to think that technology is the downfall of most relationships?

[2anddone]

H walked out just over a week ago leaving me with 2dc. Since then I have been both posting and lurking on the relationships, divorce and lone parents topics. I have been amazed at how many peoples partners have either been caught out using internet dating/sex sites, sending flirty messages through Facebook and texts/emails. So AIBU to think that now phones and tablets make accessing the internet so easy and that you can't always see what your oh has been looking at especially if the device is passworded to access, its so much easier to cheat on your oh? I mean 30 years ago there were no mobiles etc and it was a real effort to cheat or start an affair and most people would find it too much hassle.
Before anyone points out that there were affairs 30 years ago I already know that (my half brother is 6 months younger than me )

"Putting a peepee into the wrong woowoo is a problem too."

:o

Please let that make the talk round up!

Fudgemallowdelight,i can see were your perspective comes from and i can see its not an unrealistic way of thinking.i just want to feel that not everybody in the world is like that.yes there are men and women who cheat but if we all lived our lives not trusting what would be the point of ever being with someone at all.i dont think its ever the person who is cheated ons fault issey6cats.if the person doesnt want to be with that man or woman they dont have to be.

limited editionlady im glad for you that you and your husband have a good marriage and you trust him not to cheat, my husband and i were together almost 24 hours a day had a business together, went on holidays together, made love on a very regular basis and had a good love life, we had a nice house , and he still did it to me not because he didnt want to be with me but because there were all those women on line he could get his ego boost from and that was what it was all about with him, i took the decision the third time i caught him not to carry on letting him get away with it and that was the end of our marriage, the business everything and almost the end of me, i hope you never feel as near to ending it as i did in that period

Issey im not married but i do have my partner of a decade and a child and home together.marriage is a sacred thing and im really sorry to hear that.no its wasnt because of you but he wasnt worthy of you because he decided to do that and risk what sounds like a lovely life to me.please dont think im saying that he didnt want to be with you because im not being personal about every relationship because theyre not my relationships.im just saying that these people make these choices and throw a lovely life like you had away.in my grandmothers age it was a socially unacceptable thing that people frowned upon but now its crazy what goes on.maybe technology is to blame.

at putting your peepee in the wrong woowoo!
Love it Tiggy

As a matter of interest is there any evidence that the % of infidelity is rising - more people at it, or more often, or longer?

i agree with op

and the last few years it seems to have become more frequent to hear about affairs/deceit etc

nothing seems to last anymore and seems so disposable

I think if you're the type of person who cheats, you'd cheat with or without technology. Technology has just made it much easier to talk to other people and be found out. My DP and I both have phones, email addresses, Facebook accounts that are all password protected - I trust him implicitly and have no reason to think just because he has access to chat rooms and private emails he is cheating, and vice versa.

I also think that relationships that aren't as strong and have issues will also find that technology gets in the way of their relationship, by spending hours on games, talking to friends constantly by texting, even updating Facebook statuses. I'm a strong believer that the more someone talks about their relationship on Facebook/twitter the less likely it is to last. An example is my brother, him and his GF (who live together) are constantly writing 'I love you so much my darling. I miss you' on each others walls and in their statuses, I give it another 2 months maximum - it's just a bug show. That isnt technologies fault though, it's the type of person that utilises it in negative ways.

A big show, there are no bugs doing shows in their house as far as I'm aware!

Limited. I wasn't saying that everybody in the world will cheat and no one should trust their partner. I was saying that when someone cheats it very often isn't because there is anything wrong with their current marriage/relationship/partner, it's just that some people are greedy and selfish.

"I remember reading on the relationships board that research had been done into affairs and they found that when people had affairs, contrary to popular belief, there was often no problem with the existing relationship, it was just that the person who had the affair was greedy and selfish and given the opportunity, they happily took it."

While I'm sure that goes down very well with the people there, I suspect (looking at some of the clearly unreasonable views some hold on MN) that it's also often true that it does take 2 to tango.

I still haven't seen any hard evidence that Infidelity has actually got worse, if anything I suspect that electronic commas makes it easier for partners to catch it!

I don't buy the idea that affairs only happen in poor relationships (though obviously when something is wrong, the relationship is more vulnerable).

Now, if you have a philanderer, technology is irrelevant, that person is going to do it anyhow.

But ere are also affairs that creep up on one person, and might never have happened if the boundaries of relationships with third parties had stayed intact. It can be a lot easier to let these boundaries slip on line. For you justify the increasing intimacy with a third party on the basis that as you're not meeting or touching, you're doing nothing wrong. And an extensive emotional closeness can develop. And putting emotional energy into a third party means it's not going in to the primary relationship, which then suffers as a result. So it becomes an open path to the self-serving little justifications and permissions that lead to a full blown affair.

"While I'm sure that goes down very well with the people there, I suspect (looking at some of the clearly unreasonable views some hold on MN) that it's also often true that it does take 2 to tango."

If someone is unhappy in a relationship they can always end it, so they are then free to sleep with who they want, rather than being deceitful.

"If someone is unhappy in a relationship they can always end it, so they are then free to sleep with who they want, rather than being deceitful"

They could, but that's not what most people do.

I repeat, is there any actual evidence that infidelity has increased, or is it just talked about more these days.

just found this I googled infidelity and technology and got quite a few pages up. They seem to agree that while technology does not make someone cheat the fact they are a twunt does. It certainly makes it easier.

it's not the technology, it's the people using it. we all know sex/dating sites are out there, but it's if/how you use them that causes the problem. if you're in a happy relationship, you wouldn't even want to go on those sites, so it's the being miserable in the relationship that causes people to go on those sites, not the sites that cause the break up.

Fudgemallow,i dont have anything against anything you are saying i have the greatest respect for peoples perspectives on things.im not saying im right or wrong,its just what i think.i just see it that for a person to cheat they dont respect the person theyre cheating on and to me love and respect come hand in hand.surely the guilt would be unbearable?

Technology makes relationship trouble far easier to find if you are a bit bored / unhappy / philandery.

I have had men (usually exes) contact me via Facebook etc giving me the opportunity to stroke my ego / chat / cheat and in the periods where I have been desperately in love with my DH, I have ignored them all and deleted. When the relationship is vulnerable, I sometimes have to pause and think about it before deleting messages like that. Technology puts people in easy contact who might not otherwise be and I think makes infidelity (or the temptation to cheat) far easier.