Sex, lies & the Internet

Ebony, Nov, 2003 by Zondra Hughes

ON any given night, Brothers and Sisters, equipped with computers, false identities and unlimited Internet access, steal away from their mates and engage in virtual adultery, many times right under their mate's nose.

With a few simple keyboard strokes and the click of a mouse, these cyber cheaters instantly log on to the World Wide Web of lies.

It's a world where a 47-year-old married mother of three can masquerade as a virgin 17-year-old cheer-leader.

It's a world where an out-of-work high school dropout can masquerade as the owner of an up-and-coming recording company.

It's a world where an inmate (yes, the Internet is readily available in many prison systems) can masquerade as Officer Friendly, looking to "prevent" a few souls from participating in some costly scare involving your online bank account.

And it's a world where rapists, abductors, would-be stalkers and the rest of society's bottom-feeders can masquerade as law-abiding citizens, just hanging out in cyberspace for some good conversation, when in reality, they are surfing for fresh victims.

But some spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends and fiancees (and fiances) log on to relationship chatrooms.online groups where singles trade messages back and forth in real time--for hours at a time and never stray from their real relationship.

But some do stray, and never escape the Internet's tangled web, opting instead to pack up and run away with their new computer loves, leaving their real-life relationships behind.

Many jilted women have reported that while they may have kept close tabs on their man's interactions with that cute office assistant, his "old high school chum," or even that female stylist at the barbershop, they never considered their home computer system to be the competition.

"He was at home all the time, and I thought that was the only thing that mattered," says Frankie (not her real name) of Boston. "We were in the same house, but we hardly spent any time in the same room. But he slipped up; one night he forgot to sign off from his personal e-mail account and I discovered all of the e-mails from several different women. I printed them all and confronted him. We're in counseling now, and the computer is off-limits. We're trying to work it out, but the trust is long gone."

And some jilted men don't discover that their mates have been stepping out on them in cyberspace until it's too late, says Kimberly Young, a Pennsylvania-area psychologist and author of Tangled in the Web.

"What's happening in many cases is that people aren't just going online and having cybersex [trading explicit text messages online]," explains Dr. Young. "They are developing an emotional connection to the online buddy and it alters the perception of what they have at home. And the No. 1 thing I hear about is the wife who ran off with some man she met on the Internet."

Keeping the significant other ignorant about an online liaison is an art, and the more computer-savvy the cheater, the more dirt he or she will be able to conceal.

Ron Worthy, product strategist for Black-planetlove.com, an Interact community with over 2 million registered African-American singles, says part of the Internet's allure is the anonymity that it offers its single daters--and married cheaters.

"We don't actively promote or market the site to people who are married, but a small percentage of our members are married," Worthy says. "For the most part, people want a discreet way to sneak around, and the Internet is very good for that. With the Internet, you can have control over how you present yourself with pictures and your biography and any interests that you decide to divulge. Because you have a user name [an alias], not your own name, you can flirt with people in other states, or even create a double life."

Cyber cheaters living a James Bond 007 existence are often caught up in the unlikeliest of ways.

There are cheaters who are savvy enough to create multiple identities on the 'net, or join several Internet dating services simultaneously, but are busted by their mate's Internet-surfing friends or family members who come across their bios and pictures. And some suspecting mates have created Internet dating profiles to bait the straying lover.

Art (Chat Daddy) Sims, founder of a Chicago-area in-the-flesh relationship chat group, the Original Real Deal Relationship Chat, says a common faux pas many would-be cheaters make is rendezvousing with that all-too-familiar virtual lover.

"This couple had been surfing the single sites, using different user names, and unknowingly had been communicating with each other," Sims says. "When it was time to meet face-to-face, they both discovered that they were planning to cheat with each other." After a few months of giving each other the shifty eye, the couple decided to go their separate ways.

Whether or not a couple survives the meltdown of trust that follows a cyber affair depends on a number of factors, the most pertinent being the cheater's willingness to pull the cord on the online affair for good, according to relationship experts.