Psychologists call it the final frontier. It’s Cybersex, and it has become the easiest way to cheat on your spouse. “Thirty years ago it was much harder to get sex. You had to sneak around and really look for it. Cybersex brings it right into the house. It is just so easy now,” said
Tina B. Tessina, 64, a Long Beach, Calif.-based psychotherapist and author of "
Money, Sex and Kids: Stop Fighting about the Three Things That Can Ruin Your Marriage (Adams Media 2008). “Cybersex is also easier to hide and it usually doesn’t cost money.”
With Cyberspace’s coming of age so have multiple opportunities to meet someone online and get romantically involved. Chat rooms, interactive web sites, blogging and public networking forums like MySpace and Facebook have inadvertently invited strangers into many bedrooms. In fact, the Internet hookup has become so commonplace, it’s now considered as viable as any other venue to meet someone.
“I suppose it’s as good as a bar,” said Alice Aspen March, Los Angeles-based author of "
The Attention Factor." “The only difference is at a bar you actually see and talk to a person in the flesh. When you go on the Internet, you are getting a connection with a person in the machine. And it’s really a fantasy to have an affair on a machine. It is not real.”
That aspect fantasy might be why so many married people get lured into affairs online when that was not their original intent. “You could enter it innocently, not really looking for an affair. But it’s very seductive so even a little curiosity can get you hooked. While the fantasy aspect is alluring, it can also lead to misrepresentation even without intent,” said
LeslieBeth Wish, 60, a psychologist and social worker based in Sarasota, Fla. who has been counseling couples in relationships for over 30 years.
The introduction of the Internet, she added, has changed the face of what had been the traditional affair. Namely, a sexual relationship between two people that happens in person with an element of physicality. The absence of that, she said, somehow allows for a big degree of denial about the relationship even being an affair in the first place.
“Online affairs represent safety, fantasy and that big escape tunnel. They don’t count because there is no one-to-one contact. Because they are viewed as a so-called emotional timeout. It’s like the guys who go online for pornography. The Internet has created a powerful outlet for an already existing problem. People think it’s safer. It’s very easy to fool yourself by fooling your spouse. ‘Honey, it’s not like I am meeting him. It’s only online. What is the big deal?” Wish said.
Boredom, curiosity and lack of communication with a spouse – all these have been blamed for online affairs blooming in the first place. While some argue how you get to investigating online sex options is important, others point to what happens once you get there as being what matters. It can create a real problem in your relationship at home.
“If a man is curious about threesomes, for instance, and doesn’t talk to his wife about it because he thinks she wouldn’t handle it well, he goes on one of the alternative sex sites where he will find a chat room that is free or low fee. In his mind, this is a safe, cheap alternative. He doesn’t know these people. He will never meet them. And there he can connect up with people and talk about his fantasies,” Tessina. “But pretty soon, he finds someone he really connects with and off they go from the group on their own. It just moves like that.”
The fact that there is never an actual meeting between the two and no face-to-face connection naturally lays the proving ground for fantasy and even lies. What you see is not necessarily what you are getting, Wish said.
“People misrepresent themselves more online because they can. And sometimes they misrepresent themselves without knowing it. It’s called ‘unconscious misrepresentation.’ They actually do believe they look like Robert Redford. Think of the people who try out for American Idol. They really believe they have talent, and they clearly don’t. People have a lot of trouble assessing their own abilities and appearance. That is why we are so prone to flattery,” she said.
