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