Researchers from Texas Tech University found that although process of coping with social media infidelity have some unique characteristics, it can trigger similar emotional experiences for the partner who was cheated on as any other type of infidelity. The researcher compared “the experience of nonparticipating partners when their partners have engaged in infidelity behaviors on Facebook” to “the basic social processes that occur when discovering the infidelity behaviors” and the results indicate that Facebook cheating can affect deeply the relationship, as much as cheating in person. The study used data from Facebookcheating.com. “This is very important because there is a line of thought that if the infidelity was discovered online, or confined to online activity, then it shouldn’t be as painful,” said Jaclyn Cravens, a doctoral candidate in the Marriage & Family Therapy Program and lead author of the study. Cravens says ‘the emotional impact for the party who has discovered online acts of infidelity is no less severe than acts committed in-person’. “Facebook already has changed the dynamics of relationships,” Cravens said. “We see when our ‘friends’ are getting into a relationship. We say a relationship isn’t ‘official’ until it’s ‘Facebook-official.'”
Cravens and her team looked into the patterns of responses from people dealing with online infidelity. Based on that, they created a model for the stages that people tend to go through. The model includes the following five stages:
1) Warning signs: the partner who was cheated on notices gut feelings and/or suspicious behavior on the internet, such as minimizing windows, habitually clearing out browser history and adding passwords.
2) Discovering infidelity: the individual either takes it upon themselves to investigate the warning signs, or the individual accidentally discovers the infidelity.
3) Damage appraisal: the individual determines whether the discovered acts was or was not a violation of the relationship.
4) Acting on appraisal: If the individual determines that the act or acts were a violation of the relationship, he or she either confronts or avoids the partner. Sometimes the individual decides that the evidence wasn’t concrete enough to be able to approach partner. Others retaliate, which typically includes posting messages online or sending a message to the third party, or the third party’s partner.
5) Making a relationship decision: based on how the individual decided to act, they tend to make a decision about the relationship. Some end the relationship because trust was violated, others use monitoring behaviors to ensure it doesn’t happen again, and some are uncertain about what next step should be.
The researcher points out that for many couples, step three, the “Damage Appraisal” can be very difficult because couples often don’t have clearly established rules about online behavior; so they aren’t totally sure whether or not something can count as cheating.”
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When a couple comes to therapy to deal with online infidelity, one of the starting points of our work is to find out what they feel that has been violated. That process helps both partners to clarify relationship rules and expectations and understand each other’s emotional experience.
Facing the pain and hurt of infidelity is the first step towards healing.