Phantom Affair

Following on my post on online dating (A Very Brief History of Dating), I have requested and been granted the permission to produce an anonymous case study of where modern day technology has taken our emotions.

A dear friend of mine, let’s call him M, is happily immersed in a relationship with his loveable, intelligent and exotic girlfriend. They’ve been together for a while now and things are looking on the promising side. Lately M has been showing signs of fatigue. He was less tolerant to silly jokes and his time with friends and family (be it on the phone or in person) has been sparse. Not one to leave such developments un-questioned, I took it upon myself to get to the root of the matter. What was going on? The man has a good job, a great partner, he is well liked and suddenly he decides that’s not good enough and sulks. WHY?

Roll on a couple of days later.

The setting: a posh pub in an affluent area of London.

The glasses: filled with velvety red wine.

The mood: tense.

ME: Go on now, M, what is up with you, you can’t fool me.

HIM (replying with a question, which always makes me think of that joke: Is it true that you always answer a question with another? Who told you that?): Is having an online lover cheating?

ME: I could have done with a bit of intro… Is an online lover cheating? Tricky one, my friend. Would you care to expand on the topic?

And expanded is what he did. He’d met this girl online. Hadn’t thought much of it, she was living on the other side of the world and he had actually found her friendliness irritating to begin with. She had seemed at ease with the situation while he was all awkward and confused as to what the point of that friendship was. So didn’t think much of it. It was something to do when he happened to be online, say hello and chat with this person. So far so good. I kept nodding in approval. I even said “Don’t be silly, everybody does that at some point. I had a friend I chatted with occasionally. He had praised my writing, I was prepared to make him a friend for life….”

But why did I think my situation had not led to similar consequences… I was still sane. M was drawn out and confused. He had basically fallen in the trap of the novelty of the situation: conversations became longer and longer, he used every spare moment to run to his computer and see if she was around and before he knew it, they’d become very intimate in those moments oblivious of their respective lives (they both had partners, whom they spoke so fondly about). It had come to a point when he was living this parallel reality, updated on the life of a faceless person on a regular basis, opening up to them, caring about them. Virtual talks, virtual walks, virtual flirting. The only thing “non-virtual” about this was his involvement.

What do you say to that? His girlfriend did not suffer a thing, maybe she put his tiredness down to hard work. He was not planning to meet that other person. He said he felt like he’s jumped on a train that was going nowhere. That sounds scary (although not unlike my tube journeys to work on a bad day).

As a friend I wanted to be non-judgemental. As a woman I got paranoid. What if Amore did the same, how would I feel? Not happy is the answer. But then again, what is it that drives a perfectly decent person to this kind of activities? Questions kept shooting through my head. I couldn’t think of an honest way to help him out. So I asked for some time to think about it, recommending that he took it easy in the meantime. Which depressed him, because I was clearly implying he was doing the wrong thing. But was it the wrong thing?

Here’s an analogy. In the world of film, traditionally rights were sold for TV, VHS, DVD, cinema chains, etc. Then internet came along and rights have been selling for online distribution. Would that mean that cheating has expanded its realms from the world of hotels, parks, his/her house to the all mighty internet?

What is your view on this? IS ONLINE CHEATING – CHEATING? I believe it is.