On the morning of my latest chat with Dr Eve on her book Cyber Infidelity, breaking news hit the internet that the dating site Ashley Madison had been hacked.
It hasn’t been too long since this happened and the internet has been going nuts with the data dump containing all the registered email addresses, and as was expected— hackers jumped at the opportunity to analyze the data and create a few interesting things with it…
Aside from the cool tech-hacky stuff that is being done with the data-dump, somewhere out there are a few people who are actually being dumped.
If you haven’t already seen what I am about to make you aware of, I do propose that you proceed with caution – as quick as you may want to check out whether or not your partner has had an account, I checked in with Dr Eve and she has a few things to say that you may want to think about before jumping on this site: https://ashley.cynic.al/
The site itself is pretty basic, and serves its purpose -> enter an email address -> receive confirmation on whether the user is registered or not
Dr Eve had this to say…
Advice for Tech Girls’ around the confrontation process when deciding whether or not to check if your partner has an Ashley Madison account:
When deciding to confront this kind of situation, one has to bear in mind that this will force you into making decisions on whether or not to either:
A) disclose information to your other half
or
B) decide whether you want to ask your partner and this is the most difficult position to put yourself into
The minute that you do either of these, you expose yourself to a possible truth and you will then have to deal with that truth. Most people choose to avoid it while being fully aware that there is stuff that is going on, it is just easier to avoid it because we don’t want to have to deal with it or know the truth.
You really have to consider what kind of benefit it is going to be for yourself and for the relationship if you decide to tell your partner that you are on Ashley Madison or have been, or asking if they have been.
Dealing with the hurt of feeling cheated on:
There are a lot of people that think that going online is just committing infidelity, whereas, we know from my research that it may be that people are just there because they choose to be and we also know that they are not conducting infidelity in the traditional way until they go offline, and then we also know that what they do online could be defined by this person as innocent and the other person may disagree.
So you have to go in with a non-judgmental approach and even though you may feel terrified by the shock of the discovery, you should really want to try and listen well to each other and have a conversation around what defines infidelity for you. You need to give the other person an opportunity to voice their views because that person may say “I didn’t think that cyber flirting or sexting was me being unfaithful to you” and you have to consider that there could be truth in this — that this person may have truly believed that they were not being unfaithful in their world. They may only view being unfaithful as having a real life sexual experience and so their intention may never have been to cheat on you.
The Awkward Conversations Can Become The Turning Points:
All of this requires a very necessary and powerful conversation on what you each consider to be “faithful” and determining what the rules are around privacy and secrets. There is opportunity here to establish new rules around the relationship which includes technology. This way there is no secrets, because secrets are the real killer.
Web privacy is obviously a huge issue, at some point this conflicts with the honesty you are expected to have with your partner – is it a fair question to request that your partner discloses all their doings? i.e all the people he or she had chatted to, the conversations, the online sexual exchanges?
I do think that couples need to be cautious around a violation of privacy, although some people may feel that they need to know. There is also a risk that is taken in knowing all the details – it is going to force you to make a decision and force you to perhaps re-write your rules, most people are kind of comfortable with where they are and don’t like being uncomfortable. In being willing to ask this, also be willing to take on the consequences that come with it which is that you may have to change or you may have to stay in a relationship where you feel that you have been betrayed where the other person possibly did not intend to betray you.
On the other hand one person may find that they are able to finally say – I am unhappy in this marriage or relationship and being online made me realise that I want to have sex with other people or that I actually met somebody online and then had real life sex with them.
So with all the guidance Dr Eve has given above we should understand that these are the consequences of asking or finding out. The message that stands is if you are going to ask, and you do have the right to do so, then be aware of the consequences that may follow and prepare yourself for them as they may make you uncomfortable. There is also the possibility of a new conversation to establish new rules in your relationships.
If you have had a bad experience with any of this and wish to further understand infidelity in the tech space you may find this video useful for a different perspective on cheating from being cheated on, to being the cheater and the ways in which we seek new selves not necessarily new partners — the true identity crisis. This also touches on the 2015 ideology of “shame in staying with someone when we have so many options” and whether a case of infidelity actually needs to be the end of a relationship, check out Dr Esther Perel’s Ted Talk:
[ted id=2252]
How to find out if my partner was registered with Ashley Madison
