Online Sexual Fantasies and “Long Distance Cheating.”
A few days ago I had a long online chat with a woman I have known only via the Internet for about two years. During that time we only communicated by messages and by making sometimes flirtatious comments on our web pages. We wrote a lot about our families, what was going on in our lives. We got to know each other pretty well — the good and the bad. We became real friends — to whatever degree the term “real” can apply to an online relationship.
During the past few months, however, the communications have become more sexual in nature. She started sending me pictures of herself in various seductive poses; I would talk about some of my recent and not-so-recent sexual encounters — names changed to protect the guilty, of course!
For weeks she had been trying to get me to call her, which I was reluctant to do. Eventually, though, we ended up in a long online chat, a first for us. It quickly turned into a sexual ritual, that special erotic dance men and women do before they get down to the serious stuff. As the flirtatious dance got more serious, she hit me with a question I wasn’t expecting and which I answered with all the sensitivity of a 10-year-old.
She asked me if I ever had sexual fantasies about her. I told her, “No,” I hadn’t.
OK. Big mistake, I should have been a gentleman and lied and said “sometimes” or even an evasive, “Well, who wouldn’t, you sexy thing!” Instead, I just blurted out the truth. “No.”
In addition to just being stupid, there were two other reasons for my klutzy response. First, she is a married woman with several kids, into her second marriage now and I am single, and second we live well over a thousand miles apart. However things might evolve, the likelihood of our relationship becoming more than just an Internet sex fantasy seemed remote.
For myself, my marital status — single — means that I can still have guilt-free, real relationships with available single women. Not that I do that often, but that’s the theory anyway. Even online sexual flirtations with other single women have a different dimension. No one is cheating on anyone else. Done right, no one should come out of an online affair hurting anyone else.
In her case, her fantasy of me is not real, she is not available, and it has the potential of damaging her marriage. I can hear the Greek Chorus out there saying, “What business is it of yours, Sky? If the woman wants to have long distance fantasies, that’s her choice. Just go with the flow and have some fun!”
From what she has told me, her husband — who travels a lot — has no idea that she is online looking for sexual encounters with strangers like me. I guess the question, to put it in its crudest form, is whether there’s something wrong if she gets her sexual release with strange men like me and her husband doesn’t know about it? Unless she decides to tell her husband, I am part of a deception that could possible destroy her marriage. I know enough about her to understand that the foundation of her relationship with Hubby is not all that strong to begin with — otherwise, why flirt with me? Getting caught in an online affair could possibly have dire consequences for her and her children. Do I want to be responsible for that?
I think the topic raises two important issues: the issue of honesty with your partner, and the openness with which partners can discuss their sexual fantasies.
Should you tell your partner that you have these kinds of fantasies and online relationships?
My reaction is, “No.” Most people simply are not secure enough in themselves and in their relationships to hear about their partner participating some kind of cyber-fuck with other people. If you say you are having sexual fantasies about another man, most men are going to get very pissed about it. We don’t like having competition we can’t punch out in a face-to-face confrontation.
If the roles were reversed and a guy tells his partner that he’s got this hot, online chick that can really turn him on, most women are not likely to welcome the news. Most will be jealous as hell and insist on knowing all the sordid details. Consider yourself lucky if she doesn’t rip out your Internet cable connection and smash your lovely LCD computer screen.
All these new ways of “getting it on” do not change human nature.
Consider, also, the likelihood that your online fantasy lover will find his or her way into the family bed. So there you are trying to make love to your lifetime partner and in the back of your mind is some delicious-looking lady you have been chatting with online. What then? Do you tell your partner?
A Web MD article recently looked at the pros and cons of admitting these fantasies:
One good reason to remain mum, says Barbara Bartlik, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, is that the majority of people in long-term, fulfilling sexual relationships do not necessarily think about their partner when they’re at the height of sexual passion. But even though both partners might routinely think of something other than each other, revealing this may result in hurt feelings.
That’s putting it lightly. An additional problem with online fantasies is that they are not just fantasies — often they involve each partner masturbating while the phone call or chat proceeds to more erotic subjects. The basic rule of ethical behavior is that you can think what you want, but once your thoughts are turned into action, then an important ethical and moral line has been crossed. Assuming one of us is already in a relationship, do I actually have to be in your bed, making love to you, before our act can be considered “cheating”?
The other side of this argument might be — and perhaps in the case of my friend — that by having these online sexual trysts she is in fact saving her marriage. She is less likely to have a “real” affair with some Bozo in the house or condo next door. On the “cheating scale,” I guess that is true: long-distance, online affairs are neater, easier to hide, usually easier to end, and — like so much of our imaginary cyber-lives – it doesn’t seem completely real.
So, when Hubby or the Mrs. wants to know if we’ve been true, we can answer with a straight face, “Honey, the only one really in my life is you!”
Couple’s Guide to a Passionate Marriage.
A passionate marriage is not simply a cure for sexual desires or sexual dysfunctions but it is instrumental for a life-long sexual development.
They say people get better in bed as they get older. In general, people who are into 40s, 50s, and 60s can reach their sexual potential. This fact will show how your relationship with yourself controls intimate relation and sexual desire for your partner. According to sex researchers, married couples have more sex, more varied sex and more emotionally and physically satisfying sex than singles.
When sex works well in marriage, it can add a great deal to a couples’ happiness. Sex can lead to as much as 15% to 20% increase in marital satisfaction. And when a passionate marriage clicks well, it clicks extremely well. However, when sex doesn’t click well, it’s dreadful. When sex doesn’t work, it can subtract 50% to 70% of marital satisfaction.
Here are some tips for maintaining a passionate marriage:
1. Never blend fantasy to create a passionate marriage.
2. Continue your separate interests to prolong a passionate marriage.
3. Freshness is the means to a passionate marriage.
4. Boost your self-esteem by making something out of yourself.
5. Keep eye contact with each other out of bed.
6. Give each other a hug to relax.
If your marriage is similar to that of others, and you are scared, angry, vindictive, or have a lazy side which restricts the quality of a sexual relationship, there will be a lot of things at stake in trying to make or keep a passionate marriage alive. If you are less passionate or sex is less exciting than on your first mating, it doesn’t mean that your marriage is in trouble. However, it is the cause of lack of intimacy and passion in a relationship.
In addition, passionate marriage needs each person to confront the fear of defining him or herself while drawing closer to his/her partner. This process is known to be differentiation, and it involves changing the way you think about marriage. Marriage is not only a union of two persons but it is a process of learning new things about you. In this way, you will know that you are distinct from your partner and will draw you nearer to him/her.
Sexual encounters will provide you a perfect chance to differentiate and develop the strength to love deeply. A combination of humor and compassion will help you to have personal, marital and sexual fulfillment. Every sexual experience, from kissing to bold erotic conduct, is a realistic image of the way your partner and you feel about each other and yourselves outside the bedroom.
Well, rather than rushing into activities together so as to fashion or rejuvenate a passionate marriage, it’s best to begin with the personal ardor that made you appealing and fascinating to your partner in the first place. Go out with your buddies to a museum — and bring back to the marriage a fresh sense of excitement and passion.
Passionate marriage is beyond treating sexual dysfunction to achieve sexual potential but it could help you to extract the best in you, to build an energizing adult sexuality.
About the Author
For more information on Passionate Marriages please visit our website.
When Do Women Really Eat?
Over the years I’ve had my share of endless restaurant dinners with the former Mrs. Sky and the other former Mrs. Sky, and various dates of my youth. Out in public it seems these women never actually eat. They push their food around, pile it up in corners while they talk, try to get me to eat it, and every now and then put half a fork-full of peas in their mouths.
I keep thinking that by the time we leave the restaurant they’ll be so malnourished I’ll have to take them out to my car in a wheelchair. They worry me.
As I watch them not eating, two profound thoughts run through my mind: “I must be the world’s biggest pig, chowing down like I just escaped from Osama’s personal torture chamber,” and “How much am I paying for this meal she isn’t eating?”
After a while, we guys try to get used to it. We might suggest a nice soup or salad for their entre, but then we just come across looking cheap, which we are. But I grew up on the “starving children in China” guilt trip my mother threw at me when I was a kid. I believed her! I still do, despite all that Olympics propaganda about the “New China.” New, my ass, the Chinese are just getting better at hiding those starving kids, probably in the mountaints of Tibet somewhere.
I’ve decided that women only eat when they are alone, or when they gather in anonymous packs in dark kitchens solely for the purpose of “pigging out.” I mean, I NEVER see them eating, but some are way past the Orca stage of heaviness — not that I am throwing stones. So there has to be some explanation.
So today I found this photo. My heart lept with joy! — a woman who is willing to dive deep into the greasy ground beef of life, to risk ruining her makeup and looking like a pig, because she has a real appetite, a manly appetite.
I wouldn’t want to take her out to a restaurant or any place in public — I mean, what a pig! Who am I to tear down the walls of female stereotypes? Let Michelle Obama or Sarah Palin eat like that in public — or even Hillary Clinton, for that matter. Now that’s would be a glass ceiling worth breaking!
