Facebook Infidelity Just as Painful as In-Person Cheating

In olden days secret love letters were sealed with wax and delivered by a third party. Now it’s just a matter of a few keystrokes and clicks to send illicit correspondence as. A group of researchers sought to quantify the pain of cheating over the Internet versus old fashioned communication.

The study by researchers from Texas Tech University’s Marriage and Family Therapy Program wanted to see how people reacted when they found out their loved one was cheating with someone over Facebook. They coded responses from about 90 stories recalling how partners reacted when they found out their loved one was using Facebook to hookup. The study may aid therapists in helping couples heal their damaged relationship and renew their love.

Seeing the Signs

Observant partners noticed specific behaviors that led them to believe their partner was cheating on them:

• When they would walk into a room, their partner would quickly close their browser or turn off the computer.
• Their partner may take the laptop to a private place in the house, rather than use it in rooms where family members would be passing through.
• Some partners had changed the passwords to their e-mail, Facebook accounts and/or smart phone so their partner could not read any of the letters they had sent or received.

Some people in the study found out about the infidelity by accident, while others took the initiative to pry into their partners’ accounts. Some of the cheating partners had accidentally forgotten to log out of their account and their partners saw some questionable on-screen conversations. Others who had suspicions about specific people assumed they could find some evidence of the affair on the computer. One participant used special tracking software to monitor their partner’s correspondences.

Confronting and Avoiding

Nearly all the participants expressed how deeply hurt they were when they found out about the infidelity. Their shock, anger and emotional pain seemed just as severe as it would be if it had been a physical affair. Most of them agreed that cheating was cheating, no matter what the context.

The researchers analyzed what actions the participants took when they found out their loved one had cheated on them:

• Some partners never mentioned their discovery.
• Some believed that it was a one-time harmless flirtation with someone that would never go anywhere and didn’t threaten their relationship and things were better left unsaid.
• Others confronted their partner, letting their anger and pain turn into retaliation by embarrassing their loved one in front of friends, family and coworkers. 

Recovering from the Pain

One common theme that the researchers noticed in the participants who had been cheated on was that a breach of trust had been broken and would require mending. For some an affair may be the result of an underlying problem in the marriage. An infidelity is not how most couples want to find out there is a problem in their marriage, but if they do they can use that pain to make their marriage a happier one. An infidelity may help a couple take a better look at their relationship, find its strengths and weaknesses, learn from them and come out of their pain stronger together.

The study’s authors believe that their findings could be useful in marriage counseling. As technology has allowed instant communication globally, everyone seems to be connected with each other. Finding out whether some of these connections could threaten a stable relationship, or whether they are harmless correspondence, is up to both clinicians and couples to determine.

Posted under Sex Addiction in the News on Thursday, July 3rd, 2014