In the Name of Love

Online affairs is a conpromise between human nature and social circumstances.I am from china where the cyberflirts are catching up with the west but the sex seem not.

Aaron:

Great article. I wanted to comment that, in my experience, fully 1/3 of the couples whom I see are dealing with issues of infidelity related to some form of cyber relationship, whether sexual or otherwise. Partners of the individual who has stepped outside the relationship typically view this circumstance as every bit as egregious as a direct sexual affair.

Thanks for the article.

Blessings,
Michael

Hi Aaron,

I thought you did a wonderful job with this article (although there were a couple of spots I had minor issues with). If it's of any interest, I have a site where I report and comment on social issues, relationships and romance in the Second Life virtual world, and recently I've posted some articles with advice for cheaters and cheatees on the site:

http://kateamdahl.livejournal.com/tag/infidelity

^^^\ Kate /^^^

Joe Kort, LMSW is a psychotherapist and author of several books on gay and lesbian identity and relationships. He keeps an updated website at www.joekort.com

This is a great article! I will pass it on to my clients both gay and straight couples. This comes up so often in my office and less so with my lesbian clients as it turns out.

Really wonderful article. It really hit home with a few things I had to deal with recently. Online relationships can be VERY hurtful to a spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend. Sometimes I don't think I'll ever really recover from how badly I was hurt. My advice would be, "be open" and if you are with someone who believes an online relationship is morally wrong, don't do it, or find someone who feels otherwise. Just don't hurt someone because you can't keep your pants zipped.

If adults can't deal with hurt feelings, what hope do we have for giving our children the skills to deal with the inevitable hurt feelings and suffering in life and love relationships? Whenever I read an article about infidelity, I am struck by the "trauma" and "damage" it supposedly causes. How fragile and insecure are people these days, that we can't learn how to deal with certain feelings (feelings are just energy). Granted, feelings like jealousy, anger, and hurt are no picnic, but why not learn how to deal with and manage them rather than make our partners stop anything they might ever do to "cause" them? The way I see it, you can chose to feel hurt by another person's actions or you can chose not to; ie., another person cannot make you feel any particular way - your response is your responsibility).

Years ago, I was cheated on by a boyfriend. Initially, I felt hurt and betrayed. But after 10 or 15 minutes of having my feelings, when I really thought about it and realized it wasn't about me, that he was feeding his own ego (and I can surely understand that), I felt immediately better. I did not have to forgive him, because I didn't feel hurt by him.

The internet is here to stay and infidelity rates keep rising. We can either learn how to live in this reality and handle these things (and maybe even lower our expectations around the issue of fidelity in relationships) or we can keep raging against them, saying its wrong, cursing the internet, and hoping people will learn how to self-regulate on yet another issue/temptation. The problem is, we are not very good at too much self-regulating.

I think we really enjoy feeling morally superior to people who cheat.

I agree with so many things written here and am actually battling with it currently. As i found my boyfriend sex chatting and haven't really addressed it yet. I need to though as he was hiding it from me and also because our sexual life has diminshed recently which is why I find it a problem. I mean I never turn down sex, I am 10 years younger than him and a horn dog, so why is he wasting his 'sexual'energy online and not spreading it to me?
That is what he is going to have to explain to me, as now he has kind of broken my trust as he says he is in the office and he is ultimately getting off while I get nothing? Seems a bit unbalanced and as far as I am concerned, not a mutual relationship if one person is left unsatisfied while the other chats with 100's of 'women'.
Thanks for the article.