When a
married person signup on a social network and says, “I am married and I am only
here for chatting, friendship, love and date”, know that he or she is treading
a very dangerous path. Yes a lot of people think they are discipline enough to
handle the lure and pressure on these sites, but everyone has a price and we
are bound to make mistakes sometime somewhere.
So what is
the difference between a physical affair and an emotional one?
Originally, the term cheating is used when a person in a
committed relationship is physically involved with someone other than his/her
spouse. But lately, cheating has been redefined to include both emotional
affair and physical affair.
An emotional affair is any infidelity that occurs through
feeling or thought. Yes, it is on the realms of desire and fantasy.
See Part one here: How Facebook Is Killing Marriages in Nigeria (The Effects of Online Infidelity - Part 1)
With the emergence of mobile cell phones and the internet,
the meaning of cheating has been expanded to cover its original definition plus
the feelings and/or thoughts that include emotional infidelity. What this means
is that cheating now includes having intimate correspondence with someone while
on a cell phone, chatting or meeting someone over the Internet and keeping an
intimate, personal relationship with someone who is not your spouse.
The main difference between an emotional affair and a
physical one is just the physical contact.
Mostly, cheating involves people having face - to - face
contact and then engaging in physical intimacy. On the other hand, with an
emotional affair the parties may not meet. The engagement can occur on phone or
a computer and there is no real physical intimacy.
With the technological development of android, smart phones
and other telecom devices, such contacts online could transmit real images to
evoke sublime emotions.
Sadly, many people involved in emotional cheating don’t see it
as infidelity. To them, as long there is no actual physical contact, the
behavior cannot be considered cheating. But what sanity is there in a married
person exchanging erotic and nude pictures with someone else online. Even if
they hide their faces, is this not shameful?
The effect of this is that the unfaithful spouse is paying
more emotional attention to someone other than their partner, and they are
removing themselves from the commitment they made to their marriage.
An Emotional Affair Opens The Door For Physical Desires
Emotional affairs usually begin when people exchange
personal information. As the communication and involvement gets deeper and
closer, the information released to the other person becomes more personal.
Very recently, one of our readers called to request for
counseling and it concerned making a decision on an online friend who proposed
marriage online, yet they barely knew each other physically. What prompted the
young man to want to marry a lady he barely had physical contact with?
Truly, ones emotions can contrive and fathom great plans and
things that one would ordinarily not dare. There is no barrier in the realm of
fantasy. At t realm, you can marry the president from your living room.
The said young man eventually arranged a visit to our client
and declared his intention. They had met online, and it was now time to go
physical. After running a background check on the man including investigating
the details and data on his facebook account and other social networks, we
found inconsistency and false claims and identity. Your guess is as good as
mine. The young lady did a Usain Bolt
and barred him from coming near her abode.
But she has exposed a lot of personal details to the man.
What if she had not called us for just a simple chat on dating and marriage?
What if she had allowed the man to have his way? And the nauseating part of it
was that the man was married.
Who knows how many women and men have fallen victims to such
scams, scams that result from emotional involvement on facebook and on social
networks.
Perhaps you may want to dispute the danger of emotional
affairs. Perhaps you may argue that emotional affairs are harmless since they
involve more casual relationships than conventional infidelity. Please note
that the intimate nature of the communication plus the emotional investment
made by the people involved, places an emotional affair on the same level or
worse as normal physical cheating.
Continues
in part three
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