SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I agree with those who are saying it definitely plays a role. I didn't see anyone BLAMING the technology, and of course infidelity predated modern communication technology and social media, but this stuff very clearly leads to MORE infidelity than there would otherwise be.

[This message edited by SilverLinings55 at 1:34 PM, January 26th (Friday)]

I cheated on my BS when I was away at College and also when we were married living in close quarters. College was long before technology while cheating later in m marriage was very heavy on technology. My tool of choice was my cell phone and email.

So, even though these examples are completely different with one relying on technology and the others not. The common thing is privacy. I had the privacy while away at College and I had the privacy with devices. Technology gives us the power of privacy that would not have been the case in the past. Could you imagine yourself sitting in the kitchen on a land line corded phone (the only phone in the house) calling another woman or man?

It's about exposure.

20 years ago, maybe you run into an ex when you go back home for your 10th anniversary. Maybe you exchange numbers, maybe you run off somewhere right then, whatever.

Now, with social media, you have that exposure to everyone, all the time.

I have generally not been super successful with women, but for the couple of years I was a waiter, I got SO much more attention from women than I ever had.

This is a numbers game.

xhz700 your comment re exposure really resonated with me - i was watching the Bill Maher show (not sure what its called) on Wednesday night and he had a young guy on there who was a technology ethicist (or something along those lines).

Anyway - he was talking about the big online companies and the thinking that goes on behind keeping us 'hooked' onto online stuff e.g. facebook and how it keeps luring us to look at it - its quite carefully thought out - and did i read on here a few months ago that FB now has the facility to destroy private messages or something along those lines? What purpose is that serving apart from infidelity?

i may have missed it on this site but it would be useful to set up some useful 'things to consider' for those with wayward propensities in using online anything or phones - a mental checklist to go through regularly. O.k. i'm rambling now....

Khrystlebefore and all:

IMO, modern technology is a sharp, sharp tool. For good and evil. It's not the tool, it's the user, simply. That said, Khrystlebefore :

it would be useful to set up some useful 'things to consider' for those with wayward propensities in using online anything or phones - a mental checklist to go through regularly

Useful for everyone and here's my take on that list fwiw:

1. Never send, post, write, speak, image or otherwise anything on or over the Internet or any telecommunications platform (eg phone or texts) that you wouldn't show your spouse, family and/or boss (as appropriate)

2. Your spouse should always have access to any electronic device or system in your house, as should you to theirs. The exception of work devices should apply to bosses and colleagues. Leading back to #1.

If you have to hide it, it's wrong. In general and especially bc hiding is so easy with electronic devices and communications.

Or you can keep it simple at one rule:

0. Would I say, send, image, speak, and/or show this to my spouse/SO? If no, then don't.

IMO, it's not rules for tech, it's rules for life.

go well -- IDK

I wonder about that too.

I know my way fairly well through connected technology, and the subject fascinates me.

At the time, I was too shocked and hollow to really measure the place of mobiles and messaging in my WW's A. In hindsight though, her way to talk about R and how that happened and never will again, lets me think she developed a special kind of delusion she had to build progressively. Through less and less dematerialized, unreal communications with AP. Until the point when it was sufficiently established in the virtual realm that making it real seemed not very different.

That or she just lied. Who knows. I have no evidence that she ever lied to my face since DDay. She lied to cover her tracks during the affair, but I never detected an outright denial of the facts. I still have the screenshots. That seems consistent with the idea of getting comfortable because it's not real, and letting it get more and more real.

One thing is certain, modern technology gave me a certainty of the facts very quick after I felt something was wrong. All the conversations, right there in writing, all the cameras I could find. Let alone how I could have bought my own gadgets to get answers if she had used other devices and accounts than the ones I knew. Technology also empowered me to organize and make plans easily. I was out so certainly simply because I laid out the reality of how to do it, in a timely and easy manner. A purely technical process of organization for a being too emotionally broken to operate based on feelings.