I have gathered some material for you. For reasons of copyright, I'm
posting just brief excerpts here; for more info, you may want to read
these articles in their entirety.
This study of 76 men and 10 women was conducted as part of a doctoral
dissertation by Beatriz Avila Mileham at the University of Florida:
"In 2002, Mileham conducted in-depth online interviews with 76 men and
10 women, ages 25 to 66, who used Yahoo?s 'Married and Flirting' or
Microsoft?s 'Married But Flirting,' Internet chat rooms geared
specifically for married people...
The UF study found an escalating quality to these online contacts.
Many reported that what started as innocent, friendly exchanges
progressed quickly to strong desires for sexual relationships, she
said.
Twenty-six of the 86 study participants went on to meet the person
whom they had been engaged in an online relationship with, and of
these, all but two ended up having a real-life affair."
University of Florida News
http://www.napa.ufl.edu/2003news/internetinfidelity.htm
"Columbus family-relations lawyer Jeffrey Grossman implicates the
Internet in almost half of his cases that involve an extramarital
relationship -- a figure that corresponds to reports from therapists
and other lawyers nationwide...
In fact, hundreds of chat rooms with titles such as 'Married but
Looking' and 'Married and Flirting' are designed for cheaters...
In online interviews with 86 people in 'married' chat rooms, only 26
said they had met their online partners in person, noted University of
Florida researcher Beatriz Avila Mileham.
Absent touching, 83 percent of her sample indicated that they don't
equate online contact with unfaithfulness."
The Columbus Dispatch: Internet access implicated in growing number of divorces
http://www.shirleyglass.com/columbus.htm
Many sources say that the Internet is having a noticeable effect on
patterns of divorce:
"Two-thirds of lawyers meeting at an annual conference in Chicago
recently said the Internet had played a significant role in divorces
they had handled during the past year.
Meeting a new lover online and an 'obsessive' interest in pornography
were the top two problems cited in many internet-related divorce
cases...
According to divorce-online, half of all divorce petitions it
processes are due to 'internet adultery' and cybersex behaviour.
Of the 500 divorce petitions surveyed, half contained allegations
concerning cybersex, inappropriate online relationships and
pornography."
Xposed: Online Sex
http://www.xposed.com/sexposed/relationships/online_sex.aspx
Here's an interesting article discussing the results of a 1999 survey
of 270 adults. The survey's purpose was to assess the affect that the
Internet had made upon various aspects of people's lives:
"Have you ever been in love with someone on-line? (Survey Question 27)
Almost half of the respondents in this survey answered yes to the
above question (52 percent of the men and 42 percent of the women
answered yes). This is particularly interesting when one considers
that over 70 percent of the respondents stated they are married. This
information allows us to conclude there are a substantial number of
married people who have found love on the Internet outside of their
marriages...
About 13 percent of the respondents believed that on-line is having a
positive impact on their marriages (or relationship with significant
other) whereas 21 percent believe these relationships are being
hampered by on-line. The vast majority, about 2/3 of the respondents,
felt that on-line was having no impact on these relationships. If we
take all of these percentages into account, we can say that on-line is
having a net negative impact on marriages or significant other
relationships...
Cyberaffairs are 'typically a symptom of an underlying problem that
existed in the marriage before the Internet ever entered the couple's
lives... therapists need to thoroughly assess and directly deal with
underlying issues that contributed to the cyberaffair.' Only 8 percent
of the respondents felt that on-line does not hurt marriages."
The Internet: Behavioral and Other Impacts
http://members.tripod.com/martyman53/survey/impacts.htm
Actual survey results may be found here:
The Internet: Behavioral and Other Impacts
http://members.tripod.com/martyman53/survey/surveyresults.htm
This comes from a chapter of the book "Sex and the Internet":
"The internet has several characteristics which make it the ideal
medium for sexual involvement (Cooper, 1999). It is widely accessible,
inexpensive, legal, available in the privacy of one's own home,
anonymous, and does not put the user at direct risk of contracting a
sexually-transmitted disease. It is also particularly suited for
hiding the activities from others because it does not leave obvious
evidence of the sexual encounter. It often takes some computer
knowledge on the part of the spouse to retrace the user's online
adventures...
To summarize the types of behaviors involved, the viewing of
pornography while masturbating is nearly universal among male cybersex
addicts, and also found among some female cybersex users, although
women often prefer relational activities such as chat rooms to
strictly visual activities... Other behaviors are reading and writing
sexually explicit letters and stories, e-mailing to set up personal
meetings with someone, placing ads to meet sexual partners, visiting
sexually oriented chat rooms, and engaging in interactive online
affairs with same- or opposite-sex people, which may include real-time
viewing of each other's bodies using electronic cameras connected to
the computer. Related activities include phone-sex with people met
online, and online affairs that progress to skin-to-skin sex.. A
preliminary study suggests that a higher percentage of women cybersex
addicts (80%, versus 30% of men) progress to offline sexual
encounters."
Jennifer Schneider: Effects of Compulsive Cybersex Behaviors on the Spouse
http://www.jenniferschneider.com/articles/elephant_in_living_room.html
From an article originally published in the New York Times:
"Experts in the field say that the affordability, accessibility and
anonymity of the Internet are fueling a brand new psychological
disorder -- cybersex addiction -- that appears to be spreading with
astonishing rapidity and bringing turmoil to the lives of those
affected.
Researchers writing in the current issue of the journal Sexual
Addiction and Compulsivity report that many of the men and women who
now spend dozens of hours each week seeking sexual stimulation from
their computers deny that they have a problem and refuse to seek help
until their marriages, their jobs, or both, are in jeopardy.
For some people, the route to compulsive use of the Internet for
sexual satisfaction is fast and short, said Dr. Mark Schwartz of the
Masters and Johnson Institute in St. Louis. 'Sex on the Net is like
heroin,' he said. 'It grabs them and takes over their lives. And it's
very difficult to treat because the people affected don't want to give
it up.'
Those most strongly hooked on Internet sex are likely to spend hours
each day masturbating to pornographic images or having 'mutual' online
sex with someone contacted through a chat room. Occasionally, they
progress to off-line affairs with sex partners they meet online."
Cybersex Gives Birth to a Psychological Disorder
http://www.forensic-psych.com/articles/artCyber.html
"In a recent Nielsen//NetRatings' analysis of the online dating
community, of those acknowledging they accessed an online dating
service the previous day, 11 percent were married individuals."
AARP: Meeting People on the Web
http://www.aarp.org/computers-features/Articles/a2004-02-04-meetpeople.html
"Long before the World Wide Web, men and women were getting together
outside the bounds of matrimony. But the Internet is playing an
increasing role in breaking up marriages. Divorce lawyers and unhappy
spouses are finding that while the Internet doesn?t cause adultery, it
certainly makes it easier.
In fact, the Web has challenged the definition of infidelity,
according to Marlene M. Maheu, a psychologist and coauthor of
Infidelity on the Internet: Virtual Relationships and Real Betrayal...
Dr. Alvin Cooper, director of the San Jose Marital and Sexuality
Centre and a staff psychologist at Stanford University, conducted a
survey of online sexual activity for MSNBC in 2000. Nearly one in ten
of those who said they were married or in committed relationships were
also having secret relationships with someone online."
Online Washingtonian: ADULTERY ON THE THE INTERNET
http://www.washingtonian.com/health/internetadultery.html
"In reality, the number of couples seeking marital counseling these
days because of the disastrous fallout of one partner's cybersex
dalliances is 'exploding,' according to Al Cooper, a Stanford
University psychologist who directed the Internet sex survey.
Moreover, Cooper says the allure of the Internet's affordability,
accessibility, and anonymity are creating problems with sexual
compulsions for both couples and unattached single people. Those can
include obsessive viewing of pornography or cheating on a spouse with
an online lover."
Business Week: When Cupid Uses a Cursor
http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_08/b3617060.htm
Dr. Al Cooper, the author of "Sex and the Internet: A Guide Book for
Clinicians," has written extensively about the 'Net and sexuality.
Regarding the matter of the Internet making various kinds of sexual
behaviors easier, Dr. Cooper describes what he calls "The Triple A
Engine":
"Access. As close as your keyboard, any kind of sexual fantasy or
inclination you can imagine (as well as a host that you would never
imagine) are immediately available 24/7.
Affordability. With a seemingly endless supply and free-market
competitive forces, prices stay low. And frequent e-shoppers often say
the time and energy they save by going online for sex are at least as
valuable as any financial savings.
Anonymity. Even though we live in the 21st century and are supposed to
be sexually comfortable, few of us are. There continues to be
tremendous tension around sexuality. Feelings of fascination and
curiosity are countered by awkwardness, embarrassment and the subtle
sense that there is something wrong or dirty with sex. Enter the
Internet, which provides a freedom to explore sexuality that is hard
to match in the 3D world. This has an even more powerful appeal for
people who feel the need to keep their sexuality under wraps."
MSNBC: Can you surf without wiping out?
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4780785
More material from Dr. Cooper is available here:
San Jose Marital & Sexuality Centre
http://www.sex-centre.com/internet_and_sex.htm
Of particular interest may be this article, which can be obtained upon request:
"Sexuality and the Internet: Surfing into the New Millennium...
This paper highlights a few of the ways that the Internet is having a
profound effect on sexuality...
For a full copy of this article, please contact Dr. Al Cooper at San
Jose Marital and Sexuality Centre, 100 N. Winchester Blvd, suite 275,
Santa Clara, CA 95050, or 408. 248.9737."
There are numerous support groups related to online sexual addiction
and infidelity. Here are links to several:
You Are Not Alone Forums: Infidelity
http://www.enotalone.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=31
You Are Not Alone Forums: Cyber Relationships
http://www.enotalone.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=41
Yahoo! Groups: Online Infidelity
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/onlineinfidelity/
Yahoo! Groups: Anticybercheating
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Anticybercheating/
MSN Groups: For Those Hurt by Internet Infidelity
http://groups.msn.com/ForThoseHurtByInternetInfidelity
MSN Groups: Marriage and the Internet
http://groups.msn.com/MarriageandtheInternet
The Yahoo! and MSN Groups linked above are fully open only to members.
The Yahoo! Groups will display a minimal amount of information to
anyone, but the MSN Groups' URLs will bounce you back to MSN's main
"Groups" page unless you are logged in to your Microsoft .NET Passport
account. To join a Yahoo! Group, you'll need to acquire a Yahoo! email
account; to join an MSN Group, you'll need a Hotmail account and a NET
account. Whew.
I hope this helps! If anything is unclear, or if a link doesn't work
for you, please request clarification; I'll be glad to offer further
assistance before you rate my answer.
Best regards,
pinkfreud |
