Cyber Sex - Internet Nooky
By Lisa Daily
Every week I receive lots of letters from women complaining
that their boyfriends or husbands are engaged in a little
online lust-fest. Is cybersex really cheating? Does
it mean he loves me less? Is looking at porn on the
Internet as bad as flirting with someone anonymously
in a chat room?
Most of the women who write to me believe that cybersex
is cheating. Here's the rub: a surprising number of
men (54% in fact, according to Divorce Magazine,) believe
it's not.
Sure, typing words on a keyboard is not exactly the
same thing as making out with a stranger in a bar after
too many cosmopolitans, or sleeping with a coworker
on a business trip. Unfortunately, what women seem to
understand that men frequently do not is that online
relationships mean intimacy between two real people,
whether they are in the same room (or Jacuzzi) or not.
Lots of guys use Internet flirting or cybersex as a
sort of interactive girly magazine, and frankly, they
leave their emotions at the bathroom door. The problem
is that to women, both the woman in their lives and
the woman on the other end of the DSL, the interaction
is real. A cyber-relationship holds promise, and to
a wife or girlfriend that promise feels like a very
real threat.
There's more. According to recent studies, (Greenfield
and Rivet - Internet Use & Abuse Survey 1999) evidence
proves there is a high correlation between online cybersex
and subsequent real-time sexual affairs. The same study
stated that a whopping 31% of people have had an online
conversation that has led to real-time sex.
Which means that cybersex, whether you think of it
as cheating or not, poses a real hazard to relationships.
So, what can you do to protect your relationship against
cyber-nooky? Well, your best defense is to let your
partner know exactly what your position is. He'll either
respect your feelings, or he won't. (Which is telling
in itself.) But either way, you'll know where you stand,
and exactly the type of person you're with.
Lisa Daily is the author of Stop Getting Dumped! All you
need to know to make men fall madly in love with you.
At UK bookstores everywhere. As seen in/on Cosmopolitan,
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