Adultery Online
“Beatriz Avila Mileham, who studied online infidelity at the University of Florida, thinks the convenience of computers has changed the way people cheat. The interactive nature of chat rooms makes participation more serious than simple escapist fantasy, Mileham says. She recently conducted a qualitative study over the course of one year, recruiting subjects from chat rooms such as Yahoo!’s and Microsoft’s Married but Flirting. In all, 76 men and 10 women participated. Initial online flirtation doesn’t count as cheating, the subjects told Mileham. More than 80 percent felt it was just ‘talking with a computer.’ But online dalliances have a tendency to escalate, Mileham found: 30 percent of those she spoke with — 26 people — went on to a face-to-face meeting with someone they met online. And all but two ended up having an old-fashioned affair. Despite the aggressive, sex-drenched atmosphere of these chat rooms … it remains unclear if online flirtation is leading more people to cheat… there have been no studies to demonstrate that chat-room use leads to more affairs.” — Psychology Today (US)
There have been a lot of articles over the last few years asking what the borderline is between cheating and various types of online flirtation. Is it cheating if you masturbate to live streaming video of virtual strippers? Is it cheating if you maintain an erotic dialogue with someone in a chat room? Is it sex if it’s mediated by computers? Or is it just masturbation? And even if it’s just masturbation, is it cheating if two people masturbate “together” online?
It’s tempting to wonder if marriage, thanks to the computer, will become for regular folk something like it is now for celebrities — a temporary folly expressing a momentary madness of passion, yet something that will be steadily eroded simply due to the sheer number of potential hookups you can find around you. It’s hard to maintain the tunnel vision necessary for a serious relationship when you’re surrounded by other opportunities for orgasm. Given the inevitability that in the very near future we’re all going to be online all the time; given that the anonymity of the internet encourages us to explore and flirt in ways we wouldn’t dare in reality; given the sheer volume of people out there in the ether, any number of which might be interested in you or your kink; given all that, how can marriage or any approximation of it sustain the onslaught of temptation and opportunity?
Probably marriage and commitment will mutate somehow to respond to the changes in society, if for no other reason than the necessity of taking care of children. For if it’s unclear whether virtual sex is really cheating, certainly virtual parenting can’t be any kind of substitute for the real thing.
sophistry.
Thought =deed? Who among us doth not lust in’s heart, cast 1st stone. Is lusting in one’s heart cheating? If I shakes it more than once or twice in the men’s room, am I playing with myself?
since it’s vurtual sex, perhaps it’s also virtual cheating.
(I hear the sound of onehandtypeing)
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Hook-Ups