Online Affairs

Online affairs account for a growing number of divorce cases and it is the most frequently treated problem at the Center for Online Addiction. Partners engaged in an online affair go through several personality changes and often rationalize that an online affair isn’t really cheating. They believe it is a harmless flirtation because it doesn’t involve any “physical touching”. However, the emotional pain and devastation to a once warm and loving relationship is just the same.

Partners in Crisis
Partners who learn of an online affair feel betrayed, hurt, jealous, and angry at the discovery. They have long suspected that something is wrong because of the computer. Their loved one suddenly demands privacy at the computer, moving it to a private den or secluded basement, and ignores the relationship while spending hours in front of the computer. They show a declining interest in their relationship and suddenly seem preoccupied with new online activities. If confronted, their partners react with defensiveness or anger, and a once loving and sensitive wife becomes cold and withdrawn, and a formerly jovial husband turns quiet and serious.

A Growing Trend
In the last decade, Dr. Kimberly Young has counseled hundreds of couples devastated by the long-term affects of an online affair. Online affairs can impact stable marriages as the partner engaged in the affair often idealizes these new online relationships. They imagine a better life, they picture running off with a new online lover, and they romanticize this person who seems to understand them in a way no one else has, leaving a devastated spouse struggling to understand how their husband or wife could fall in love with someone that they have never met.

Help is Available
Dr. Young works with individuals coping with an online affair in their relationships. Individually, she helps a partner engaged in an online affair to understand the rationalizations and to focus on how the affair may be symptom of a larger relationship problem. couples to rebuild trust and communication hurt by an online affair. She counsels partners and spouses at any stage of the relationship, even if they are filing for separation or divorce.

Through counseling, Dr. Young helps couples rebuild the broken trust and communication hurt by an online affair. She helps couples address underlying problems that may have existed before the affair began and works with them to establish new ground rules when it come to using the computer. She also provides individual counseling for partners and spouses dealing with the discovery of an online affair.

For immediate help, you can download Dr. Young’s new ebooklet, Breaking the Denial:Confronting a Loved One Addicted to the Internet, which helps you confront a loved one addicted to the Internet or read her exclusive guide, Infidelity Online: Rebuilding Your Relationship after an Online Affair.

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