Tammy felt sick to her stomach when she saw it. Sitting there on the scanner by the computer were photographs of her husband, Gene. Pictures he had scanned in himself. And one of them was a picture of Gene and Tammy dancing at their wedding-except Tammy had been cut out of the scene.
“I immediately just had a bad feeling about it,” she said.
So she called Gene on his cell phone. He was on the road, traveling for his New England company.
“I asked him why he had been scanning in pictures of himself,” Tammy said. “There was a 30-second silence-it seemed like 5 minutes.”
“My mother asked for some wedding photos,” Gene finally said.
“You’re a liar,” Tammy said and hung up.
Eventually the truth would come out, thanks in part to some computer detective work by Tammy. Gene had struck up a friendship with a woman from Michigan on the Internet. Although they initially talked about the news of the day-especially the incidents of Sept. 11, which had just occurred-the talk soon turned personal. Soon they were having cybersex, a common Internet practice in which people send instant messages to each other with details of what they would do to each other if they were face to face at that moment, and they share in orgasms as they masturbate along with each keystroke.
Although Gene and the other woman never met, the cyberspace affair was just as devastating to Tammy and Gene’s marriage as an affair conducted in a motel room. And the regrets are the same.
“It came pretty darn close to costing me my marriage,” Gene said.
Tammy and Gene (who, like others in this story, requested anonymity) are not alone in finding their lives damaged by Internet activity related to sex. Last July MSNBC.com released a poll of more than 38,000 adult Internet users. It found that 1 in 10 admitted being addicted to Internet sex and that 1 of every 7 hours of Internet usage is devoted to sexual activity, be it Internet affairs or pornography.
Through counseling and the support of an Internet message board for relationships hurt by cybercheating, Tammy and Gene are trying to gather the fragments of their marriage.
“One thing that’s helped is we read this book called `After the Affair’ and annotated it,” Gene said. “She’d underline a section and write my name and I’d see if it fit: `Yep, that’s me. That’s what I’ve been doing.’ And I’d do the same for her.”
“After the Affair,” written by Yale psychologist Janis Abrahms Spring, has been published in 11 countries and sold 150,000 copies. Although its focus is not the Internet, Spring said she and other mental-health professionals are seeing an alarming increase in relationships damaged by Internet affairs.
A `dramatic increase’
“Whenever I give a workshop, I always ask how many of the counselors in the room are dealing more and more with affairs that began on the Internet,” she said. “And almost every hand goes up.”
J. Lindsey Short, a Houston attorney and president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, said he and colleagues across the country are seeing a “dramatic increase” in divorce cases tangled in Internet affairs.
“I think people believe it to be safe to have these Internet discussions,” he said. “Over time, they think they know this person, and from there, it’s a pretty easy step to pick up the phone and make a call. Unhappy people tend to do desperate things, and this feels safer than going to a bar.”
Linda Elrod, vice chairwoman of the American Bar Association’s family law section, said anecdotal evidence of Internet affairs is plentiful in lawyers’ offices as well, but statistics and case law are hard to come by because most states have no-fault divorces these days.
The driving forces
So what drives Internet infidelity? Stanford psychologist Al Cooper, author of the MSNBC study and a pioneer in the field, calls it “the Triple-A engine”: anonymity, accessibility and affordability.
Here’s how those factors come into play on the Internet.
Anonymity: People can share intimacies without revealing their identities.
Accessibility: Instead of a small sampling of potential partners at a local bar, a person has the potential to meet thousands of people from across the world on the Internet.
Affordability: The Internet is inexpensive, or certainly less expensive than face-to-face courtship, for a long time.
Cooper said the Internet “turbocharges” relationships, speeding their development as people get a false sense of intimacy with someone who, a week or a month before, had been a complete stranger. As the Internet revs up the relationship, people can get blindsided, said Chicago therapist Dianna W. Bolen.
“The Internet affects people’s expectations about relationships,” she said. “I think the biggest setup for failure in a relationship is moving too fast.”
Brian, a teacher and farmer in Kansas, never saw the wreck coming. And although his wife’s affair has not led to divorce court, it has led him to antidepressant medications and feelings that he will never trust her again.
He and Linda married young; their last anniversary was their 28th. Right after Christmas of ’99, they bought their first computer.
“I can still remember the sound that Windows made when it first started up,” he said. “My wife and I sat there just in awe.”
Unwelcome evidence
Brian, an avid card player, soon discovered that you could talk to people of similar interests from all over the world. He began playing Spades with these newfound friends. Linda found acquaintances on the Net, too, but her talks had higher stakes.
The last few years were a vulnerable time for the couple. Brian’s younger brother died of cancer; both sets of parents died. An unexpected pregnancy at 45 ended when Linda miscarried. Brian would teach his classes and then come home and head for the tractor, farming his 800-acre property.
One night he went out to Linda’s truck, looking for a flashlight. Instead, he found love letters, printouts of e-mails to Linda from Glenn, a man she had met online.
But the attraction wasn’t confined to the screen. Linda and Glenn graduated from e-mails to a motel room.
“He drove 300 miles; she drove 30,” Brian said, weeping.
Brian and Linda are still together, but nothing is the same.
“I have known pain, but there is nothing that holds a candle to this,” he said. “It’s devastating, and I don’t think my wife understands the pain.”
Of course, the question could be raised: Is Tammy’s case the same as Brian’s? After all, one affair was consummated physically; the other one ended before it reached a face-to-face meeting. Psychologist Marlene Maheu and family therapist Rona Subotnik, authors of the book “Infidelity and the Internet,” said the damage they encounter in therapy with their clients is the same.
Betraying vows
Subotnik defines “cyberinfidelity” this way: “Cyberinfidelity occurs when a person uses a computer or the Internet to betray a vow or agreement of sexual exclusivity.”
Debbie Layton-Tholl, a Florida psychologist who heard from 4,800 people in a study of Internet infidelity, puts it even more simply: “The minute a relationship goes from being public knowledge to becoming a secret–the minute you are feeling as though you can’t tell your spouse or partner about this person–you’ve crossed the line. It’s a betrayal.”
And usually, the guilty party knows it, said Washington State therapist B.J. Harrold, who recently completed an in-depth study of spouses who cheated online (about half of the relationships moved to physical encounters).
“It was absolutely universal,” she said. “They knew they were breaking their vows. There was no moral ambiguity. Everybody said they knew that their spouses would be devastated by it if they were discovered.”
But that isn’t slowing the pursuit of cyber and real-time adultery. In an ongoing study, Brazilian psychologist Maria Cristina Martins visits an adult-personals Web site and poses as a Chicago woman looking for an affair, specifically with a married man in his 40s. In less than a month, she has received more than 1,000 responses–including many executives willing to fly her around the country and provide accommodations; 32 percent of the respondents live in Illinois.
Looking for intimacy
“From what I’ve gathered from the responses, cyberaffairs are a search for both sex and intimacy,” Martins said. “One is only intimate with a partner when there is open and honest communication about his or her likes and dislikes, not only sexually but in the relationship as a whole.”
But whatever the reason for an affair, it is the most serious threat a relationship will face. And cyberspace is complicating the issue–and not just for the adults.
Harrold recalled one woman whose cyber affair was discovered by her husband. She managed to placate him. It was a harmless game that would never become a face-to-face meeting, she said. She and her online paramour even visited one of the many Internet cyber wedding chapels to pledge fidelity to each other.
“She invited her teenage daughter to witness the ceremony online,” Harrold said. “Afterwards, she wondered if she had done the right thing.”
Maheu said that you can follow the money to see what’s driving Internet technology: the adult entertainment industry.
One piece of technology in the works, Maheu said, is a partial body suit that will allow online lovers to stimulate each other electronically, even if they’re thousands of miles apart.
“You strap on a belt and attach it to the pelvis,” she said. “But what happens if your 10-year-old son finds it and straps it on?” she said.
While technology is advancing, for better or worse, it can’t make decisions for humans. And when a cyber- or full-blown affair is discovered, the partners have decisions to make about whether the relationship will continue.
Subotnik said that in successful therapy, the couple goes through a number of stages, all of which are emotional.
Coping: “Coping with your emotions is difficult because, initially, the emotions are just off the wall,” Subotnik said. People must learn how to deal with their anger, she said. And anxiety is also a problem. “People are obsessive; they review the affair over and over,” she said. “They want to know everything about it; they can’t stop thinking about it.”
Searching for understanding: If a couple can work through their emotions, they can begin to look at tracing where the affair came from.
“If the emotions have decreased, we can work on communication skills,” Subotnik said. Counselors will also look at what’s called the “family of origin”: Did the adulterer come from a home where infidelity is all in the family?
Reconstruction: The last stage aims to answer a big question. “Can I trust him again?” The guilty partner must make a sincere apology, acknowledging how badly it harmed the relationship, a promise not to stray again and an agreement about what the relationship will look like in the future.
It’s not easy, said Subotnik, but there’s hope.
“Marriages can get stronger if they survive an affair, because the spouses look at the problems and build on them.”
Laura, a teacher in Texas, certainly found that to be true. Her husband, Al, had concealed his affair so well that she never suspected a thing. But when he broke down and confessed it to her, it forced them as a couple to deal with each other with openness and honesty.
Although the process was agonizing, Laura said their marriage is better than it has ever been.
“Our feelings are so different for each other now, much stronger,” she said.
“I think to myself: If he would have kept this to himself for the rest of his life–which he could have–our marriage would still be just so-so,” she said. “Strange, isn’t it? So much pain to feel so good.”
Navigating the road to recovery
Therapist Derek Ball of Rock Island was working with yet another couple whose marriage had been ravaged by a cyber affair. They said they still loved each other but were still having trouble communicating, even in his office.
Why, asked the wife, could he share those things with the other woman instead of her?
Ball was stumped at first but then hit upon an idea that turned this couple around. He had them start communicating by e-mail with each other to get the lines of communication unblocked. It worked. They’ve not only improved their communication offline but rejuvenated their sex life as well.
“There’s a sense of intimacy that comes from the written word. You feel connected,” Ball said.
Although there is no blueprint for recovering from a cyber affair, certain things seem to provide help for the journey.
– Get counseling: Even if your partner won’t go, get some help. If he or she will join you, that’s even better. Don’t give up, even if you don’t hit it off with the first counselor you try. Jenny (all names in the article have been changed), a New York editor, is seeing a therapist even though her partner and betrayer Jeremy refuses to go.
“I can’t emphasize enough the importance of good counsel,” she said. “It helps me keep my perspective, gives me better ways to approach issues, gives me a place to vent and to understand him, and what is going on between us better.”
– Try Internet support groups: It may sound odd that the technology that provided the tools for betrayal could be a godsend for those in emotional turmoil, but many, such as Lynn, a network communications consultant in New York, find it to be true.
“It helps [you recover] when you do not feel all alone,” she said. “Even good friends who have never been through a betrayal just don’t get it.”
Betrayed partners offer comfort and support to each other. Occasionally, a cheater who has mended his or her marriage will offer counsel–or set straight another betrayer who has wandered onto the board and is trying to justify his or her behavior.
Paige, a waitress from North Carolina, started the “anticybercheating” message board on Yahoo (groups.yahoo.com/group/anticybercheating) two years ago after a rocky time in her marriage.
“I guess the best thing about the board is misery loves company,” she joked. “We all needed validation that our feelings weren’t what our cheating spouses wanted us to believe. We weren’t crazy, we weren’t imagining it, and we weren’t blowing it out of proportion.”
Other helpful message boards include www.willingspirits.com, www.marriagebuilders.com and the Marriage and the Internet community at msn.com.
– Be honest: Don lives in Georgia and works with computers. He’d been burned in his first marriage–he caught his wife in bed with his best friend–and wanted to make things work in his second marriage to Dawn. But he met a woman at a technology conference and soon they were e-mailing constantly, and more.
Dawn grew suspicious. And even though Don was the “geek” in the family, she simply did a search on their hard drive for files containing the word “love.” It pulled up several e-mails, including ones that Don had deleted. Today, their marriage is better than ever, and Don said that’s because he learned over time that honesty is the only way to slowly rebuild trust.
“I lied for a long time,” Don said. “I lied because of shame and I lied because of fear of loss. Once I realized that it was taking her back to Day One every time she caught me in a lie, I understood that I had to set aside my shame and fear and face what I had done.”
– Remember kids are affected too: Rich and Sarah of Kansas have four kids, ages 8 and younger. Rich works in an Army office job; Sarah’s a nurse. For a long while, Sarah had sensed something was wrong. Rich was always working late, often not getting home until after the kids were asleep. Then he’d stay up till 4 or 5 in the morning on the computer, Sarah said.
Sarah used Spector, the spy software, to bust him. She also started her own Web site, www.bustedyouonline.com, to help others. “If we didn’t have kids, I would have left,” she said of Rich’s cybersex and phone sex with a Minnesota woman.
“In a sense, he’s not just betrayed me, he’s betrayed the kids too,” she said. “He cheated them of time and energy and memories. The kids know that something’s wrong between us. I was talking to our 8- and 7-year-olds last night. I said, `Mommy and Daddy love you. I know we fight a lot right now, but Mommy and Daddy are committed to you; we want to have a happy home for you guys to grow up in.’ And my little 7-year-old kid started crying because he was so happy I said that.”
– Stop contact with “OP”: In the cybercheating recovery community, there are many abbreviations: BS for betrayed spouse, WS for wayward spouse, OP for other partner, RL for real-life affair and so on. If a relationship is to mend, experts say, contact with the other man/woman must cease.
Ken, an engineer in North Dakota, had never met Rita, his online lover of three years, but he was planning to fly to Georgia to meet her.
“I had bought some telephone calling cards and I found out he sent her the cards so she could call him at work,” said Donna, Ken’s wife. “What was really painful is that Rita and I have the same birthday, and the name of the town she lives in is very similar to my maiden name,” she said.
When the affair was discovered, Ken told Rita it was over, but Rita persisted (she has a husband and kids of her own). To show his honesty, Ken forwarded every e-mail to Donna, and wouldn’t delete phone messages she left until Donna heard them.
“Those were private,” Rita protested. Then came frequent hangups on their home phone. The police have a harassment report on file in case she calls or e-mails again.
– Shared faith helps: After Ken and Donna agreed to try to mend their marriage, Ken was reluctant to see her parents, who are retired ministers, because Donna had confided in them. At a family gathering, Donna’s parents made a beeline for Ken and embraced him.
“We don’t approve of what you did,” they said, “but we still think of you as our son and we love you.”
Ken’s apprehension melted, and he has become very involved in the Assemblies of God church that Donna and their daughter belong to.
– Read books on relationships: Among the recommendations for those who have been through the ordeal are “After the Affair” (HarperCollins, $14) by Janis Abrahms Spring, “The Monogamy Myth: A Personal Handbook for Recovering from Affairs” (Newmarket Press, $14.95) by Peggy Vaughan, “Infidelity and the Internet” (Sourcebooks, $16.95) by Marlene Maheu and Rona Subotnik, and “When Your Lover Is a Liar” (Harperperennial Library, $13) by Susan Forward.
— P.K.
Warning signs hint of trouble on the horizon
So what are the classic signs of someone in extracurricular cyber activity? Here are a few symptoms, cited by people who have experienced cyberspace betrayal by their spouse or partner.
Online for hours: If your spouse is on the Internet every night and on weekends–till 2 or 3 in the morning–he or she is probably not checking out the stock tables. Watch for a keen interest in gadgets such as a video camera.
Anger: People who are involved in affairs and who feel guilty sometimes are looking for ways to justify their behavior. Picking fights with a spouse can ease the guilt.
Secretive behavior: A strong need for privacy every time a spouse or partner goes online could mean that Web searches and e-mail contain inappropriate material.
A sudden change in sexual appetite: Marlene Maheu, co-author of “Infidelity and the Internet,” said unusual bedroom behavior can be a signal that your partner is up to something.
“It could be either a dramatic increase or decrease in sexual interest,” Maheu said. “They may suddenly want to try new things sexually, or there may be a decrease in their emotional connection during the act.”
If there’s no interest at all, they may be using up their sexual energy on Internet activities, she said.
Also, if your partner seems sexually aroused while working on the computer, Maheu said, beware.
— P.K.
