Anonymous Cheating: Is Online Flirting Infidelity?

Secret messages, hidden thrills, and broken trust. When does online flirting become real betrayal? Discover how anonymous cheating impacts marriages, families, and whether trust can ever be rebuilt.

I have counselled four couples in the last three weeks with the same issue, and as a result, it seems pertinent to address the topic.

Let me paint a common but generic example of this.

A married man with children is comfortable in his life. He has no major issues with his wife, but he has a need to peek outside his marriage. He begins surreptitiously messaging women whom he doesn’t know. He reaches out to prostitutes, to women whose profiles give him the impression that they are somewhat open to flirting, and to other arbitrary strangers. Some respond to him, and the online flirting begins. It becomes exciting; the feeling of doing it lights up his feel-good chemicals in his brain; the dopamine and the endorphins ignite, and he feels alive again and has pep in his step. It is secretive, alluring, and ‘not harming anyone’ in his life. The reaching out intensifies in terms of the people he reaches out to, and the conversation becomes more explicit.

This becomes a drug in itself. It becomes hard to resist, and it fills his mind all day long, often not performing optimally at work. His concentration gets affected; he dismisses any mundane interaction as boring; he is irritated with his wife, who wants to discuss the broken washing machine or ask him to take care of the children. It is a countdown to the next secret escapade, and the boost begins at the start of picking up his phone or laptop to start the process.

Is this cheating?

Yes, it is because the man is going out of his marriage, even for a while, to connect with other women. He may, or may not, be able to compartmentalize this in his brain, but after getting away with it once and deriving pleasure from it, he will seek it out again. That is human nature. Does it make it right? No, but if we have a delicious new chocolate and we see it again on the supermarket shelf, our brain will remind us how much we enjoyed it. It is up to us to decide whether to buy it or ignore it.

The Consequences

For the person who is looking outside the marriage the consequences can be severe. Normal living, perhaps with many other pressing issues, including feeling ignored by his spouse, may give the man an ‘excuse’ or a reason to self-soothe. The problem is that it becomes addictive, as we get addicted to repeated processes, behaviours, and substances. If the behaviour becomes more regular, it becomes almost ‘normalised’ for the man who is doing it. He begins to dally more often and with more intensity. He gets away with it, not being caught, and he becomes less tuned in to being secretive, or his guardrails slip. When his wife or partner finds out, which invariably happens, her shock often feels disproportionate to the deed in his head. He has become used to it and can operate in both worlds.

For his wife, she goes into a state of shock and disbelief. Her adrenaline and cortisol rise, and she is usually horrified. She will look at herself and decide that she is not pretty, sexy, thin, young, alluring enough, and her self-esteem will plummet. She could become absent-minded as she is consumed with the news, and the children will feel it and become demanding, act out, and be uncomfortable without realizing why. There is tension in the house; snide remarks are made, and whatever the husband tries to do to rectify the situation, even in the smallest ways, gets scoffed at and rejected. Intimacy is off the table between them, and she asks many questions, often repeated many times in one day. She may well confide in a friend or a family member, and the husband is often astonished that she would expose him. Concentration becomes a problem; she is angry and can’t sleep or eat as normal. Her world is shattered in every way. Their social life is threatened; she can only imagine someone connecting emotionally to someone he has an intimate relationship with, and she is disgusted and wants out of the marriage.

The man vows to stop it immediately. He swears he will never do it again and invites his wife to check his phone constantly, follow him on Life 360, and call him many times a day to check up on him. He is remorseful as he realizes the impact that his behaviour has caused and is scared of his own future, as his family becomes something that he will lose.

The one problem is about trust and betrayal. Will she ever trust him again, in any way? Will she allow herself to be vulnerable with him ever again? Will she be comfortable being naked or having sex with him again? She feels lonely and alone, and the structure of life could be disintegrating.

So what now?

There are many divorces. There are also those who push forward, go to counselling, move forward a few steps, go backward a step or two, filled with resentment and anger. Often, the wife is horrified that she shared a joke with him and they both laughed, because she doesn’t want him to think she has forgiven him. The husband, in counselling and outside of it, has to be prepared to answer every question she has totally honestly, however many times she needs to ask it. She may well want the explicit details so that she can have a full picture of what occurred. He has a lot to prove and a lot of trust to try to rebuild.

Can the marriage be saved?

In many cases, depending on different factors, it can. Sometimes a lot of good comes out of the trauma. The marriage, when examined, can be better understood by both spouses; both have to be truthful and vulnerable, and all issues that have been building up over years need to be attended to and addressed. There becomes a new way of connecting, more honest and more conscious. This can include checking in every day for a few minutes to check if the other partner has any irritation, grievance, or misunderstanding during the day. It gets explained gently, understood, and the issue is sorted. It takes care, being open to being totally honest with each other and believing what the other person is saying is the hundred percent truth.

In an ideal world, if a couple wants to stay together, even though they can’t imagine getting past the trauma, they can work on it with a professional who can guide the process and see if the marriage can be saved.