What are your views on online affairs versus in life affairs?? Are they just as hurtful?? Deadly to an marriage?? Or are they more easily discounted because the OTHER person is not in the most part as easily accesible?

Alexy:<P>You bet they are. Got me, damned near killed my marriage. An emotional or a physical affair is still an affair: emotional and/or physical energy is being directed outside the marriage.<P>That is destructive. So, if that is what is going on: nip it in the bud before it goes too far.<P>Godspeed,<BR>STL

That's how my husband's affair started: He was in the habit of just "chatting" with people. Then, he started chatting with girls he met. Then he found one in particular that he liked and, wouldn't you know it, she lived two hours away from the military school he was attending. Two hours away meant that she could secretely fool around on her husband. They were "madly in love," yet he claims to only have seen her 5 times (for whole weekends at a time.) <P>I intervened in yet another on-line friendship that he was having: I e-mailed her and asked her who she was, she told me and asked who I was (the wife of somebody she was talking dirty with, I told her, only I tried to put it kindly.) I warned her to be careful with her privacy and her heart when talking to strangers, that strangers sometimes lie and hurt you if you aren't cautious. We corresponded back and forth a couple of times and she admitted that this was indeed the case for her several times. <P>I am fully convinced that meeting folks for romantic interests the good old-fashioned way (face-to-face) is the thing to do. . .

Online is how my WS started, then it went to real life and now they live together. It was very painful knowing she was online with another man, I was hurt confused and frustrated, then when it went to real it was even more devestaing, When they were only online and I confronted her, I got all the lies and deciet she snuck around private email accounts, then the phone calls I never knew about. Everything you would expect in RLA was there. The other thing is the internet affairs are much more addicting than RLA because a strong emotional bond is made first, then the physical comes later.

I had no idea. SeenTheLight, I am going to assume that your online turned real life, or was it still strictly online? What are the signs of online friends being more than friends? I am asking because I have a good friend who is in what I believe to be in a "online" affair and has decided to go and venture to that person with kids in tow. I am out of any ideas on how to stop it and help, I have shown online horror stories. So do the online affairs work out?? What are the rights of the other parent in regards to the children. Too many ?

Alexy,<P>Beware on-line A's can and will kill a marriage. Mine is pretty near dead. H met many women on-line. Had 1 night stands with a few and then wham! Met OW. In Aug 2000 (right around our 10th anniversary - which I never got to celebrate). <P>EA went PA in about 1 month. They have been hot and heavy since. D/d 11/22/00. Said they were just friends, good friends. H moved out 12/31/00. Tried to come home numerous times. Actually moved back 3 times. H just moved out yesterday again this time to live with OW. H even went to jail for his anger at me (yea, I threw his clothes out the door because he said he wanted to leave his family but leave his stuff with us). <P>This is from the man that did not want to live with OW until he was 'properly divorced'. His scruples have been lowered to the level of the scum that HF talked about. <P>OW called me a B, said I was not a lady and that she was. OW said H belonged to her and not to his family. H believed that. OW said our son would be ok without his dad. H believes that. OW dictated how H should contact his family and deal with them. Going to find out if she will enforce it. H went to live with her yesterday. OW accused H of emotional adultery when he came home the last time. OW has made our lives a living hell. <P>There is more, much more..... OW claimed to get preg 2 times, claims to have miscarried 2 times..... OW may not be divorced yet but she was quick to give H all the divorce info on how to do it quick and cheaply. Ow is a cutthroat. H had gone farther in debt because of his deals with her. Live out, could not afford the rent, did not pay his bills, ruined our credit (I was denied an auto loan because H made late payments on his truck and I was the co-signer), taxes filed late, we will be evicted (forced to leave our home) due to H not paying up on past monies owed and no guarantee to pay on a regular basis. OW requires that H pay her more than he ever paid me of his share of the rent. H's money went to pay his credit card bills, taxes and daycare expenses. Now I am asking for reimbursement on his medical and auto insurance that I have been covering for him in additiont to fact the other expenses listed before that were also being fronted via my paycheck. The list goes on.........<P>So are on-line A's dangerous? YES!!!!!<P>L.

Alexy,<P>I am SeenTheLight’s wife. He’s still over there sleeping like a baby so I’ll take a shot at answering your questions.<P>STL had several online affairs spanning a 2.5 year period. He had multiple affairs going at any one time. There were about 10 of them. For the most part they were cyber/phone affairs. One of them turned PA. He met her for a weekend fling. That affair ended about a month after they met in person. He also had dinner/lunch dates with 4 or 5 of them.<P>Thank goodness none of them developed into emotional affairs - EA’s.<P>Re: “What are the signs of online friends being more than friends?”<P>I’d say that when emotional and/or sexual energy is going outside of the marriage to the online friend then it is more then friends. At this point I’d also say that a spouse should not have any close chat/email friends of the opposite sex. If a spouse has an opposite sex friendship that is kept hidden from the other spouse, it’s out of hand. <P>Your friend’s “online” affair is obviously out of hand. <P>Your friend’s plan to visit her online lover with kids in tow is a really bad idea. She has no idea what she is walking into. And her children should not be subjected to her affair.<P>My bet is that online affairs work out even less often then “in-person affairs”. There are a few reasons for this. <P>The first and foremost is that it is too easy for a person to be whoever they want to be online. Many, many people just plain lie online. Then there is the problem of translating the virtual relationship into a real-life relationship. Many people who get along famously online do not even like the person when they finally meet.<P>Does your friend’s husband know of her plans? If not he needs to be told immediately so that she cannot take the children.<P>Whose idea is it that she take the children? Is it her OM's. If it is I'd be really worried.<P>RE: “What are the rights of the other parent in regards to the children.”<P>Both parents have equal rights to the children. Her husband may not be able to stop her from going to meet this guy, but he can stop her from taking the children with her. He needs to see an attorney ASAP to find out how to go about it.<P>Z<BR><P>------------------<BR>He loves not who does not show love.<BR>----William Shakespeare

Alexy:<P>zorweb covered most of the ground regarding online affairs.<P>I just wanted to add that it can be a very innocent thing at first. Sort of the "boil the frog slowly" approach.<P>Like any sort of addictive behavior, once headed in certain directions and the fog begins to descend, it is easy to self-justify the behavior. "Just an online friend." etc. zorweb's observation about secrecy is the correct one: if a person has an online "friendship" (even off-line, for that matter) that they keep from the other spouse, then that is a huge, huge red flag that something is amiss.<P>Applying radical honesty counters this.<P>Godspeed,<BR>STL

alexy,<P>I'm sure you don't mind if I bring this to the top again - I've been gone and just found this. Had to comment since it's my favorite topic (NOT!).<P>W and I discovered online gaming together. We both did chat together for a while. It is quite addictive - especially chatting with opp. sex. I got busy with other things and couldn't spend much time online, but W got drawn in big-time. STL got it exactly right about the "boil the frog slowly" effect. Also, the secrecy and the defensiveness.<P>She actually told me all about the men she was chatting with, just not everything they chatted about. They never met (talked about it, though), never phoned (I hope). Things have been broken off (mostly). <P>You're right also that "nothing happened" so all of my pain was sort of invented. It did hurt *a lot*. I'd hate to imagine that a "real" A could be worse. I worry sometimes that the "unreal" aspect means I may never truly resolve this "issue".<P>I hope you can get your friend to pull back from the brink.<P>-Jeffers<P><BR>

Zorweb, thank you for your candid and helpful response.<P><BR>Jeffers, Thank you also for the reply and for bringing it to the top. My friend has gone to another state, and her husband has left also. I have no idea if he knows, but I do know that he is aware of her addiction to chat rooms. I myself, only play games and post here online. The chat room experience i tried, just never really liked it. I worry for her actually trusting the men she is meeting online to the point of taking the children to meet them. She is as far as I know 7 states away. I worry.

Jeffers:<P>The pain you felt was not imaginary nor contrived. Any time emotional energy (sexual or just emotional) goes outside the marriage, it is an affair. Some emotional need is not being addressed. So, in effect, it was an affair--from your description, an EA.<P>zorweb and I, as part of the radical honesty approach, installed monitoring software ( <A HREF="http://www.iopus.com" TARGET=_blank>http://www.iopus.com</A> . Some would call it "snooping" ... it is actually about radical honesty and verification/validation. Ka-ching go the love unit deposits: your EN for honesty is met ... as is hers; you can both see what each other is doing on the computer.<P>And, it is a deterent toward falling into that trap again.<P>Godspeed,<BR>STL

alexy - an "infidelity" can take many forms; reduced to the base condition, infidelity is a breach of trust, a breaking of an agreement. The agreement, whether tacit or explicit, can be in many forms in addition to insisting that the genitals stay out of the hands or whatever of outsiders. (Pittman, "Private Lies")<P>WAT

STL,<P>Yes, I know my pain was very real. I was being tongue in cheek (a little). My W has even admitted that I was in pain and it was real and that she was the cause. But she has real difficulties with the "A" word. After all, nothing really was going on. They were all "just friends". That is why I always have to chime in when I see something like that in a post. <P>I did the snooping thing surreptitiously (great word!). But I got caught and it was bad. It would be a huge LB for me to bring it up again. If I can't get over the honesty thing I may have to... someday. Things are improving for us on a regular basis (with only occasional emotional setbacks on my part) so as long as the derivative remains positive I'm pretty content.<P>Thanks for the comment. Zorweb was also a big help when I first showed up here. You two are a great team.<P>-- Jeffers<BR>