CyberCheating and You
April 8, 2008 by susangpyp
Someone wrote on one of the comments about cyber cheating and/or actual cheating. I’ve edited a post from last year on this. Cybersex, infidelity, sexual addiction…it’s all a matter of extreme dysfunction playing itself out in a relationship. If your partner is doing these things, what about you? Where is your codependency? Your co-addiction? Your martyrdom? Your victimhood?
These are things you need to look at.
It’s not about never giving another chance to change, but it’s about who are you, who is your partner, what has gone on, what is going to go on and what is going to change. It’s about asking tough, tough questions when anything that even hints of infidelity raises its ugly head. It’s about asking what is going on FOR you and TO you and INSIDE you before, during and after this situation.
If you’ve caught your partner cheating and you are spying to make sure it doesn’t happen again, maybe that makes sense for a little while, but after that you have to really assess the situation. What is this lack of trust doing to your life, to your partner’s life, to your kids’ lives? When is it time to get up and get out? Most of all, when are you going to look at YOU and figure out how and why you wound up with this cheater? What are you getting out of this sad little drama? What can you do to change?
Here’s the post on spying on suspecting cheaters.
To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. - George MacDonald
Love is an action. It is what you do. It is also what you don’t do: you don’t control people, you don’t oppress people. And you don’t let people control and oppress you.
Lately I have been hearing a lot of people talking about installing spyware on their partner’s computer or software that duplicates their email and sends it to them or records every keystroke. Some people have taken to talking about it like it’s normal. It is not normal.
Step back a minute and think about your life. Unless you are a paid detective, what can you be doing in the time you’re spending spying on your partner? You can be developing your own interests, finding people to be with, spending time with your kids etc. If you are spending all this time spying on someone, you are NOT living your life.
Life is too short to play detective because someone cannot or will not be honest about what they are doing and who they are doing it with.
Life is too short to have people accusing us of things we’re not doing. Life is too short for jealousy, control or suspicion or arguments that go round and round with no end and no resolution.
If you are in a relationship that requires you to snoop and sneak or if you are being accused of doing things you’re not doing, it’s time to take inventory and ask yourself how much time, energy and emotion you spend on these ridiculous topics.
Sometimes people are so deep into spying on their partner that they don’t take the time to ask themselves, “WHAT am I doing?” If the spying is necessary because the person is not trustworthy, that denotes a SERIOUS relationship issue. If the spying has just taken on a life of its own, that’s a YOU issue. Trust means trust. It means I trust you because I can. It does not mean I trust you because I’ve hacked into your computer or installed spyware and can see you have nothing to hide. A spot check to quell an insecurity here or there is not the end of the world, but doing it on a regular basis shows a serious flaw in the relationship as well as in the characters of both people.
If there is a trust issue, have you talked about it? Does your partner know what is acceptable and unacceptable? Are YOU okay with what is acceptable and unacceptable?
Sometimes people are afraid to draw boundaries because they think they are being unreasonable. You have to get okay with your own boundaries and standards and stick to them. It IS okay to say porn is not okay and NO not every man does it (if that is what he is telling you). It IS okay to say talking to people of the opposite sex on the computer is NOT okay. Even if he or she says they are only friends and you are being a dictator, it IS okay to have that as a boundary and as a standard…it IS okay to say it’s NOT okay to do this.
It IS okay to say “This is what I need from this relationship.” and have those needs met without being told you’re being controlling or crazy or shrew-like or a bastard or bitch or WHATEVER the charge is for knowing where your boundaries are. You do not need to justify that you don’t think this is okay….that you are not comfortable with it. It’s okay to NOT be okay with it.
If you are involved with a sex addict, go to Co-SA for support or CODA if Co-SA seems too intense. You need to find out where you are and how to get out of where you are. You need to learn to set boundaries and have standards and if your partner isn’t willing to honor those boundaries or meet those standards, you need to learn to make a choice from there.
If your partner can’t meet them or thinks they are unreasonable, you have three choices: Accept it, Change It or Leave.
That’s it. Those are the ONLY three choices you ever have when something in your relationship is NOT going your way or is harming you or making you very upset. If you accept it, it means YOU REALLY accept it and it’s fine and you can be serene even if it’s going on.
Changing it is only possible through negotiation and knowing what is negotiable and not negotiable.
If an issue has cropped up and you’re talking about it, are you really negotiating? or are you wearing each other down or is one of you muddying the issue so much the other doesn’t know what he or she feels or thinks anymore.
People who are cheating are usually also lying and twisting things to make the accusing partner feel somewhat crazy about the accusations. Don’t fall into these mind game/word game traps.
The TRUTH WILL RING TRUE. If it sounds nutty/implausible, it probably is. AND it’s not your fault. Don’t take on any responsibility for a cheater cheating or doing untrustworthy things. Everyone is responsible for his or her own behavior. They own it. You do not. If you are not being the greatest partner they can leave, they don’t get to stay and torture you. But YOU have to make that clear.
It IS possible (and healthy) to set a boundary and let someone know what the consequences are for that boundary.
NEVER NEVER NEVER deliver an ultimatum you are not prepared to follow through with. Do not say, “If you continue to be obsessed with porn I am leaving.” unless you are prepared to leave.
Don’t talk in broad terms either. Give your partner very specific details about a) your feelings b) your expectations and c) the consequences of those expectations not being met. You can say, “I get hurt when you talk to other [women/men] on the computer.” That’s it.
Speak in “I” language and talk about YOUR feelings. Do not let the other person say that’s ridiculous or nothing is going on so it’s stupid for you to feel that way or everyone does it or I don’t know what your problem is….etc. YOUR FEELINGS ARE YOUR FEELINGS. Just repeat that. “You might think it’s stupid but this is what I feel and this is what I need to not feel that way…” Then say, “If you continue to do this knowing that it hurts me, I’m going to……….” and then say what you’re going to do. Again, don’t say “I’m leaving” or “we’re getting a divorce.” unless you are prepared to do just that. You can only cry wolf so many times before it becomes apparent you are full of crap and you’re not doing any such thing.
You don’t have to explain WHY you feel this is not okay. It’s just not. It’s on your list of what is and is not okay and that has to be communicated. If someone says you are trying to control him or her you can say, “No I just want to be with someone who will not do this thing and if you’re not him or her I need to know that now so I can figure things out.” If someone considers that a threat, so be it. That’s fine. There are couples for whom porn or cyber chatting or swinging or what have you is perfectly fine. If you’re not one of those couples, you’re not. You can’t be that kind of couple unless both people are HONESTLY accepting of it and have designed it that way.
Too often people get into relationships with completely different agendas and ideas of what “the couple” — the entity you both make up –is going to look like. And it’s too late when both realize it’s very different and then the games begin.
You need to decide what IS and is not okay in a relationship and if you can’t get that from this partner, you either have to change your standards or change your partner.
If you are the person who thinks its okay maybe you need another partner who is more understanding. Don’t stay together and torture each other by trying to change the other person into something they are not.
And before you continue to argue endlessly about the same issues over and over again, ask yourself, is this about THIS issue or is this about control and keeping your partner at a distance? Is this about subconsciously picking people you are never going to mesh with? Why do you have a need to be in such an unfulfilling relationship? Why are you so unwilling to GET OUT of an unfulfilling relationship?
Why are you using children, finances, “I’m afraid to be alone” , “I don’t want to be single.” drive your decision to stay in a bad relationship. None of those are good reasons.
Children of divorce can and do thrive when their parents are happy. People can be poor for a while and still do quite well. If you are afraid to be alone or single, you can work on that. These are all poor excuses to accept unacceptable behavior.
If you want to stay, you MUST tell your partner what your boundaries are. What is and is not okay and let them go from there. They will either accept it, change it or leave. But don’t wallow around in the mud arguing incessantly about it. Don’t let people play word games with you when you’re trying to set boundaries. Don’t let them turn it on you. Speak in “I” language and put it out there. What they do or do not do with it is up to them.
If porn is not okay, SAY IT. If talking to other people on the computer is not okay, SAY IT. If staying out all hours is not okay, SAY IT. If having lunch or dinner with someone of the opposite sex is not okay, SAY IT. You must know what is and is not okay but your partner needs to know too. If your partner knows and CONTINUES THE BEHAVIOR, you can accept it, change it or leave. Or decide not to decide and fight about it for the rest of your life. But that is misery and know you are choosing misery and you don’t have to.
People can and do become addicted to porn, addicted to cheating (whether cyber or otherwise) and doing what they want. If your partner has an addiction of ANY KIND, it will induce sneaking, lying and destruction. That is what addiction does to a relationship. You have the right to get out or to insist they stop it and seek help. They have the right to reject that ultimatum. You have to be prepared for that and decide accordingly. You might want to suggest counseling or some other intervention but be prepared for resistance. Addicts do not give up addiction easily and they blame people, places and things for their addiction. If you need to go to a support group for help and support: GO THERE. Don’t buy into the addicts game of blame.
Do you have to spy on your partner? Does your partner spy on you? What is going on? Why is it going on?
Life is SHORT. Too short to be stuck in these destructive patterns with unworthy people.
If you are a standup person and insist on being with other standup people, trust is something you get fairly early on. Both people recognize another trustworthy person. There ARE trustworthy, honest partners to find and to build a relationship with. It IS possible to have a relationship where you are trusted and can trust.
Jealousy, accusations, power and control are not a part of a trusting relationship and they’re not part of a healthy relationship.
We become trustworthy and learn to pick other trustworthy people (who will not be suspicious and insecure and controlling) when we do our work. When we figure out the things in our past that have led us to controlling and/or untrustworthy people, we fix what is wrong and the right people come into our lives.
In order to find the right person, you need to BE the right person.
Start today.
thanks Susan this must be one of your most powerful and most helpful blogs so far. I am truly grateful since I have been shot of a very destructive relationship for 7 months now - he really tried to ruin me - or better put I allowed him to try and ruin me -this has really helped me realise what a truly bad person he is.
After reading this post several times, I wasn’t going to post. I thought that it didn’t really apply to me. BUT, I’d like to say a couple of things. First of all, I think that cheating is a cheating it’s just easier to do today because the internet makes it so. Cyber this and that is just another way to conduct relationships.
My feeling is that there should be no difference between the way a person conducts themselves in person and how they behave while sitting in front of a computer. Internet relationships have now become almost the dating method of choice, rather than the exception. With that said, the internet has some very hidden flaws and some that are not so hidden.
So, if you meet someone online and you decide to meet in person, use safety precautions first and foremost but also OBSERVE. There’s lots of room for manipulation of the facts online, but not in person. Do they behave in the same way that they “speak” online? This is where you want to begin taking notes.
Take notes, trust your instincts and first and foremost, KNOW THYSELF. You will choose a good date whether on or off the web, and you’ll be glad you did your homework. People who have something to hide are usually the worst liars and you can avoid the whole mess by knowing who you are and what you want in the first place.
Thanks Heather. I am one of the few people who did online dating in the late 80s / early 90s. I worked for a computer company and we had an internal SINGLES message board. It was really cool to meet people and date but you wound up dating people you worked with (even though we were all in different offices).
I fell in love with someone because of how he turned a phrase in email. We wrote long letters to each other that were warm and funny and nice. We were quite the couple in cyberspace. We did not mesh so well in person. Two different worlds. We were both seduced and seductive with our on-line correspondence.
Luckily I learned. I know that most people came on line 10-15 years later and they’ve expanded the world that I once knew because our SINGLES message board was an internal thing so we could only go so far with it.
I was NOT who I said I was on there. I didn’t yet know how to be (it was the first few years after my divorce) and it scared me enough to be someone else and to meet other people who were not who they said they were. Luckily I found out many years before most people. I know that any temptation for me to be phony and act out is ten fold on the internet and that even though it’s gone now, there were years it was in full force.
I was burned a time or two and even burned myself by not being who I really was. Luckily I learned that all long ago.
By the time hubby met me and said, “You are who you say you are.” I had gotten to the point where I could not afford to be anything else!!! I LOVE the honesty in my life today. I love being who I say I am and not knowing how to be anyone else. :)
Cyber “stuff” can be very scary.
Heather-
Such good advice: know who you are and what you want. It’s a good way to be active in my life. When I know those things I CAN choose who I want to be with. I don’t have to wait for someone to choose me.
This is a great recipe for keeping predators, sociopaths, cheaters, and abusers at bay. They simply won’t feel the vibe. Confidence and self-assurance and self-knowledge repels them. It is just a total turnoff to them.
Seeif:
What you write is true! It IS a total turnoff to them because people who are looking to take advantage of another person can see a victim from a mile away. Someone who won’t buy into their garbage or their mind games isn’t a viable opportunity. It’s a weird version of survival of the fittest for opportunists.
And it’s also true that you have every right to choose your partner, just as much as they have the right to choose you or reject you. We ALL have options. That was probably my biggest revelation when I first started to feel better. It was: Oh My Word! I’m ALIVE! I can feel my own being again and I can choose anything *I* want in the world! Some of us repeat old patterns, but those who get stung hard enough and can look at the problem don’t go back to banging their head against a wall.
Moreover, several if not quite a few people, know that I met my present beau online, through a dating website. We have been together 8 months. I can honestly say there’s been NO DRAMA, NO GAMES, NO MISERY. We talk, we care about one another, we share all kinds of things and have lots in common. When we have conflict it’s not the blow up, hair’s on fire, call the police type stuff I had while married. It’s NOTHING like that at all. It’s calm, yet assertive and usually it leaves both of us feeling good about each other. Now granted, we are new to this relationship and we still have more learning to do about each other, BUT there are no WILD surprises about our behavior or who were are - we knew all of that going into it. We understood each other from the get-go and we liked what we saw. Nothing was amiss as we started to date. He has treated me well from day one. I have treated him well. We respect each other’s past, present and we look forward to our future with great joy! We LOVE weekends because it means we can spend time together once again. It is a great match because we both knew what we wanted, we have boundaries and standards and we had love to give that in the past we may not have been able to share. Great matches DO happen, even on the internet. It’s a matter of self-love, self-care, desires and boundaries…and they all have to be addressed prior to a relationship.
Good points Heather and Seeif. I think that my ex was a very different person on the internet and even on the phone than he was in person. He was able to communicate and be intimate on those, but in person he was not able to do that. It took me a long time to get over my “first impression” and to start to see things as they really were. And honestly, I didn’t really completely do that until everything was over- then the veil was lifted. Now he’s in a long distance relationship. Surprised? I guess she will be eventually.
AHHHHH!!! This post practically slapped me in the face (in a good way, if there is such a thing…) I spent SO much of my last relationship justifying and explaining my feelings to him, only to get his favorite phrase “it’s not that big a deal.” Well, you know what? I am at the point now where I say “SCREW THAT!” I know I’m a reasonable person. And I’m tired of finding people who invalidate my feelings and always find a way to twist things so that I’m wrong. I am going to keep telling myself that how I feel is OK.
And looking back, he WAS addicted to porn, tv, and the internet. After we broke up, I found a post he’d left online at some adult themed message board. I knew he was into porn, but I was shocked when I found this as I had no idea he was actually interacting with anyone else, and it gave some validation to my feelings of distrust that started to develop toward the end of the relationship. And his mom told me after we broke up, that she’s almost positive he fooled around with a coworker before he and his ex-wife had separated (a coworker he later got involved with and got incensed at me for saying I wasn’t comfortable with him going to dinner with her even as “just friends” despite the fact that he’d told me that I would have to be comfortable with it for it to happen - I guess he didn’t count on me actually standing up for what I felt was not okay.) To this day, I have no proof that he ever betrayed my trust while we were together, and I will probably never really know. But the things that this has made me think about -
1. I didn’t feel like I deserved to be in a relationship with someone who would be faithful to me and truly care about & validate my feelings
2. I have some serious control issues to work on (manipulating him by doing too much for him, playing the martyr in order to get him to do what I wanted out of guilt/a sense of responsibility, etc)
3. Maybe part of me was hoping I would catch him in something so I could be self-righteous in my faithfulness - God, it sucks to admit that!
4. I have insecurities to work on so that I don’t end up staying in a relationship where my feelings are belittled and dismissed as “no big deal”. I need to take things much slower in the beginning of a relationship so if there are such issues, I have time to see them before I am “in over my head,” and to be able to walk away if this kind of craziness does show up again…
As always, Susan, thanks for the great post!
Lucy? Is that YOU? Hello There! Email me and tell me how you are!
Heather :)
Reading your post makes me think of the saying “you’re either in or your out”. If you asked me that about my relationship, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that I am in.
However, I am also often the last to “get it”, be it a joke or implications of a social interaction. That can be a problem.
I am grateful that my partner really understands that when I say that something was no big deal I am sincere in that and has the commitment and patience to explain what it looks like and feels like to her. Actually, I rarely say that anymore, usually heading straight for “how’s that a problem?” or some such.
Somewhere in there with “accept it, change it, or leave”, we’ve inserted “make sure you both understand it.”
That curiosity has made all the difference for me.
I find this very interesting and have a slightly different situation that just occurred with my recent ex…
I was spending the night at her place, and went to bed before her as she had some work to do. I was asleep for a couple of hours when she came in, woke me up and politely told me that we were over. She proceeded to tell me how this is something she has never done and was shocked with herself that she did, but my email was still open on her computer and she happened to click on a folder where she discovered an email I received from signing up with the site Ashely Madison. For those that don’t know what that is, it’s a site for people who are attached to look for things on the side.
Now, of course anyone seeing that would assume that there was either cheating going on or at least the intention of cheating. That is exactly what she accused me of doing, and stated that she refused to have that in her life and we were over.
I explained to her this, and it is absolutely the truth of the situation…I had been hearing ads about the site on the radio and thought it was such a strange thing I wanted to just look and see if it was for real, etc. I signed up, looked at the site out of pure curiosity, then deleted my account. I had no intention of using it, no thoughts of cheating or anything like that. Because of that, it didn’t even cross my mind that I had done anything wrong.
Needless to say, it was very difficult for her to believe me, which I do understand. I would probably feel the same way. She also was very upset with herself that she had snooped at all and made her question why she would do that. And even if she accepted my story about why I signed up for that site, she was worried that the trust on both sides had been irrevocably damaged.
It was very frustrating, as I knew the truth of my actions. I’ve also been in relationships where I’d been accused of things I didn’t do, which continued to hold throughout the relationship and it just cannot work that way.
We put the whole thing on hold for the night and decided to talk the next day. When we talked, it was an issue of whether we could get past this breach in trust on both sides. Even though we did decide we could get past that, it brought up other issues of where our relationship was going (namely that she wants to have a child in the near future and I am just not ready to make that choice and don’t know when I will be, especially since we were still working on our relationship) and we decided to call it off.
I have no words of wisdom here, sadly. I just thought I would put out this situation for everyone to mull over and comment on. It was very difficult to try and convince someone of my innocence when the hard evidence seemed so clear to them that I was being deceitful. It was a ridiculous situation that could have been avoided by either deleting that email and/or if she had not snooped as she really didn’t find anything since there was no intention behind it.
Silverfoxx,
sounds complicated. Have also read your other post about the baby subject. I think this incident here was just brought up more serious issues that you obviously have (or have had) in your relationship, as it is - I agree - ridiculous to be accused of cheating just for visiting a website. So it probably was just a trigger for the “real” problems. Sounds like you are both unsure of what you want in life. It’s incredible how you broke up and got back together, her becoming pregnant and then NOT wanting the baby after having made this such an issue and so important….wow. Don’t know much to say, but I would find it irresponsible towards the child to have it whilst being in such a mixed up situation. It would be selfish and wrong. Children deserve more stable circumstances….and a child is never going to “save” a relationship. It is - on the contrary - even a test of the harmonious relationships, as it complicates things. I am absolutely FOR having a child, but the foundation for that must be right….at least not unfair on the child!