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Internet
Addiction - 2
Virtual
Infidelity
Every time Cynthia’s
husband heads upstairs to the office, her stomach tightens and her jaw
clenches.
"I feel paranoid whenever
he is on the computer," she says. "I can’t get it off my mind that he is
cheating."
Cynthia confronted Victor
after reading an email from a woman she had never heard of, who apparently
lived in another country. Victor denied having an affair. After all, he
had never actually seen the other woman, much less touched her, and he had
no plans to do so. "A bunch of typed words don’t amount to an affair," he
maintained. It was just talking and exploring fantasies.
But to Cynthia, the
intimacy expressed in the email is more threatening than a purely sexual
relationship. She wondered why her partner couldn’t be that intimate with
her.
Intimacy issues are often
at the heart of Internet affairs. Too often, however, online time serves
only to distract from the marital problems at hand. And online
relationships are generally easier because of the illusion of perfection.
Lack of information about the real person to whom one is talking, the
silence into which one types, the absence of visual cues—all these can
make the person on the other end of the keyboard seem infinitely more
wonderful than the imperfect person who shares your bed.
Simulated
Experience
Four-year-old Eddie
spends hours behind a computer screen studying whales and porpoises; he
can identify almost anything that swims. But Eddie has never seen real
fish, though he lives near the ocean and a world-class aquarium.
Like a pint-sized hermit
peering out of his window, Eddie, like huge numbers of children today, is
learning about nature on a computer screen, not from direct contact with
the natural world. His experience is only a simulated experience, which
increasing numbers of people are willing to accept as sufficient.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
