They worked together and were casual acquaintances. One day he looked her up on Facebook and sent her a message asking, “Would you like to get a drink sometime?” Soon after that the affair began.
“If Facebook didn’t exist, I doubt I would have gathered the courage to ask her directly. It made the initial step that much easier,” he said.
The advantages of technology that facilitate regular dating (such as the ease of access and the absence of the pressure found in an in-person interaction) also transfer over to cheating. This includes the ease of escalation, which, when engaging in something as scandalous as cheating, is quite valuable. With messages you can slowly test the waters of potentially starting an affair. Once you find out the other person is on the same page, it can ramp up very fast. Or you can easily backpedal without quite the same level of embarrassment you’d experience if it had happened in person.
Here’s an example:
The other person may think you are a creep, but either of you can just act like it was a misreading of the message. In the Weiner situation, phrases like “got a night plan for us?” and “make me an offer i can’t refuse” allowed him to safely test the waters and see if Lisa was really interested in something sexual.
Also, the privacy of our phones means we have a new place to foster and grow clandestine relationships. In the past, people who wanted to engage or flirt with someone outside their relationship would have to sneak away to a remote bar or restaurant to reduce the risk of being spotted by friends or loved ones. Today, with proper precautions, our phones provide a private refuge that can house intimacy that no one else is privy to.
In one focus group a gentleman told us he once started innocently texting with a married coworker and it eventually turned into a full-on clandestine relationship. Normally they had no reason to chat beyond the office. One day the guy sent a jokey text when he saw something that reminded him of something he and the woman had laughed about at work. She responded and a fun, witty banter took hold.
These instances increased in frequency, and soon the two were also spending time together after work. Eventually both parties caught feelings, and it developed into a secret relationship, with the married woman constantly sending texts to this other guy in secret. The texts were getting so frequent that the guy had to change the woman’s contact info in his phone so as to not arouse the suspicion of others, who might wonder why this married lady was texting him so much. Instead of getting texts from Susan, it looked like he was getting texts from a male friend named David.
If I ever was texting frequently with someone and wanted to make an alias, I think I’d go with “Scottie Pippen.” Then any friends who were peeking at my screen could be left wondering why I was texting with the former Chicago Bulls star on the reg.
I only hope Scottie Pippen’s wife never has an affair where she uses the same strategy and the guy texts while Scottie is in the room and he can see her screen. Scottie Pippen would likely believe it was an impostor Scottie Pippen from another dimension, sent to steal his wife and kill him. The psychological damage inflicted on poor Scottie Pippen would be far worse than discovering a simple affair.
Back to our real situation: Eventually both parties decided it was best to end the affair. But again, would this kind of thing have taken off if these people hadn’t had the privacy of text messages to introduce a romantic element into their relationship?
She was married and I respected that. I wouldn’t have made a voice call to say little jokey things to her. It would have been weird. Since it was just texting, it seemed pretty innocuous. But as it went on, we both couldn’t help but realize, there was a spark between us. When you’re both on your phones, you have this safe zone that no one else can break into. It was this private little world where we could talk about all the stress and confusion and love that the whole dilemma was creating. If it weren’t for text messages, I’m not sure anything would have started between us.
Some people we heard from, however, felt that ultimately technology doesn’t turn us into philanderers. If you’re gonna cheat, you’re gonna cheat, they said. Social media or no social media, in the end it’s two people together in the flesh.
“I don’t think that someone who is otherwise a faithful partner in a relationship is going to suddenly start cheating because someone sends them a winky face in an IM,” said one user on the subreddit, in the thread’s most popular post. “I’d say it makes it easier to cheat, but doesn’t make it harder to be faithful.”