Are You Married Yet Having An Online (Emotional) Affair?

An online emotional affair is an alternative kind of extra-marital affair. It comparable to a physical affair since it has the same kinds of emotions. There is ample secrecy and fantasy.

Though some people may argue that there is a difference between it and the regular physical affair, an online affair is as potentially destructive as a physical affair. 

So how do you tell if you are having an emotional affair online? Well, if you answer yes to five of the following questions you may just have slipped into what has gone beyond mere chatting online. 

Here’s how to find out if you are having an online affair:

1.         How much time do you spend online?

If you spend above three hours a week chatting with and exchanging personal information with a member of the opposite sex you are having an online affair. 

2.         Do you look forward to spending time with your online “friend?”

When you are not online are you preoccupied with thoughts of your online friend? Do you think about them often and look forward to the next time you will be able to chat with them?

3.         Is your online friend a secret?

Have you shared the fact that you have an online friend with your spouse? Do you keep it to yourself because you know your spouse would react negatively? Maybe you don’t tell because the idea of having a friend your spouse doesn’t know about is exciting to you.

4.         Do you share relationship issues with your online friend?

Is he/she someone you feel comfortable sharing marital problems? You tell him/her more about what you want out of life, what your disappointments are and feel they are more understanding than your spouse.

5.         Is your online friend a better listener than your spouse?

When you share person details and problems, does your online friend always respond in the way you need? Do you find yourself wishing your spouse cared as much as your online friend seems to?

6.         Are you beginning to resent your spouse?

Are you making comparisons between your online friend and your spouse? Are you finding that you feel more anger than usual toward your spouse? Becoming less tolerant of a spouse, feeling anger and resentment and withdrawing emotionally is one of the most harmful aspects of any type of affair.

7.         Do you have less interest in sex with your spouse?

To begin with, you may fantasize about your online friend during sex with your spouse. Then you may lose all sexual interest in your spouse and replace it with sexual fantasies and longings for your online friend. Before you know it you are thinking of ways to meet your online friend in person. 

8.         Do you exchange photos with your online friend?

Have you sent your online friend a photo of yourself? Have the two of you sent each other erotic and sexually suggestive photos of yourself? If not, has the thought crossed your mind?  

9.         Have you suggested a “real life” meeting with your online friend?

Meeting for lunch or coffee will soon become a topic of discussion. Online affairs almost always lead to a desire to meet each other in real life. That is when something you think is harmless becomes destructive.

Don’t be fooled by the denial and rationalizations you have made about your online friend. Keeping it online may be something you can live with. It may, in your mind be OK since the two of you are not having sex. Whatever you are telling yourself about it, it will eventually turn into more than you went looking for in the first place.

How To Break An Emotional Online Affair

1.         Accept you’re wrong. Be honest with yourself and what you are doing. Being honest about your behavior is the only way to determine if what you are doing is worth the pain it will cause your spouse and family.

2.         If you decide to end the online affair expect to be emotionally uncomfortable, at least for sometime. You've formed a bond with another human being. Breaking that bond is going to take will-power.

3.         Spend less time online and more time doing things that will impact your life positively. Exchange your negative behavior for one that will enrich your marriage and family.

4.         If you find it impossible to break off the affair get help. You don't have to do it alone. See a therapist or talk to trusted friend. Share what you are going through with someone willing to help you handle the negative emotions you are feeling (Reach Marriage Alive Digest).

How Facebook Is Killing Marriages in Nigeria (The Effects of Online Infidelity - Part 3)

When a married woman replies a private message on facebook and says, “I love you too” to a message from another man perhaps younger than herself who had sent, “I love you with the whole of my heart”, then you are sure that there is infidelity. 

As a matter of fact, it is even more dangerous for a marriage when your spouse is more involved emotionally with someone else. This is part of what leads to sexless marriages where spouses become placid and rigid to towards their partners.  

What could be more adulterous than a man or woman lying on the matrimonial bed yet fantasizing and desiring someone else? 

An Emotional Affair is Dangerous

Anyone who finds himself or herself drawn to another person on an emotional level should seriously consider the effects of such an affair. When you become deep in an emotional affair, you are on the same pedestal with someone engaged in a physical affair. And this would eventually lead to divorce just as in physical cheating.

See Part one Here: How Facebook Is Killing Marriages in Nigeria (The Effects of Online Infidelity - Part 1) 

See Part Two Here: How Facebook Is Killing Marriages in Nigeria (The Effects of Online Infidelity - Part 2) 

 

We are not advocating a ban on normal friendship online with people of the opposite sex (like we have the power). It is normal to build very healthy relationships and have friends outside the marriage with men and women. But there should be a limit to our involvement in such friendships. Any friendship that is likely to threaten the emotional bond between spouses should be shunned. 

Usually, people make friends based on certain qualities that draw them to such persons. But a good and healthy friendship should add value, goodness and enjoyment to your life and not threaten your marriage in anyway. And let your spouse determine that value, not just you.

Remember that a little attraction can turn into an obsession or lead to an emotional affair. And this would eventually become harmful to you and your spouse. Indeed, what can be more dangerous to a marriage than the breakdown of the emotional connection marital partners have for each other. 

Don’t let social network kill your home. Don’t tweet your marriage away. Face your spouse and not a Facebook lover. Stand your grounds to keep your marital vows rather than get joy from Instagram. 

There is nothing is happening in Whatsapp that cannot happen in your home. That man or woman from Google+ will not add anything to your life beyond the spouse you married. Don’t let your smartphone be wiser than you!

How Ex-WAEC Executive Almost Seduced Pastor Adeboye…The Lesson To Learn!

 

It is true that when person becomes married, he or she is expected to stick to his/her spouse and stay faithful to his marital vows. For those that wear wedding rings, it is primarily a way of telling people, “I am taken –married. Keep clear of me”!

But a lot of men and women don’t just care whether you are married or not. If they want to have an affair with you to satisfy their wicked urge, they come all out at you, not minding your marital status.  They don’t care if in gratifying their flesh you get destroyed. And lately, it has been reported that some group of women now specialize in going after married men for ritual purposes and to destroy the homes of such men. And they are selective of their victims.

Perhaps this was what one of such women planned for Pastor Enoch A. Adeboye, the General Overseer of Redeemed Christian Church of God.

 Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye shared his experience at the 62nd annual Convention of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in August 2014, where he charged the congregation to always depend on God in the face of challenges.

Narrating his story, he recounted how a high profile woman who was an executive of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) did everything to seduce him.

According to him, the woman came to him and emphatically declared that God had told her that he would be her husband, and immediately he reprimanded her, saying, “You know that I am happily married and have children.”

But this didn’t dissuade the woman who continued to pester him, and even came to the Redemption Camp to threaten him, saying, “If you stand in my way to marrying this man, I will kill you.”

In other words, she wasn’t ready for a no as an answer. Yet she was equally married.

To stop the harassment of the woman, Pastor Adeboye took the matter to the Inspector General of Police who instantly invited the woman and her husband to his office and after a meeting banned the randy woman from entering the Redemption Camp or ever making passes at the man of God.

But if you think that would end the matter, you are wrong. Here him,

“But that measure didn’t stop her. I travelled to London without telling anybody, to work on the church’s devotional, Open Heaven. As soon as I settled down in the room, the telephone rang and the voice at the other end said: “welcome to London. I am coming in 15 minutes."

To deter and dissuade her, he said he told the voice on the receiver,

“You don’t know anything. You know that the Police in London are very efficient and if you dare come here, I will call the Police for you. There is a Police station a few meters from where I am staying and she must have known that because she didn’t come but kept calling me.

Not knowing what more to do, he said,

“I cried to God, Who told me, ‘You know of the scripture that says, whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven. Believe me honestly, unless God helps, there are things you cannot handle on your own,"

In rounding off, the urged the multitude gathered to pray for the fire of God to come against anyone hindering their progress.

You may find it hard to believe that a woman could have the effrontery to go seduce of the foremost minister of God in Nigeria. But it happened, and it can happen to you, if you are not attentive.

So what are the lessons to learn here?

§                  Husbands and wives, be committed to your vows

§                  Refuse to be lured into places /areas that can easily make you to compromise

§                  Don’t allow yourself to be boxed or cajoled into an uncompromising position that will make you vulnerable to temptation and advances from the opposite sex

§                  Be watchful of the courtesies extended to you by the opposite sex. If they can go after Pastor Adeboye, how much more you!

§                  When you go for outing with anyone of the opposite sex who is not a relative, be mindful of what you drink and/or  eat

§                  Don’t go for late night visits alone or stay too late outside with anyone who is not your spouse or family

§                  Don’t allow yourself to be in company of the opposite sex alone always (even if a colleague). It might lead to misconceptions

§                  Don’t allow conversations with the opposite to drift to personal or intimate issues

§              Be mindful of the opposite sex who repeatedly flatter you and comment on your dressing, shape, body curves, weight and appearance. Yes, it might seem like he/she is teasing you; but be careful

§                  Immediately rebuke passes or romantic gestures or advances and bring your spouse into the picture. If someone makes a pass at you yet you remain silent, you somewhat encourage the person to continue because, sometimes, silence could be interpreted to mean consent

§                  And note that if you go into a secret relationship or affair, it is not really secret any more, because two people know about it. And since you cannot guarantee confidentiality forever and you cannot control the state of the other person. So keep off such relationships!

 

How Facebook Is Killing Marriages in Nigeria (The Effects of Online Infidelity - Part 2)

 A lot of people will not immediately understand or take note of the effects of what their activities online is doing to their marriage because many people believe that there is a big difference between a physical and an emotional affair.
 

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

How Facebook Is Killing Marriages in Nigeria (The Effects of Online Infidelity - Part 1)

The advent of internet, especially the entrance of GSM mobile technology has enhanced the well being of Nigerians. But there is now a low-side especially with the emergence of several social networks and the use of smart phones.

Though smart phones account for only about 15% of the mobile telephone market in Nigeria, it has held many people spellbound. Hardly would you find some people without their Blackberry and other brands including Nokia and Techno. But what do people really do with these phones one may ask; especially when it seems some of these devices are smarter than their owners. They do not only kill people’s pockets, they now kill marriages too.

A few years back, many of our women at offices, especially government offices lazy about watching home videos. But lately, they are “facing” their phones socializing on Facebook, Twoo, Eskimi, Google+ and other social networks even at office hours. 

Many people hook onto people they really do not know and build online relationships that are usually unknown to their spouses. And this certainly have effects on marriages and relationships. Though such online “friends” may not meet physically, does it still not amount to infidelity?

Our correspondent chatted with some married women on facebook and some of them were very willing to date a man if the environment is right and safe. Some of such women are even ready to date younger fellows. According to one who pleaded anonymity, ‘I don’t mind to date someone I am older than, if there is money!”

However, for some, it is not only about money, but attention. A lot of women are neglected by their spouses and they turn to the social network to keep relationship with someone would tell them sweet and encouraging words. For some, they just want you to compliment their photos and tell them “you are beautiful!”

The men are not left out. Yes, some married men spend huge sums of money buying and sending recharge cards to ladies in attempt to woo them online, yet they may never get to meet these ladies physically. And some young ladies capitalize on this to milk such gullible men.

An Abuja based engineer (name withheld) narrated how his adventure on facebook took him to Port Harcourt, over800 kilometres away to seek a friend he met online.

According to him, “She asked me to send money for air ticket from Port Harcourt to Abuja so we could meet for a weekend and spend time together. I transferred N20,000 to her, but I didn’t hear from her again for two days only for her to send an SMS with another number to tell me she lost her android phone and couldn’t come online. 

She then asked me to send N18,000 for her to buy a Techno smart phone so we could keep into touch as she travels to Abuja. I was actually going to send the money that morning when I met a friend going to Port Harcourt and he suggested we take a quick dash together as he was also on an escapade. 

“By Nightfall we were in Port Harcourt. I sent several SMS to her line and the one she used to reach me the previous day but none was delivered as the lines were dead. In the morning I traced my supposed online friend to her address only to find it was nursery school premises. When she eventually switched on her phone around noon time, the message went and I quickly put a call through with another line. When she heard I was actually in front of her fake address, she laughed and cut the line. For the past seven months, she has not used her facebook account and she switched lines”

It was indeed a bitter lesson for this man. The money and time he would have spent on his wife and family, he wasted on a fake friend online. But did he truly learn? Did he admit that what he was doing was infidelity?

As for Lola (not her real name), a female banker, her husband has successfully shut her out of his activities online. She suspects him of cheating, but has no proof.

According to her, “My husband does not allow me to access his facebook account. Even his photos are restricted. I can’t view them from my own facebook. I expect that as his wife, I should be able to relate with him on line too. And it is a taboo to touch his phone for any reason. He always claims it is for security reasons”.

In another case, it was a harrowing experience for Chinedu when he discovered that his wife who had always been denying him of sex was flirting with a man online. He found out right in his own bed.

He said, “We were asleep, and as usual she slept on the other side of the bed away from me. If she’s not tired, it’s toothache or back pain or something else. But to my surprise, I woke up around 2:30am and discovered her android phone has slipped to the flow but the earpiece was on her ear and it was blinking.  I quietly picked the phone and opened it, only to find romantic messages on facebook exchanged between my wife and a young man who was apparently awake not knowing his sugar-honey had fallen asleep. 

I pretended to be my wife and responded to the messages and more kept coming with big revelations. I engaged him till 3:20am”.

She was in bed with her husband, yet she was ‘romancing’ another man online. If you were Chinedu, what would you do to your spouse? What do you think would happen to the marriage? Well, your guess is as good as mine! 

Is spending time and intimate feelings with someone other than your spouse not cheating? Though parties involved in these relationships may be far apart and do not necessarily meet physically, they are having an emotional affair, which itself is infidelity. Indeed, there is only a thin line between a physical affair and an emotional one.

Barely two months ago, facebook faced the home of a certain Mr. Akpan and his wife Bridget. Akpan is a driver in a food drink company and works on shift. The wife sells provision in front of their house. Whenever he was off duty, Akpan’s major preoccupation was the phone the company bought for him to monitor his whereabouts. 

According to Bridget, “Everyday he will lie on the chair as if he is romancing the phone. He will not talk with you or come near you until it is time he gets ready for work. He is always browsing”.

Akpan was scheduled to resume work in the afternoon that fateful day but facebook visited his home and trouble erupted. 

According to Bridget, his wife, “When I came back after 30mins from the shop to check him, my husband who was troubling and abusing me over food was still pressing his phone on the chair. Out of annoyance, I grabbed the phone from him and took it to the dining table where I left his food since. To my surprise, he rushed after me as if it was more than a phone. I put the phone in the money purse tied around my waist. He came to the table and threw away the food with the plates. 

"Before I knew it, my own husband has slapped me several times and I fell on the chair. He started to drag the purse from my waist and kicked and beat me. My husband is harsh, but he has never beaten me. It was as if a spirit entered him.

"Though he succeeded in taking the phone, he kept beating me. I had to run to the kitchen to escape through the back door but it was locked and he came after me. By this time, neighbours have entered our parlour and were begging him to stop but he refused and he pursued me to the kitchen. To scare him and make him stop, I picked a wooden pestle from the sink and threatened to hit him if he comes near me. 

Though I was bleeding from my mouth, he didn’t stop. As he rushed towards me, I didn’t know when I hit him in the head and he collapsed with blood everywhere. Thank God neighbours were there begging him before I hit him, people would have said I deliberately planned to kill him.”

Akpan did not die. He survived the concussion. But as at press time, he is still nursing his head wound and trying to mend his marriage. Bridge did move from her matrimonial home but returned after their families intervened.

But what was Akpan doing on the phone that fateful day? A neighbour who picked his phone when he was rushed to the hospital confirmed to our correspondent that he was chatting with female friend. 

But sadly, Bridget who does not know what facebook is or how to browse will never know the truth why her once loving husband could beat her.

To be continued in part 2

The Threat of Office Relationships To Marriages

 

Relationships, especially marriages, require time and true commitment for it to thrive and for those involved to become fulfilled and get the best of it. This is akin to the commitment we show to our jobs or career.

And one of the ways to stay committed to your relationship is to fend off little, or perhaps seemingly insignificant but dangerous intrusions especially at the workplace.

The workplace is a potential setting for flirtatious advances from the opposite sex since colleagues tend to see themselves more often, perhaps than one’s partner, and amorous feelings could develop secretly in the heart of an admirer.

This is why a lot of organizations indeed prohibit office romance solely because it has the potential of putting their staff off balance. Perhaps this is why many such relationships are kept secret too.

But as a person who is committed to keeping your marriage safe, you must essentially guide against anything that would unnecessarily expose you to temptation or cause trouble for you and your partner. 

You may be striving to build a wonderful career; but you may not know the true intent of the next fellow in your team. Some may not be truly interested in their job, and are merely marking time. 

For some, the sole ambition is to get enough eating and drinking money to get along. For such people, the stakes are fairly low and would do anything to make their stay at that office worth the while. Don’t let anybody use you as an extra bonus! Don’t be the reason why that fellow’s job, whether full time or part time, becomes more interesting. 

It does not make sense if you are a great manager at work yet you can’t manage your relationship. Or don’t you think it is a waste of talent if you head a human resource department in a big organization yet you can’t keep your relationship at home on track?

Simple precautions would help keep you away from compromising situations that may potentially damage your relationship.

Remember that it is not just having a wonderful job that brings fulfillment. If your relationship is in turmoil, you would not have the heart or peace to enjoy the success or proceeds of your labour.

Having a great career and a wonderful relationship is perhaps one of the greatest dreams of many young people. But whilst working or having a career is essential in building ourselves and in providing the basic necessities of life for our families and loved ones, your work could be a potential threat to your relationship if the dynamics are not properly managed.