The company behind Ashley Madison, a popular online dating service marketed to people trying to cheat on their spouses, said on Monday that the site had been breached by hackers who may have obtained personal data about the service’s millions of members.
The group of hackers behind the attack, going by the name Impact Team, said they had stolen information on the 37 million members of Ashley Madison. To prevent the data from being released, the hackers said, the company needed to shut down the site entirely.
The hackers promised to release the real names, passwords and financial transactions of members if Ashley Madison did not meet that demand. The hackers have leaked some information online already, but that data did not appear to be the bulk of what was collected. (Grandoni, 2015)
The above extract from a news article emphasizes how Internet‐enabled cheating is a big business. Cyberspace has created new opportunities to cheat on one’s partner, and in many ways has made it easier to carry out an affair (both online and offline). The research on Internet infidelity has examined the types of online sexual activities that might be considered unfaithful and which ones might cause the most upset for people. This chapter questions whether all online sexual behaviour, including cybersex with an avatar, might be considered acts of betrayal. We also examine other forms of relationship transgression, such as emotional betrayal. How men and women differ on their understandings of infidelity are examined through the lens of theories such as social evolutionary and social cognitive theories. However, as the reader will note, researchers need to gain a more in‐depth understanding of betrayals that might take place online in order to develop theories that incorporate relationship transgressions that take place in the physical and cyber realms – especially given the importance and frequent usage of digital technologies in many people’s lives.
For a number of years, scholars debated whether or not Internet infidelity was a real phenomenon (e.g., Cooper, 2002; Maheu & Subotnik, 2001; Whitty, 2003b; Young, 1998). These days there is general agreement that people can and do cheat on their partners on the Internet. There are, however, conflicting views on which behaviours might be considered unfaithful.
Internet infidelity has been operationalized in a number of ways. Shaw (1997) defined Internet infidelity as ‘behaviorally different from other kinds of infidelity; however, the contributing factors and results are similar when we consider how it affects the way partners relate’ (p. 29). A more specific definition has been offered by Young, Griffin‐Shelley, Cooper, O’Mara and Buchanan (2000), who stated that a cyberaffair is ‘a romantic and/or sexual relationship that is initiated via online contact and maintained predominantly through electronic conversations that occur through email and in virtual communities such as chat rooms, interactive games, or newsgroups’ (p. 60). In contrast, Maheu and Subotnik (2001) provide a generic definition of infidelity: ‘Infidelity happens when two people have a commitment and that commitment is broken – regardless of where, how or with whom it happens. Infidelity is the breaking of a promise with a real person, whether the sexual stimulation is derived from the virtual or the real world’ (p. 101).
As already highlighted in this book, the Internet will continue to evolve, and so a statement about the specific spaces online in which individuals might cheat (e.g., email, SNSs) is difficult to include in any definition of Internet infidelity. The definition of Internet infidelity offered here is as follows:
Internet infidelity occurs when the rules of the relationship are broken by acting inappropriately in an emotional and/or a sexual manner with at least one person other than one’s partner. The rules might differ for different couples, but there are some fundamental rules that are often unspoken and are typical expectations of most committed relationships. The Internet might be the exclusive, main or partial space where the inappropriate emotional or sexual interactions take place.
As with offline infidelity, the types of behaviours that are considered unfaithful online are classified as emotional and/or sexual. However, there is a range of sexual and emotional activities that one can engage in and not all of these are necessarily considered to be unfaithful by all individuals.
Chapter 5 considered cybersex and offered a definition, stating that cybersex is ‘generally understood to be synchronous communication in cyberspace where two or more individuals engage in discourses about sexual fantasies’ (Whitty & Carr, 2006, p. 21). It was also pointed out that there are various understandings about what cybersex entails but, in the main, individuals see it as a descriptive, interactive activity that sexually arouses individuals and might contain a visual element. Previous research has consistently found that cybersex is perceived as an act of infidelity (Mileham, 2007; Parker & Wampler, 2003; Whitty, 2003b, 2005). This is not limited to studies that ask participants whether they would be upset if they learnt that their partner was engaging in such activities. Mileham (2007), for example, interviewed 76 men and 10 women whom she had recruited from Yahoo’s ‘Married and Flirting’ and MSN’s ‘Married but Flirting’ chat rooms. Married people inhabit these sites and engage in cyberflirting and cybersex and sometimes arrange to meet offline. She found that some of these participants acknowledged that online activities could be perceived as unfaithful.
Chapter 5 outlined a host of online sexual activities, not all of which have been considered by researchers of Internet infidelity. In addition to cybersex, Parker and Wampler (2003) identified a range of other online sexual interactions that participants believed to be unfaithful, including interacting in adult chat rooms and becoming a member of an adult website. More recently, Schneider, Weiss and Samenow (2012) identified a range of online sexual activities that individuals considered to be unfaithful, including viewing pornography alone, sexual chatting and viewing porn, and sexual chatting and then meeting up with the person with whom they were chatting. These cyber activities might take place via computers and/or smartphones.
Viewing pornography is not considered by the majority of participants surveyed by the research to be an unfaithful act (although it is often still upsetting for individuals to learn their partner has been viewing pornography). Parker and Wampler (2003) found that visiting adult chat rooms but not interacting, and visiting various adult websites were also not considered to be relationship transgressions. It has been suggested that viewing pornography is less likely to be understood as a relationship transgression because it is a passive act, which often does not involve interacting with another. Moreover, there is no real possibility of it leading to interaction with the person being watched.
Why are online sexual activities considered by the majority to be unfaithful acts given that these activities are only virtual? According to Whitty (2003b, 2005, 2011), the answer lies with research conducted on more traditional relationship transgressions. Previous research into infidelity has found that ‘mental exclusivity’ is as important as ‘sexual exclusivity’ (Yarab & Allgeier, 1998). Roscoe, Cavanaugh and Kennedy (1988), for example, found that undergraduates believed that engaging in sexual interactions such as kissing, flirting and petting with someone other than their partner ought to be considered unfaithful. Yarab, Sensibaugh and Allgeier (1998) revealed an array of unfaithful sexual behaviours in addition to sexual intercourse, including passionately kissing, sexual fantasies, sexual attraction and flirting. Yarab and Allgeier (1998) found that, when considering sexual fantasies, the greater the threat of the sexual fantasy to the current relationship, the more likely the fantasy was to be rated as unfaithful. For instance, fantasizing about a partner’s best friend was considered by most to be a greater threat, and therefore more unfaithful, than fantasizing about a movie star.
Returning to the question, empirical research suggests that it is the sexual desire for another that is the act of betrayal. Hence, displays of that sexual desire as well as fantasizing about the object of one’s desire can be upsetting for one’s partner. But this desire needs to be seen as potentially mutual and obtainable. Therefore, if one has sexual fantasies about Brad Pitt or a male gigolo, one’s partner is far less likely to be concerned than if one fantasizes about having sex with their best friend or a stranger they have cybersex with online.
The research on offline infidelity has identified that not all infidelity is sexual – it can be emotional. Emotional infidelity is understood to be falling in love with another individual other than one’s partner, or sharing intimate and/or secret details about oneself with someone one is attracted to, other than one’s partner. Emotional infidelity has been found to be equally upsetting whether it takes place online or offline. This finding makes sense in light of the research summarized in Chapter 3 on online relationships – where such relationships, for some, are understood to be as intimate and emotionally fulfilling as offline relationships. Emotional infidelity is illustrated in the extract below, which is from a study where participants were required to complete a story following a cue about Internet infidelity (Whitty, 2005):
‘It is cheating,’ she said rather calmly.
‘No, I’m not cheating. It’s not like I’m bonking her anyway. You’re the one I’m with and, like I said, I have NO intentions of meeting her.’ He hopped into bed.
‘It’s “emotional” cheating,’ she said, getting annoyed.
‘How so?’ he asked, amusement showing in his eyes.
‘Cheating isn’t necessarily physical. That’s one side of it. …’ He pulled the sheets over himself and rolled over. ‘Well … I know you have not met her yet, that’s why, but I’m still a little annoyed, Mark.’ She sat on the edge of the bed.
‘Don’t be mad. You’re the one I love. So how is it emotional cheating?’ He sat up.
‘You’re keeping stuff from me. Relationships are about trust! How can I trust you if you keep stuff from me about the “Internet girl”?’ (pp. 62–63)
Overall, it seems that men and women do not differ in how much or how regularly they experience jealousy or upset in regard to traditional forms of infidelity (Buss, 2000). Nonetheless, some researchers have found that men and women differ in the ‘weighting given to the cues that trigger jealousy’ (Buss, 2000, p. 46). As Buss (2000) explains: ‘men are predicted to give more weight to cues of sexual infidelity, whereas women are predicted to give more weight to cues of long‐term diversion of investment, such as, emotional involvement with another person’ (p. 46). This he explains through an evolutionary lens. According to this theory, through natural selection the human species has inherited certain traits and emotional reactions. Researchers, such as Buss, contend that ancestral men faced a grave threat from cuckoldry – being uncertain about the paternity of their partner’s children. Consequently, men are more likely to respond with more intense jealousy to sexual infidelity than women. Ancestral women, on the other hand, faced the risk that an unfaithful male partner might divert his resources to another woman and her children. Therefore, women have developed an innate jealousy towards emotional infidelity (the assumption being that the man will expend resources on the ‘other woman’ he is in love with).
Research on offline infidelity has found that, when forced to choose whether sexual or emotional infidelity is most upsetting, women, more than men, rate extradyadic emotional behaviour as more upsetting (Shackelford & Buss, 1996). Some have found this result even when participants are not forced to decide. For example, Roscoe et al. (1988) asked participants to list what behaviours they believed were relationship transgressions. In this study, men were more likely to state that a sexual encounter with a different partner was an exemplar of infidelity. In contrast, women were more likely to state that spending time with another and keeping secrets from a partner were acts of infidelity. It is, however, noteworthy that both men and women report extradyadic sexual behaviour to be more unacceptable and a greater betrayal than extradyadic emotional behaviour (Shackelford & Buss, 1996).
Not all theorists agree with evolutionary theorists’ accounts of infidelity. DeSteno, Bartlett, Braverman and Salovey (2002), for example, have argued that the methodology Buss and his colleagues used to test their claims was not sound. One reason for this is because the same results are not always found when different methodologies are employed to test this hypothesis. Buss and his colleagues’ findings have been supported via forced‐choice questions, asking participants to choose whether they believe sexual or emotional infidelity is worse. Gender differences, however, are typically not obtained when participants are asked to rate how upset they would feel as a result of each of these scenarios.
Alternative theories have been developed to explain jealousy and upset experienced as a result of betrayal. Some theorists have contended that existing gender differences need not reflect innate modules. Instead, they might be better explained by a social cognitive approach or by developmental theories (e.g., DeSteno & Salovey, 1996; Harris, 2004; Harris & Christenfeld, 1996). Proponents of these theories believe it is crucial to understand what men and women read into their partners’ infidelity. This has been named the ‘double‐shot hypothesis’ (DeSteno & Salovey, 1996) or the ‘two‐for‐one hypothesis’ (Harris & Christenfeld, 1996), both of which essentially state that men feel doubly upset when thinking about their female partner having sex with another man, as the male partner holds the belief that this most likely means she is in love with the other man. Hence, sexual infidelity implies emotional infidelity. Women, in contrast, think that men can have sex without being in love and so do not believe that sexual infidelity implies emotional infidelity. Instead, women get the double hit if they believe their male partner is in love with another woman. This is because they believe that emotional infidelity implies sexual infidelity. Men, however, do not assume that their female partner is having sex with another man with whom she is in love. Therefore, he does not experience any additional upset from this thought.
To test out their claims, Harris and Christenfeld (1996) asked their participants to think of a serious romantic relationship they had been involved in and to imagine that this partner had been engaging in sexual intercourse with someone else. On a five‐point Likert scale, participants had to rate the likelihood that their partner was in love with the person with whom they had just engaged in sex. In addition, they were again asked to think of a serious romantic relationship they had been involved in and to imagine that their partner was in love with someone else. On a five‐point Likert scale, participants had to rate the likelihood that their partner was having sex with the person with whom they were in love. As predicted, they found that men were more likely to say that their partner was in love with the person with whom they were having sex, and women were more likely to say that their partner was having sex with the person with whom they had fallen in love.
The gender differences with regard to Internet infidelity are mixed, and not as clear‐cut as the research on traditional infidelity. Consistent with previous research on offline infidelity, in a story‐writing task, Whitty (2005) found that women, more than men, mentioned emotional betrayal in their stories of cyberinfidelities. Also, in line with previous research on offline betrayal (e.g., Amato & Previti, 2003; Paul & Galloway, 1994), she found that women were more likely than men to write that they would end their relationship if they found out their partner was having an affair on the Internet. Moreover, the women in Whitty’s (2005) study were more likely than the men to talk about the time and distancing from the relationship the infidelity caused.
Interestingly, when asked to rate scenarios, any gender differences have been found to occur in the opposite direction from what traditional theories of infidelity would predict. Parker and Wampler’s (2003) study, which considered online sexual activities, found that women viewed these activities more seriously than men did. Whitty’s (2003b) study found that women were more likely than men to believe that sexual acts were an act of betrayal. Whitty and Quigly (2008) considered whether the double‐shot hypothesis or the two‐for‐one hypothesis applied to attitudes towards cyberinfidelities. Their research did not find any gender differences or any support for these hypotheses. Moreover, they found that participants were much less likely to believe that cybersex implied love or that online love implied cybersex than they were to believe that sexual intercourse implied love or that love implied sexual intercourse. They argue that this could be for a number of reasons. First, given that previous research has found that most people have not engaged in online sexual activities, making connections between love and cybersex does not come easily. Second, given that cybersex is qualitatively different from sexual intercourse, although individuals might still perceive it as a relationship transgression, they do not necessarily link it with love in the same way they would offline relationship transgressions.
There is a dearth of research available on differences between online and offline affairs. However, from what we know about online relationships, we might theorize two differences. The first is that online relationships might have a more seductive appeal than offline relationships, given that we know that ‘hyperpersonal’ relationships can form online. The second is that online affairs might be psychologically easier to engage in given that the virtual world is theoretically easy to ‘split off’ from people’s everyday lives.
Chapter 3 points out that relationships developed online can sometimes be ‘hyperpersonal’ (Walther, 1996, 2007; Walther, Slovacek & Tidwell, 2001). Given the hyperintimacy that can be achieved during CMC, there is the danger that these relationships, while they remain online, might appear more appealing and enticing, leading to idealization. Because of certain features of CMC, individuals can be strategic in their self‐presentations, creating a more likeable person than perhaps they are more commonly perceived to be in other spaces. The reactions one receives to this well‐crafted, likeable self could potentially be more appealing than the responses one receives to a more mundane self of everyday life. Moreover, if the individual that person is communicating with is employing the same strategy, they too might seem a more likeable person than people known in one’s everyday life. It has been argued that this seductive appeal of online relating could therefore easily lead to an online affair (Whitty, 2010; Whitty & Carr, 2005).
Melanie Klein’s work on splitting is also useful in explaining the appeal of online relationships (Whitty & Carr, 2005, 2006). She believed that splitting was one of the most primitive or basic defence mechanisms against anxiety. According to Klein (1986), the ego prevents the bad part of the object from contaminating the good part of the object by splitting it off and disowning a part of itself. An infant in its relationship with its mother’s breast conceives the breast as both a good and a bad object. The breast gratifies and frustrates, and the infant will simultaneously project both love and hate onto it. On the one hand, the infant idealizes this good object but, on the other hand, the bad object is seen as terrifying, frustrating and a persecutor threatening to destroy both the infant and the good object. The infant projects love and idealizes the good object but goes beyond mere projection in trying to induce in the mother feelings towards the bad object for which she must take responsibility (i.e., a process of projective identification). This stage of development Klein termed the ‘paranoid‐schizoid position’. The infant may, as another defence mechanism for this less developed ego, seek to deny the reality of the persecutory object. While in our normal development we pass through this phase, this primitive defence against anxiety is a regressive reaction that, in a sense of always being available to us, is never transcended. The good objects in the developed superego come to represent the fantasized ego ideal and thus ‘the possibility of a return to narcissism’ (Schwartz, 1990, p. 18).
In line with Klein’s object relations theory, it might be useful to understand the individual with whom one is having an online affair to be the good object. Given that the interactions that take place in cyberspace can often be seen as separate from the outside world (Whitty & Carr, 2006), it is potentially easier to split an online affair off from the rest of the individual’s world. The online relationship can potentially cater to an unfettered, impotent fantasy that it is difficult to measure up to in reality. Hence, the online affair can potentially lead to a narcissistic withdrawal.
It has been argued that offline infidelity occurs because there are problems in one’s relationship or because of certain personality characteristics (see Fitness, 2001). Buss and Shackelford (1997) have identified some key reasons why people betray their partners, including complaints that one’s partner sexualizes others, exhibits high levels of jealousy and possessiveness, is condescending, withholds sex or abuses alcohol. These are perhaps the same reasons individuals are motivated to initiate online affairs. However, drawing from Klein’s theory, it has been argued that online affairs are perhaps easier to maintain than offline affairs – that the online relationship can become idealized through the process of splitting, while simultaneously denying the bad aspects of the person one is having the affair with and at the same time the bad aspects in oneself. It is possibly easier to idealize an individual online (the good object) when one can more easily filter out the potential negative aspects of the relationship (the bad object). The relationship can be turned on or off at one’s leisure and the communication content, to some extent, can be more easily controlled. Moreover, the Internet does provide an environment where it is easier to construct a more positive view of the self and to avoid presenting the negative aspects of the self. In contrast, it is not so easy to indulge in one’s fantasies of perfection in an offline affair, as one still has to deal with the real person. Given the nature of these affairs as psychologically different from offline affairs, it is argued later in this chapter that therapy needs to take into account these differences; however, before considering treatment approaches, it is important to examine exactly what is understood to be Internet infidelity.
This chapter has examined the many types of relationship transgressions that can take place online. We have focused on studies that have examined transgressions that occur between real people online. However, what of engaging in online sexual acts in a game or virtual world using an avatar? Would couples perceive such an act as an act of betrayal? Although little research has been conducted in order to answer this question, anecdotal evidence might go some way to helping begin to think about whether a virtual affair using an avatar is a ‘real’ relationship transgression.
Morris (2008) reported the story of an English couple who divorced because of the husband’s alter ego’s hot chatting with another woman in Second Life. Second Life is a MMORPG where individuals create their own avatars (personas) and interact in a fantasy world. Morris wrote that the couple initially met online, after which their avatars become partners in Second Life – that is, until Amy Taylor (aka Laura Skye in Second Life) caught her husband, David Pollard (aka Dave Barmy in Second Life), having cybersex with a prostitute in Second Life. As Morris reports:
Horrified, Taylor ended the online relationship between Skye and Barmy but stayed with Pollard in real life.
It was then that fact and fiction really began to collide. Taylor decided to test Dave Barmy – and thus Pollard’s loyalty – by turning to a virtual female private eye called Markie Macdonald. A ‘honey trap’ was set up in which an alluring avatar chatted Barmy up. He passed the test with flying colours, talking about Laura Skye all night. Barmy and Skye got back together in cyberspace, marrying in a ceremony held in a pretty tropical grove. In real life at their flat in Cornwall, Taylor wept as she watched the service, and in 2005 – real life again – the couple married in the less glamorous surroundings of the St. Austell registry office. But Taylor sensed something was wrong and eventually found Dave Barmy chatting affectionately to a woman who was not Laura Skye. She found it even more disturbing than his earlier tryst, as there seemed genuine affection in it and – in real life – she filed for divorce.
Despite the fact that avatars were involved, in this scenario there were still real people interacting behind them. Moreover, as was highlighted earlier in this chapter, emotional betrayal can be just as upsetting as sexual betrayal. This might account for Taylor’s upset. However, although Taylor, in this scenario, obviously believed that her husband had cheated on her, we still need to consider whether the majority of people would see things in the same light. In her case the two lived intense lives together in a fantasy world (considered to be a game). Perhaps Taylor found it difficult to separate play from reality.
In one of the few studies that have examined infidelity in Second Life, Gilbert, Murphy and Avalos (2011) surveyed 199 participants who had been involved in an intimate relationship in Second Life. They found that the majority of participants viewed their Second Life relationships as real rather than as a form of game‐playing. However, not all their findings presented these relationships in glowing terms. A portion of their participants believed that their virtual relationship was deemed a threat to their real‐life relationship with the potential for ‘detrimental effects rising as the couple progressively adds non‐immersive digital and physical channels of communication to the original 3D relationship’ (p. 2039). This study suggests that, for some, developing a romantic relationship with an avatar in a game could be understood as an act of infidelity.
There is much we still need to learn about Internet infidelity. We also need to be mindful of the changing nature of the Internet. Web 2.0 brought about a much more interactive Internet (using applications to increase interactivity), and it will continue to develop in increasingly sophisticated ways. Today, individuals often use digital technologies for social purposes, which could potentially result in a large proportion of relationship transgressions being initiated and/or conducted online. The question of whether romantic and/or sexual relationships that develop in more playful areas of the Internet might be construed as relationship transgressions is yet to be properly examined. Affairs are potentially easy to initiate and maintain because of digital technologies, and these technologies must surely play a significant role in most forms of infidelity. How partners deal with such affairs if they wish to continue their relationships also requires further investigation.