“Women are supposed to be the nurturers and the matriarchs in our society.”ĭue to the secretive nature of online affairs, reliable statistics are hard to find, but a 2005 study of 1,828 Web users in Sweden offers evidence about the prevalence of cybersex and online affairs. “I think there is this bias that women don’t cheat for sexual reasons at all,” Hertlein says. While men traditionally have been the more unfaithful sex, gender roles are reversing in some cases as more women experience cybersex. “That is starting to even out in part because of the equality of opportunity that the Internet brings to everybody,” she says. Women usually feel more threatened by the emotional betrayal of a partner’s online affair, while men are more concerned about physical encounters, Hertlein says, but the gender differences are lessening. Several studies suggest that even when there is no in-person contact, online affairs can be just as devastating as the real-world variety, triggering feelings of insecurity, anger and jealousy. While there is no universally accepted definition, an Internet affair frequently involves intimate chat sessions and sexually stimulating conversation or cybersex, which may include filming mutual masturbation with a Web camera. “With the Internet, we’re moving away from just physical ideas about infidelity and acknowledging emotional infidelity.” “It’s not just that you’re communicating with someone online but that there is a sexual or emotional nature,” says Katherine Hertlein, PhD, an associate professor at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas who studies online affairs. If there is no physical contact or actual sex, is it still an affair?
The growth in steamy chat room conversations and cybersex also has triggered a rethinking of the meaning of infidelity. The typical affair used to start in the office and move to a seedy motel room, but the vast reach of the Internet has brought infidelity into many couples’ homes over the past decade.