Confessions of Internet widows
This was actually the first case of an Internet widow ever published in the UK, way before News of the World started running a weekly story. And the experience was awful. A woman was heartily sobbing on the phone about how her husband had left her to bring up their two young children after he’d met someone in the US using the Internet. He was addicted to IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and had “discovered all the fun he’d been missing.”
The call had been taken by one of the other staff, then passed over to me, and everyone thought it was a practical joke so they were laughing. Why did she ask to speak to me? I encourage people to get online.
“Because you mention how great the Internet is, but it’s breaking up families and people should realise it’s not a real form of communicating,” she says, weeping. “It’s all very false. It’s better to communicate verbally with the people who are nearest to you instead of putting too much time into the Internet.” She is incredibly upset and insists on remaining anonymous so our conversation won’t affect her divorce proceedings.
She met her husband at secondary school when she was 15, they’ve been married for 12 years and have a daughter and son, aged three and seven. “The worst thing was that he was using the computer all through the night. Now I know he was chatting to her while I was falling asleep, waiting for him to come to bed.”
She didn’t know when the IRC romance started. “Maybe at the beginning of last year. He has been using the computer for the last two years for work and mentioned her in January. He said she lived in San Francisco, but didn’t tell me much else. I use a computer at work, but we’re not on the Internet, so I couldn’t send her a message. The Internet hasn’t come into my life yet.”
Her 30-year-old husband flew to the US in September last year on business and met up with his new IRC friend. When he returned, he moved out of the family home and “only visited once for Christmas dinner”.
“He phoned me in the UK and said he’d decided he couldn’t stay with the family any more. His new business was taking up a lot of time, but I said he could take whatever time he needed. I wanted our marriage to survive, but he said his new business interests and marriage were not compatible. Other things are more important to him. And now I’m left struggling to pick up the pieces.”
She thinks her husband portrayed himself on the Net as a single, available person. “It seems a bit strange saying that you’ve fallen in love with someone you’ve met through the Internet. It must have an element of illusion.”
Given her experiences, will she be using the Net in the future? “Probably, because of the field I work in, as a librarian. But I won’t use a computer to seek out new friends. I already have friends I can meet up with, who live round this area.”
I found Andrew on the Net in a discussion on-line adultery, and his on-line lover is expecting their first child. “When we ‘met’ we were both in long term relationships which we ended quickly and cleanly,” Andrew recalled. “Read negatively, our partners got dumped by the Net. Or, you could say our relationships were already dead and finding one another gave us the impetus to do what we should have done long before.”
When they first met online, they were both using the Net at home. Liza was studying computing, and she’d bought a PC. She tried to get her husband interested in the Net by getting him an online account, but it didn’t work.
“We met around September 1997 in an IRC channel #Sydney,” Andrew recalls. “It was a crap channel then, and still is, but obviously some sort of luck was on our side. Liza was living about 100 kilometres away in Melbourne and I was in Sydney [Australia]. Our first expression of love happened online after about two weeks, mainly because the basis of our chats was never flirtation, just talking honestly. We chatted for about four to six hours every night from the first night we met. We seemed to understand each other so well and we fell in love, even though that was never our intention. When we realised, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. We worked in the same area and we liked the same sorts of things – except for our musical tastes, which are still at opposite ends of the planet. I tend to move fast or not at all in the real world, so the speed of us falling in love so quickly was no real surprise to me,” Andrew says.
“There was more online chat, phone calls and photo swapping and after about four weeks since we’d first made contact, I flew to Melbourne to meet up in person.” Andrew had been involved in a relationship for five years, and Liza had been married for about four. “No kids were involved, thankfully. That almost definitely would have stopped anything happening,” Andrew affirmed. Neither of their partners was expecting the breakup. “My girlfriend was out of the country, in the UK, at the time. She wasn’t impressed but at least it finished cleanly. Liza’s partner thought he could work it out but that’s because he never understood what she was about. The divorce should be finalised soon.” Andrew’s partner had never used the Net. “Liza’s husband would sometimes be present when we were chatting initially because, at first we weren’t actually flirting, let alone net-sexing.”
Liza didn’t cite the Net as the cause of her divorce. “She can cite her husband as a jerk, but she doesn’t need to because they’ve been separated for two years. I think he intends to play the used and abused jilted lover and bring it up.
“As for online adultery . . . well, it caused paranoia, jokes, and abstinence from using IRC, until we finally settled down and got over it. We rarely go on these days – I tend to use a different nick each time I go on so I don’t form any ‘bonds’. We pretty much gave up on it because there were too many morons to make it worthwhile to look for good people, and besides, we got what we wanted out of IRC!”
Baby pics of Caitlin Leanne (born on November 19), including the early ultrasounds, at http://www.crafti.com.au/~interact/baby.
With on-line romances becoming more common as more people connect to the Net, it’s inevitable we’ll be hearing more heartbroken tales about randy partners involved in illicit cyberspatial affairs. And the usual hurt associated with being dumped for someone else will be exacerbated by knowing the whole sordid saga took place in your own home.
When I rang Relate marriage guidance spokesperson and counsellor Denise Knowles, she’d just finished advising a couple who were coping with the wife’s adulterous Internet affair. “I’d never come across this sort of thing before,” Knowles says. “I learnt quite a bit, but I don’t think I want to be linked in to the Internet. I’m a bit fearful about the obvious abuse that can occur.”
Abuse? “Well, people can sell themselves in a way they haven’t done before, because they can pretend to be something they’re not. This anonymity is very intoxicating, so the Internet can be much more open to abuse than other ways of meeting a partner. Relationships which wouldn’t have developed, because people would have been aware of other aspects of the person’s character, are now going ahead. And some of these people are reinventing themselves solely for the reason of getting their leg over and finding someone.”
She says the newly raised concerns about the Internet are similar to those expressed when dating agencies were introduced. “Some people said dating agencies were exploitative. The Internet’s like anything that’s new – you learn to push the boundaries as far as you can. But this sort of behaviour has to be seen as unacceptable before something will be done about it.”
Referring to the troubled couple, Knowles says both of them used to log on to the Net, but the wife had become attracted to another person “via the written word”. “Then they started meeting and spending weekends together. Her partner knew about this, because they had an open marriage,” Knowles explains. “When everything was finally sorted out, she jacked the other man in and sent a warning out that he was sleeping around with married women.”
Knowles says the term `widows’ is often used when describing partners who aren’t involved in their lover’s time-absorbing leisure pursuits. “The difference with Internet widows is that the partner is actually still in the same house. This is an additional irritant, because the person hasn’t left the house and avoided you – they’re in the same place, flirting with someone else and ignoring you. It’s a constant thorn in your side.
“No-one likes to think their partner is being deceitful, but somehow it seems worse when it’s happening under the same roof. At least when your partner is `working late at the office’ you can feel reassured by an element of doubt. But when this happens right under your nose it can tip the scales. What can you do, short of turning off the computer?”
She says it’s difficult to stop an Internet affair, because computers are often used by both people at home. “You can demand that someone doesn’t see their lover again, but most people feel too guilty about throwing out a computer. Who gets custody of it? What if they’re both addicted? Is it a joint tool? At the end of the day, the computer becomes a focal point for venom and anger.
“There’s no excuse for being completely selfish and locking out everyone else. Of course the person who’s left out will feel miffed when you don’t have time to put up shelves, look after the kids and walk the dog. Addicts take valuable time away from the relationship. You have to talk with your partner and find out what’s so exciting about the Internet and how you can bring excitement back into your relationship.”
She says Internet addicts should also think about the messages they’re giving their children. “You’re saying: `This is how you meet people.’ You could be encouraging your kids to become very articulate on the computer, but they don’t want to go out and meet real people. That’s not much use when they have to defend themselves against the school bully.
“They need skills they can use throughout their entire life. Otherwise they’ll just end up in a bedsit on the dole, playing with the Internet. There is the potential for an enormously high membership of this sort of club of people who haven’t developed sufficient social skills.”
And finally, what about when you’ve left your family and set up house with your new cyberspace lover?
“How are they going to feel about you spending time on the Net in future?,” Knowles asks. “There has to be a lot of trust. You’ve met someone this way before, so what’s to say you won’t do it again? You’d have to be incredibly self-disciplined,” she warns. “And when you communicated on-line, if you got angry you could always switch the machine off. You can’t just switch off a human being.”
If your partner’s a Net addict, Knowles says you don’t have to take your partner’s on-line love affair lying down. Fight back with these tips:
1. Be alert for signs of addiction. “People drift apart very gradually,” Knowles says. “Then one day they wake up and suddenly feel like they have nothing in common. You have to talk openly and honestly about how to overcome the distance.”
2. Get all the important aspects of your lives into perspective. “No-one’s saying you can’t do things you enjoy, but as a partner you have certain responsibilities. If you don’t do these, you have to be prepared for the consequences.”
3. Restrict the number of hours for using the Internet. The time freed up should be spent together. “You can’t devote enormous amounts of time and energy to something and expect the rest of your life to stay the same. It won’t – your relationships will suffer.”
4. Introduce excitement into your relationship by doing new activities. “I don’t mean `excitement’ literally. Just doing things like going for a walk can be helpful,” Knowles advises.
The tempestuous tribulations of on-line lust are chronicled in a book written by middle-aged suburban housewife and mum, Stephanie Fletcher. E-mail: A Love Story diarises the temptation, fall and redemption of Katherine Simmons, the wife of a successful businessman and mother of teenage twin boys who finds salvation in an on-line love affair.
Fletcher has also been lucky. Only two days after her book was published in the US, a New Jersey husband filed for divorce on the grounds that his wife had committed infidelity during dozens of sexually explicit exchanges on America Online. Now they’re both indulging in chicanery, arguing over whether the e-mail messages were “virtual adultery” or “romantic daydreaming”.
The new author was instantly caught up in a frantic whirl of exclusive appearances on US talk shows and quoted as a computer love expert on NBS, CBS, National Radio and in USA Today. Has she ever been tempted to have an on-line dalliance? “No, I’ve been happily married for 19 years. In the case of people who have on-line affairs, I suspect their marriages weren’t in a good condition to start with. They get sucked in because they have problems with their significant relationship, dilemmas over being middle-aged or both.”
She began using the Net four years ago. “I gave my husband some Internet software for Christmas, but he never installed it. I like to browse the Web in the evening.” It can be easy for middle-aged Net users to become addicted, she thinks, particularly if their significant relationship has stagnated. “I’ve seen research that says married couples only speak to each other for about 15 minutes a day. But when you’re on-line, you have someone who hangs on your every word for hours at a time. People who are infatuated can sit at their computer for 10 to 15 hours a day, because it’s so important for them to have someone who’ll listen to them talk and share deep thoughts with.
“I think it’s difficult for some Net users to differentiate the infatuation stage from love. No-one else necessarily knows what’s happening, so it can be incredibly secretive and mysterious. It also seems to be very romantic.”
After listening to numerous traumatic tales as an online agony aunt for an US service provider, Fletcher decided to write a book. “It’s amazing how most of the people wanting to have affairs were middle-aged and married. Also, there were teenagers who despaired of ever finding love. My book is a cautionary, epistolary tale and the first I know of that’s written entirely in the form of e-mail.”
She thinks that three out of four on-line romances will probably have unhappy endings. “It’s too early to tell because people are still in the honeymoon stage during the first couple of years. But most people report that they’re disillusioned by the whole experience.”
On-line love isn’t all that bad, according to psychologist Dr Mark Griffiths, a specialist in technological addictions at Nottingham Trent University. He has only come across a couple of people who have shown the true signs of Internet addiction. “People don’t become addicted to the Internet as a medium – they just use it to fuel other addictions, such as sex addicts or role players who are addicted to escapist games. They pursue these habits on the Internet instead of via another forum.” He says there are many things on the Net that people can use to continue their addictions. “Any activity which offers potential incoming rewards very quickly, such as Instants scratch cards, can be addictive, but the National Lottery is not addictive because you probably won’t get a reward and it’s only held once a week.
“My gut reaction is that IRC and chat lines could be very addictive, and even e-mail. They enable an overweight 18-year-old pimply guy to take on a role as an outgoing whizzkid in a text-based virtual reality on the other side of the world. Someone without many social skills can easily be sucked into excessive use of this type of role-playing because it allows for immersion into an escapist mode and instantaneous rewards.”
Coincidentally, Griffiths says he received a letter that morning from a woman who’d written to tell him that her husband had left her for someone he’d met over the Internet. “He was self-employed and worked from home, using the computer all day. Then he started using chat lines, formed a relationship and left for the US to go and live with another woman,” Griffiths says. “It’s totally weird, but it’s happening. A text-based relationship can obviously be rewarding for some people. I find it quite refreshing and healthy in a way, because it’s breaking down prejudices and you’re not just falling in love with someone’s appearance.”
But what about when they meet in person and discover all of those unattractive and otherwise hidden flaws? “That happens over time in a lot of relationships anyway,” Griffiths says. “On-line love is bizarre, but it’s not necessarily something that’s bad.”
So what’s it like living with an Internet addict? Do they all like Star Trek, The Next Gen, Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5? How many software company T-shirts do they have? Do they play computer games in their spare time? Do they talk about the Internet at parties? And, most importantly, can they cook? I rounded up four candidates.
Ivan Pope, 34, Net guru and director of NetNames, allowed me to speak to his girlfriend, Caroline Chalmers, 31. She spilled the beans on what it’s really like to live with an on-line junkie.
“He’s obsessed with the Internet and spends a lot of hours working back at the office, but I don’t mind at all,” Chalmers, a London-based solicitor, reveals. “I work long hours too, so I don’t sit around wistfully waiting for him to come home.” She says that before Pope began using the Net in 1992, they’d been together for about seven years, so they’d had plenty of time to build a solid relationship.
“Before this, he used to do installation art, because he has a degree in fine art. But the Net’s much more lucrative. Now he’s earning a bit of money, so I think it’s very good,” Chalmers says. “I’d like to learn how to use the Internet, but Ivan hasn’t taught me because he doesn’t think I’ll pick it up quickly enough. We don’t have a computer at home and I might be getting one at work soon, but otherwise I leave the word processing to my secretary. I prefer to use a fountain pen and paper.” Chalmers confesses that all she knows about computers is how to “undo the modem and turn everything off if there’s a thunderstorm.”
She says that Pope has an obsessive personality. “He really gets into whatever he sets his mind to, and he’s spending more time doing this now because he’s setting up a business. I’d expect things to quieten down a bit. I’m not wistful at all at the moment – I’m actually very impressed with what he’s achieved. He’s self-taught and picked it all up himself.”
Strongly denying that Pope is “an anorak”, Chalmers concedes she has seen him wearing T-shirts with software company logos, but adds: “I probably wear some of them too.” He doesn’t play computer games, and is an excellent cook. “He does all the cooking – if I work really late, I have cornflakes, because I can’t cook anything,” Chalmers confesses.
Robert M Toups Jnr, creator of Babes on the Web, had just been dumped when I contacted him in New York. “I never tell women that I design Web pages. At bars when I’m trying to rustle up a sweetheart I tell them I’m director of a college magazine. If they begin to talk about the Internet then I’ll slowly bring up the fact I’m a Web designer. It takes a special woman to understand Babes on the Web without question. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any special women,” Toups says.
“I try to date women with no Net knowledge. I would go nuts if all I talked about was the Internet. I usually talk about publishing, as women are more impressed with the magazine than the whole Web thingy, which is actually how a woman I met at a bar last week described it.”
Maybe Toups’ lack of love is due to the fact he wears corporate T-shirts to bed, particularly those emblazoned with Apple, Adobe and Netscape logos. He also can’t cook, works 14-hour days and is a Star Trek fan. Luckily he’s got Babes on the Web to gawk at during those lonely work-filled evenings.
Dan Blumenfeld, of the infamous Dan’s Gallery of the Grotesque (now closed after continual harassment from pro-censorship activists), is a single but dating man. “In my case, the real `time-sponge’ is being on-call in the hospital all the time, not being on-line,” Blumenfeld divulges. “I’d say my current `obsession’ is with X-Files and, of course, horror and science fiction movies.” Blumenfeld can cook, works long hours (at the hospital) and claims that he “can’t stand computer games”.
So, does he chat about the Internet at parties, or is that a guaranteed conservation killer?
“Well, most of my friends know about the Gallery, so it usually comes up in conversations at parties,” Blumenfeld admits. “But frankly, for many people the Net, and computers in general, are rather boring subjects for discussion, so they’d rather not hear about it all the time.”
Richard Hall, 26, IT manager and director of web design company, Star Interactive, is out there looking for love – when he isn’t on the Net, that is.
“The Net’s the last place on earth I’d try to meet women, because most of the time I think it’d be blokes pretending to be women who are trying to chat you up. Finding love on-line works for some people, but I feel a degree of scepticism – I mean, there’s a lot to be said for atmosphere and spontaneity.”
He says he enjoys using the Internet, but his West London housemates all consider him to be “pretty sad” because he works long hours during the week. Hall admits his first priority is to “get a life”. “I can’t cook – I’m a great fan of Uncle Ben’s. And I don’t wear T-shirts emblazoned with software company logos because they’re a sure geek attractor and you end up talking about software.”
He says his social life actually revolves around people he met on the Net. “I became friends with a bloke on a windsurfing mailing list who lived in New York. When he visited the UK we got on like a house on fire. I’d rather be windsurfing than Websurfing.”
