Is online infidelity the last relationship taboo?
How? Danielle Younge-Ullman, a Toronto-based novelist, gives herself strict rules. “If you’re a little too excited to be getting a message from someone, if it makes you feel guilty or if it’s something you wouldn’t be reading/saying/doing with your partner sitting [metaphorically] on your shoulder, you’re probably crossing the line,” she says. “I say this as someone who, when single, knew very well how to cross the line and hang out on the other side.”
My own rule of conduct is simplicity itself, and it hasn’t failed me yet. When I’m online, I never get involved in anything that might prompt me to minimize the screen if I hear my boyfriend coming down the hall. For email, I have taken my mother’s rule about always wearing clean underwear in case I’m hit by a bus and adapted it for the computer age.
Online cheating isn’t new, which also means that it’s a little less exhilarating than it was even a few years ago. The disillusionment and chaos it causes turn out to be a high price to pay for what amounts to projection, fantasy and hot ’n’ heavy typing. In the end, real life still has the last LOL.
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