Virtual Affairs: Are They Cheating?

Traditionally, there are two recognized kinds of affairs that married people can engage in: sexual affairs, which are well-known, and emotional affairs, which involve confiding in and getting emotional support from someone outside your marriage. Many affairs are both. But there’s a new kind of affair that’s been in the spotlight recently, particularly in America’s divorce courts: Online or ‘virtual’ affairs.

Defining ‘Virtual Affair’
The defining trait of an online affair is the exchange of sexually-charged messages over an electronic medium, without any physical meeting. This generally takes one of two forms: either a prolonged interaction (many separate encounters) between two specific people, or one person engaging in a prolonged series of interactions with a variety of other people.

Is It Cheating?
This is a difficult subject, because it calls into question what ‘cheating’ actually means. On the one hand, there is no sex in a virtual affair, and there is rarely an emotional bond involved, either. Thus, the perpetrator can very honestly get away with claiming no infidelity. On the other hand, it sure feels to the betrayed spouse like they were cheated on, which for most purposes is actually the only thing that matters (at least, in a no-fault divorce state like Michigan.)

The important part here is that virtual affairs, whether you call them ‘cheating’ or not, are definitely a violation of trust. And like any other significant violation of trust, it will take some serious work on the part of the violator to earn trust back from their spouse.

The Scientists Weigh In: It’s More Like Gambling than Cheating
One of the most unusual factors behind a virtual affair is that they are generally not inspired by the same urges that drive someone to, for example, indulge in pornography. Instead, the main drivers of virtual affairs are the same elements of Internet life that drive trolls to do their troll thing:

• Dissociative Anonymity (“No one connects my actions online to my real self.”)
• Invisibility (“No one knows what I look like or how to find me.”)
• Asynchronicity (“My actions aren’t taking place in real-time, so cause-and-effect doesn’t really apply to them.”)
• Solipsistic Introjection (“I’m reading these words with my own voice, so this person isn’t actually that different from me.”)
• Dissociative Imagination (“These other people aren’t real, they’re just words appearing on my screen, so anything I do to/with them don’t have any real-world effect.”)
• Illusion of No Authority (“There’s no cops/law/government/parents/etc. here, so I can do whatever I want.”)

These thoughts collide to form a kind of psychological ‘armor’ that leads the person having the affair to believe that there couldn’t be any real-world consequences of a virtual affair.

Yet the thrill of putting a tentative virtual flirtation out there and getting a positive response is very real — the heart really races, the blood really flows toward the genitals, and the smiles (on both sides of the screen) are genuine. The combination of obvious real-world upside and perceived lack of real-world consequences feels like gambling without the risk of losing —  you can only win, or try again, so why not try again? And again, and again, and again?

If You Catch Your Spouse in a Virtual Affair…
…it’s time to have a frank discussion. It might very well be that you’re not all that concerned by the affair — there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, it’s up to the people involved in a relationship to define what ‘cheating’ means for the two of them. But if it is something you consider cheating, try to remember that it’s most effective to think of the affair not as a sexual or emotional betrayal, and more like an ‘addiction to romance.’ Like any other addiction, it can most easily be broken by human connection — so unless it was already an obvious choice, divorce should probably be off the table.