Mistake #2:

Your Cheatin' Heart

There are so many people looking for partners on the Internet who are already have one, that the "I" in Internet should stand for "Infidelity." The problem is that many people do not feel like they are "cheating" on their partner when they engage in a cyber romance with a stranger. They often treat it as "innocent fun" or like private fantasies because their online partner is someone who they never meet in person and who may live hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Well, not exactly. A growing number of people who are not satisfied to keep their secret love affair online will arrange to meet their lover in person. It is at this point that their "innocent" cyber affair becomes a full-blown affair. However, cyber affairs do not have to be taken to the next level before they can destroy the trust upon which a relationship is built.

Why are there so many online affairs? Because they are easy to do, easy to justify, easy to hide, and easy to end. They are so easy to end (all it takes is for one person to stop sending e-mails) that cyber break-ups can often be more emotionally devastating than real ones. The unfortunate recipients of a break-up never understand why their relationships end so abruptly.

Most people do not get on the Internet to intentionally have a cyber affair. Most people in cyber affairs do not know how they went from being someone's casual online friend to being their lover. The reason why is because they are not aware of their unmet needs.

People who are unhappy with their current partner turn to the Internet as a solution to their unmet needs. Instead of identifying the true source of their problems, they blame their partner for not meeting their needs and search online for someone who will. They justify their online affairs because their partner is not meeting their needs and because their online affair is not seen as cheating.

If you go back to the previous page and re-read the stories of how people fell in love online, you will see one very important fact missing from all of them.

All of them were still married to someone else when their online romances began. All of them did not feel like they were doing anything harmful to their marriage when they started. All of them got out of their prior marriage to pursue their online relationship, and all of them are no longer with the person they met online.

None of them understood what went wrong. That is why they wrote to the author for advice.

The #2 Mistake of the Internet is when people use online partners to solve their relationship problems and fulfill unmet needs while failing to see how they can damage their current relationships and themselves in the process.