4.2 Impact of online affairs
While online affairs may be virtual, the research to date suggests that people who have discovered their partner has had a relationship online have similar emotional experiences as people whose partner has cheated offline (Vossler and Moller, 2020a). Their stories reveal that they felt hurt, shocked and angry, which can lead to thinking about whether to continue the relationship or not. Online affairs have also been shown to have similar effects as offline cheating on relationships and families; for example, people separating after the affair has been discovered. Explore this idea further in the Activity 4.2.
Activity 4.3 Discovering an online affair
The following is a fictional account of the impact internet infidelity can have.
6 months ago my wife met a guy friend through a mutual page they were both in on Facebook. Long story short, I hated the time they spent chatting, I had a gut feeling from the start and explained to her how these things usually go. Well, I was spot on about everything I said! She knew it made me angry that they chatted every day but she still did it and made me feel like she didn’t love or respect me at all. I saw a very flirtatious msg from him (he’s married with 3 kids by the way) and sent him a msg saying he had crossed the line, piece of shit sent a rude msg back and blocked me.
2 months later my wife was out doing the weekly food shop and left the computer open so I saw a complete conversation. He said he loves her and thinks she’s amazing and I think she fell in love with him too, even though they’re in separate parts of the country and have never even met! I told her that night I had a bad feeling about it and thought something was wrong and I told her to swear on our kids lives nothing was going on, she lied to my face about everything. I showed her the msgs I’d seen, she was in shock and apologised, deleted him and wants to work things out with me. But I don’t know if I love her anymore, let alone trust the lying shit! We have 4 beautiful young kids and that’s all that’s all that’s holding me together at the moment. Need some advice please people.
Consider the aspects of online infidelity you learned about in Activity 3.8 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . In the account above, which of these aspects do you think might be playing out?
Discussion
One thing that seems to add to this person’s distress is that they have discovered a permanent and detailed account of the online affair. In addition, the fact that it happened at home – with their partner chatting with the affair partner everyday – seems important as the home space stopped being just a couple space and became the space where the affair occurred. Another aspect that seems significant is that the couple seem not to have agreed about what ‘counted’ as infidelity in an online space.
4.1 How infidelity affects relationship partners