchange of body fluids. So, if there’s no penetration, you’re not being unfaithful. That’s old-fashioned traditional thinking. I’m going to assist you to think digitally about this and create your own definition of cyber infidelity.

Here is what men with a profile on AM in the USA, Canada, UK, South Africa and Australia say that CI means to them:

You can see the themes of CI emerge. When these men sign up to www.AshleyMadison.com, they know they are committing CI. Across all ages and countries, more than 40% of men say so – and go ahead anyway. Almost everyone defines cyberchatting, cyberflirting and cybersex as infidelity (see more about this in the next chapter); interestingly, matching research mentioned, my respondents also see emotional connection as CI. But it’s not as high on their list as physical action with another. Just so we are on the same page, emotional infidelity includes the feelings of betrayal that result from non-physical intimacy with an external person or emotionally bonding with someone other than one’s primary partner.55 No one really thinks viewing pornography is committing CI, which is reflected in all the current research – so, no big surprise there. Sexting is considered CI by the majority of respondents, with lower numbers in the over-55 age group. This may be because respondents in this group are less familiar with technology and the concept of sexting. And, just to double-check, I asked men if they were sure what CI meant, and the majority said yes, we’re pretty sure what this means. So I can’t plead that ignorance drives CI. As expected, almost everyone across all ages and countries says that when you meet in real life, you’re crossing over into traditional infidelity.

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 what are their wives saying?? Here is what South African women aged 18–55+, who have signed up to AM, say CI means to their partners:

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?