How Does an Online Affair Differ from Offline Cheating?
What might not be so obvious, however, are the ways in which it has altered some of the dynamics that operate in our private lives and particularly in our intimate relationships. Voyeurism is certainly nothing new. In the modern age, movies and magazines have served to whet people’s fantasies for nearly a century. Such “adult material” has usually been considered a harmless indulgence because of its basic two-dimensional unreality. A husband may not feel so threatened when his wife fawns over a movie star because he knows that there’s virtually no chance of her ever meeting the person and acting out any of those thoughts. The fantasy doesn’t deprive the real relationship of anything, in other words. Much of the sexual titillation available on the web – the pornographic images and videos – is also two-dimensional and similarly “unreal”. But it also offers a host of other options – from chat rooms to the relatively recent phenomenon of cyber sex – that allow real people to interact intim
