By Ogova Ondego
Published January 9, 2023
Are you married or in a relationship? Do you delete your WhatsApp text messages and phone call logs so your partner doesn’t have to see them? Then admit that you are caught up in a love affair, inappropriate relationship or entanglement!
When Amina said Hi to Omar via WhatsApp one Monday evening after work, little did they know they were laying ground for what is now known as social media infidelity. Both married and living with their families in Nairobi, 36-year-old Amina and 49-year-old Omar were both of strong religious and moral character who knew and believed that both pre- and extra-marital relationships were wrong.
Thereafter Amina and Omar chatted every evening on their Smartphone even in the presence of their their partners without their spouse getting to know about it. Within no time Amina and Omar found themselves caught up in a physical adulterous relationship from which they could not easily extricate themselves no matter how hard they tried to. What had started as a friendly and innocent chat had given way to a full blown love affair that neither Amina nor Omar had envisaged. They met during their lunch break as they both worked in the central business district of Nairobi. To cover up their tracks and leave no tell tales, they started deleting chat messages, call logs and even went on to install strong passwords on their devices so their partners could no longer access them as before. They had, horribly, discovered that cheating starts not with sex but with sneaky conversations. No, Cheating isn’t just about flirting, touching, kissing or having sex.
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News reports from around the world, particularly from western Europe and North America indicate that many couples are separating or divorcing over incriminating evidence gleaned from social media, principally Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn and SnapChat.
According to an article titled Social Media Infidelity Is A Very Modern Problem by Adam Bulger that is published on fatherly.com, “Infidelity — both physical and emotional — is easier thanks to social media. Apps make it easier to escape into the lives, and arms, of others.”
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Bulger argues that “With Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, webcams, and other such media,” that anyone “considering cheating or having emotional affairs … can carry on affairs from the comfort of their couch, illuminated by the light of their computer or smartphone screen.”
“Experts say those same social networks have made it easier for people who are inclined to cheat on their significant other to do so with partners both familiar and previously unknown,” Matt Lindner says in Does using social media make you more likely to cheat?, an article on chicagotribune.com.
“For people who are morally willing to and motivated to, social media offers an unprecedented opportunity to engage in unfaithful behavior,” Lindner quotes Benjamin Karney, a professor of social psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles who has extensively studied interpersonal relationships and marriage as having said. “You don’t even have to find somebody who is in your neighborhood. You can flirt and exchange sexual communication with anyone who is willing to do it on planet Earth who is holding a smartphone.”
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Writing for aha-now.com in an article titled How Social Media Cheating Leads to Relationship Problems [Infographic], Harleena Singh argues that in today’s world one “can now be unfaithful emotionally and mentally, while you are online.”
Social media cheating or digital infidelity is about people getting intimate emotionally and mentally with someone other than their spouse, Singh contends. “It’s a fact that the place most people consider safe to cheat on their spouse is the social media.”
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Singh argues that “One reason why social media becomes a risk for your marriage and relationship is because you tend to exchange intimate information in your virtual communication without feeling fearful or guilty.
Though Amina and Omar are still pursuing each other in their now almost addictive adulterous relationship on and off social media and their spouses are getting suspicious, they are yet to be caught with any incriminating foolproof evidence. For now.
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