Where the Internet Just Makes the Cheating Spouse Get Things Easier

How easy is it to find your lover? The click of a mouse is all it takes, says this article, which tells of people who have met online because of dating sites and social networking stations built for the international arena. Thanks to profiles that provide information on everything from someone’s astrological sign to his or her favorite brand of lipstick, social networking can actually facilitate romance. The Internet has changed the face of dating and looking for a potential mate: because people are not much older when they start looking for their husbands or wives, the traditional bars and pubs just don’t cut it anymore.

On the popular Irish dating site Maybefriends.com, there are about six thousand members who range in age from their late twenties to early forties, but there are even users who are past their seventies! Another increasingly popular site is Anotherfriend.com, which claims to have over a hundred thousand registered members, and that’s just from Ireland! For some people, online dating makes it much easier to find love, especially when work entails a lot of sitting down at one’s computer.

The article mentions the case of a woman and a man who met online, and whose shared interests led them to resolve to meet each other. It turns out that they went to school together – a realization that perhaps strengthened their bond, which allowed them to eventually get married. Now, they have a child. This story is becoming more and more common around the world, as more and more singles get the chance to fall in love – but it can be an easy way for people to have an affair as well.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the year 2001 saw about half of marriages crumble into divorce. Although this is not an absolute statistic for cheating, it may be a sign that marriages are growing more and more vulnerable – and as technology advances, this downward slide may be all the more easy. In one such case, a man broke up with his girlfriend so that he could move in with a woman whom he had been having an online affair with. When he moved in with her, however, he started cheating again.

Both sexual and emotional infidelity exist online: some people will pour out their emotions to someone else, but this does not necessarily lead to a sexual follow through. In some cases, however, it does, and it can certainly break up relationships quite painfully.