Modern Romance (21 page)

For me, the most offensive part was that he used the word “wackadoodle.”

Also, did you catch that sly, almost subliminal, blink-and-you-might-miss-it allusion to sex? It was when she said they could have mad, passionate sex.

That last message basically signaled a shift in their Facebook chat and opened the floodgates for all sorts of sexual messages and infamous penis photos.

 • • • 

What fascinates me most, though, is that this is something that simply could not have happened thirty years ago.
Sure, he might have still wanted to sexually stray from his relationship, but the privacy of Facebook, the ease of access to potential people to cheat with, and the ability to flirt with caution via the medium of chat—that perfect storm for temptation is undeniably a new development.

Given the sensitivity of the subject and the potential judgment that would occur in an in-person focus group, we used the privacy of the Internet to gain insight into people’s real-world experiences with cheating and social media.

I posed these questions in our subreddit: Has anyone started an affair or cheated on someone through social media? If social media didn’t exist, would something like this have happened anyway?

One gentleman said that he started a relationship through a social media site. It initially began as harmless chatting but, like the Weiner chat, over time it escalated. Though not as aggressive as the Weiner chat, it started getting flirty and the two began sharing their innermost feelings and problems.

It certainly wouldn’t have happened without social media, as my wife had successfully cut me off from most of the non-family women in my life. I don’t necessarily see it as a completely bad thing either—without my talking to the other woman (and the sort of honesty that relative internet anonymity provides), I wouldn’t have realized just how fucked up my relationship was with my then-wife, and the numerous things that I always thought were normal, and were really her doing her best to control every aspect of my life, and generally make me unable to leave her.

Another user said that he started an affair that he simply wouldn’t have had the gumption to start without Facebook.

They worked together and were casual acquaintances. One day he looked her up on Facebook and sent her a message asking, “Would you like to get a drink sometime?” Soon after that the affair began.

“If Facebook didn’t exist, I doubt I would have gathered the courage to ask her directly. It made the initial step that much easier,” he said.

The advantages of technology that facilitate regular dating (such as the ease of access and the absence of the pressure found in an in-person interaction) also transfer over to cheating. This includes the ease of escalation, which, when engaging in something as scandalous as cheating, is quite valuable. With messages you can slowly test the waters of potentially starting an affair. Once you find out the other person is on the same page, it can ramp up very fast. Or you can easily backpedal without quite the same level of embarrassment you’d experience if it had happened in person.

Here’s an example:

The other person may think you are a creep, but either of you can just act like it was a misreading of the message. In the Weiner situation, phrases like “got a night plan for us?” and “make me an offer i can’t refuse” allowed him to safely test the waters and see if Lisa was really interested in something sexual.

Also, the privacy of our phones means we have a new place to foster and grow clandestine relationships. In the past, people who wanted to engage or flirt with someone outside their relationship would have to sneak away to a remote bar or restaurant to reduce the risk of being spotted by friends or loved ones. Today, with proper precautions, our phones provide a private refuge that can house intimacy that no one else is privy to.

In one focus group a gentleman told us he once started innocently texting with a married coworker and it eventually turned into a full-on clandestine relationship. Normally they had no reason to chat beyond the office. One day the guy sent a jokey text when he saw something that reminded him of something he and the woman had laughed about at work. She responded and a fun, witty banter took hold.

These instances increased in frequency, and soon the two were also spending time together after work. Eventually both parties caught feelings, and it developed into a secret relationship, with the married woman constantly sending texts to this other guy in secret. The texts were getting so frequent that the guy had to change the woman’s contact info in his phone so as to not arouse the suspicion of others, who might wonder why this married lady was texting him so much. Instead of getting texts from Susan, it looked like he was getting texts from a male friend named David.

If I ever was texting frequently with someone and wanted to make an alias, I think I’d go with “Scottie Pippen.” Then any friends who were peeking at my screen could be left wondering why I was texting with the former Chicago Bulls star on the reg.

I only hope Scottie Pippen’s wife never has an affair where she uses the same strategy and the guy texts while Scottie is in the room and he can see her screen. Scottie Pippen would likely believe it was an impostor Scottie Pippen from another dimension, sent to steal his wife and kill him. The psychological damage inflicted on poor Scottie Pippen would be far worse than discovering a simple affair.

Back to our real situation: Eventually both parties decided it was best to end the affair. But again, would this kind of thing have taken off if these people hadn’t had the privacy of text messages to introduce a romantic element into their relationship?

She was married and I respected that. I wouldn’t have made a voice call to say little jokey things to her. It would have been weird. Since it was just texting, it seemed pretty innocuous. But as it went on, we both couldn’t help but realize, there was a spark between us. When you’re both on your phones, you have this safe zone that no one else can break into. It was this private little world where we could talk about all the stress and confusion and love that the whole dilemma was creating. If it weren’t for text messages, I’m not sure anything would have started between us.

Some people we heard from, however, felt that ultimately technology doesn’t turn us into philanderers. If you’re gonna cheat, you’re gonna cheat, they said. Social media or no social media, in the end it’s two people together in the flesh.

“I don’t think that someone who is otherwise a faithful partner in a relationship is going to suddenly start cheating because someone sends them a winky face in an IM,” said one user on the subreddit, in the thread’s most popular post. “I’d say it makes it easier to cheat, but doesn’t make it harder to be faithful.”

But even if it doesn’t lead to full-on cheating, social media presents new problems and temptations, even for the faithful. Besides offering privacy, social media also presents us with a forum where other potential partners are constantly on display. One gentleman recalled how, when he got into a new relationship, social media such as Instagram provided an outlet to view all the options out there.

I love my girlfriend, but when we were first getting serious, I would go on Instagram and see all these hot girls. And its like, ‘Whoa should I be dating these girls? Or just settle down and be in a relationship?’ It felt like the opposite of ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ They were in sight and IN my mind.

The privacy of the Internet and phone world has also led to the rise of settings where people can be adulterous without any judgments. The most well-known example is Ashley Madison, a terrifyingly popular online dating website that is designed specifically to help people have affairs. The company’s motto is “Life is Short. Have an Affair.”

The company enrolls its full-paying members in the “Affair Guarantee Program,” which offers a full refund if they don’t find someone within their first three months on the site. The site’s home page offers users a click-through icon that lets them “Search and Chat with Married People in Your Area,” as well as a blog and Twitter feed featuring advice such as “How to Get and Keep a Fuck Buddy” and news items such as “Men Not Bothered by the Idea of Wives’ Infidelity.”

Apparently it’s growing quickly, from 8.5 million members in 2011 to a self-reported 11 million members in 2014.
5

Now, I know that people have been cheating on each other for as long as they’ve made promises to be monogamous and that, to date, there’s no hard evidence that the Internet is making people more likely to commit infidelity. That said, it’s impossible to imagine something like Ashley Madison getting this popular this fast in a world without digital media. Whether or not we’re cheating more often, it’s certainly easier to do.

BREAKING UP IN THE PHONE WORLD

Another thing that’s become easier because of modern technology is breakups.
Not long ago breaking up with someone required an emotionally wrenching face-to-face conversation or, at the least, a phone call in which the person who wanted to end things had to own up to their feelings and, usually, explain themselves too. Generally the breakup conversation also required being thoughtful about the other person’s feelings and vulnerability, and doing everything possible to say things that would boost the morale of the person being jilted.

This is why our culture developed lines like “It’s not you, it’s me” and “I’m just not ready to be in a relationship now” and “I’m sorry, I just want to focus on my dragon art.”

Of course, no one liked these conversations. But we all saw them as obligatory, because they were the decent human thing to do for another person.

Today a growing number of people, and a majority of younger adults, are more likely to break up with someone by text, instant message, or social media than in person or by phone. According to a 2014 survey of 2,712 eighteen- to thirty-year-olds who’d had a relationship end during the previous year, 56 percent said they had broken up using digital media, with texting being the most popular method (25 percent), followed closely by social media (20 percent), and then e-mail (11 percent), which people used because it let them “fully explain their reasons.”

By contrast, only 18 percent had broken up through a face-to-face interaction, and a mere 15 percent had split up with a call.
6
A startling 0.0014 percent had broken up by hiring a blimp that said, “Tammy I think we need to see other people.” (Note: I think this was just one dude named Phil from Indiana.)

The most common reason people gave for breaking up via text or social media was that it is “less awkward,” which makes sense given that young adults do just about all other communication through their phones too.

Oddly, 73 percent of those young adults—the very same ones who said they had broken up with other people via text or social media—said they would be upset if someone broke up with them that way.

To be clear, the study above didn’t specify how serious these relationships were, so it didn’t account for how the length or intensity of the relationship affected the preferred breakup method. Obviously there’s a huge difference between breaking up with someone after three weeks and after three years. In fact, the anthropologist Ilana Gershon has found many young people in casual relationships would actually prefer to be dumped by these less traditional methods.
7