Is online infidelity the last relationship taboo?
The most infamous (and weirdest) example of online infidelity occurred in the game Second Life, an online virtual world where people create sexy avatars with sexy jobs who interact with one another. It’s like a grown-up, hightech version of playing Barbies. Two years ago, in England, Amy Taylor caught her husband, David Pollard, cheating in the game with another avatar, played by an American woman, Linda Brinkley. Pollard claimed that he and Brinkley were just “hanging out” in Second Life, but Taylor was devastated and filed for divorce. “It may have started online, but it existed entirely in the real world and hurt just as much,” Taylor told The Guardian.
Jessica*, a nurse in Toronto, feels the same way. She suspected something was going on with her boyfriend, Mike, when he returned from a business trip and suddenly seemed unhappy and preoccupied. “He was always on his computer,” she says. “He kept his laptop on the floor by the bed, and he’d lean over and check his email constantly.”
When she asked him what was wrong, he snapped at her and accused her of being too needy. The sparring went on for months. She considered ending it but then decided that she couldn’t leave without the full story. She taught herself how to use a key logger (a form of spyware that records keystrokes) and, one night when he was asleep, put her memory stick into his laptop and grabbed the record of his online activity.
See what Jessica found out on the next page ...
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