Gary was pleased when his wife Sue first started to use the family PC because he thought it was about time that she learned how to use it. He had encouraged her because he thought it would help her with technical stuff, with which she had a lack of confidence. He didn’t realize that this would be the start of something that could end his marriage.
Like most computer novices, Sue was very unsure of how to do the simplest things such as opening the browser and surfing websites. Her typing skills were poor and all the computer jargon was like a foreign language to her. After a few weeks, she gained more confidence and soon she was surfing around the net like an old hand.
Sue discovers the world of internet chat rooms.
Then one day her sister told her about internet chat rooms and how much fun they are. Her sister told her that they could talk to each other online, meet new people, and generally have a laugh together.
This sounded interesting to Sue so her sister showed her how to sign up with a well-known chat program and soon they were visiting various chat rooms and talking to people from all over the world.
Eventually they settled on a favourite chat room where they had developed a circle of friends from all round the world. Most of the people in the chat room seemed to be men but anyone who was a bit strange was soon ignored by the regulars and left the chat room for good. Most of the conversations were harmless chitchat but there were always a few people who were a bit more offensive.
Sue becomes addicted to chat rooms.
Gradually Sue started to spend more and more time on her PC and always in the chat room. She started to neglect the house and often stayed downstairs on her PC into the very small hours and sometimes staying down all night while Gary was alone in bed. She would get up after noon and her appearance started to suffer. The children were ignored and left to their own devices, meals were not prepared regularly, and Sue would sit at her PC with a sandwich or snack rather than cook a full meal for the family. Friends who called were treated with indifference by Sue and soon got the message that they were not welcome.
She was also on the PC almost all day with the door to the room firmly shut and acted suspiciously whenever anyone came into the room. He could hear her speaking on her microphone and sometimes heard male voices speaking back. When he asked about this, she said she was talking to married couples and not men on their own. She practically lived in the chat room, it seemed to be an obsession with her, and the whole family started to feel neglected and miserable.
Finally, Gary realized that something had to be done to restore a normal family life and he asked Sue to spend less time on her PC and more on him and the family. Her reaction was shocking. She shouted and ranted at him to mind his own business and that she was only talking to married couples and women whom she had met in the chat room.
She even lost her temper with her older children who had told her straight that she was spending too much time on the PC and neglecting them and the house. She simply would not or could not see that she had a problem.
Gary now rued the day he got her interested in computers, and didn’t know that chat rooms can be full of people with emotional problems who often started an online affair. It would lead him into a situation that would nearly break up his marriage for good, and cause a lot of heartache in the weeks ahead.
Gary decides to find out what’s going on.
Sue had gone away for a few days to visit her other sister and Gary couldn’t get the problems he was having with his wife off his mind. It was affecting his marriage badly and he wanted to find why Sue was so obsessed with going in the chat rooms. He was not normally the jealous type but the thoughts in his head finally got the better of him. For his own peace of mind, he needed to put his suspicions to rest so he decided to look on Sue’s PC to see if he could find out what she was actually doing in the chat rooms.
Sue didn’t know that a record of practically everything that she had typed and received in the chat rooms was sitting in a folder on her hard drive waiting to be read by anyone who had the knowledge of how to do so. Gary did have.
He had done some research about chat room programs on the Internet and learned about chat archives, which were a record of everything that had been typed and received during a chat session. These were stored in a folder on the PC. He had also found a free program, which would decipher the encoded chat archives.
He could not open up Sue’s chat client program because it needed a password but, as she did not have a login password to her PC, he could go directly into her PC file system and open the folder containing the chat archives. He found them but they were in some form of code so he used the program he had downloaded and opened up the file and started to read.
What he read shook him to the core.
Gary finds out the terrible truth.
Sue was not indulging in harmless chat but had actually formed a serious emotional attachment to one particular man Karl, and had actually given him her cell phone number and real name. She had lied about her age and told him she was single as well. It was also very clear from the two-way conversations that she had been viewing him and other men on their webcams for sexual thrills. She didn’t allow them to see her on webcam though, which for Gary was a small blessing.
She had also had vulgar conversations with other men who were unaware of her deeper emotional attachment to Karl, who seemed to be just as involved with her. Most of the other men had been played for fools by Sue, with the exception of Karl whom she seemed to love, even though she only really knew him via the internet. He could have been just as devious as her for all she knew, which is one of the dangers of internet chat rooms.
Gary had missed all the classic signs of an internet affair, but now there was no mistaking what had been going on for months behind his back. The evidence of his wife’s infidelity stared at him from the computer monitor. It was a deep, emotional online affair between Sue and Karl. He felt betrayed and disgusted with what he had read and in some strange way wished he hadn’t found out his wife had been cheating on him because the shock was devastating. His legs and whole body felt numb and strange and his mind was a jumble of confused thoughts.
What did Gary do about it?
Gary couldn’t hold back his feelings so he confronted Sue over the telephone about what he had found. This played right into Sue’s hands though as she accused him of spying on her and that what she had done was not the issue to her, but his spying on her was. After a flaming row over the phone, Gary decided to move out and stay with friends for a while before Sue came back home.
When Sue returned home, she resumed her chat room habits as if nothing had changed, only now she had no one to answer to and therefore no need to be sneaky about doing what she had been doing.
Gary meanwhile, had got over the initial shock and thought that things would smooth over in a week or two. Sue had not actually met any of the men she was involved with but to Gary it was just as big a betrayal as if she had. Gary hoped that Sue would eventually understand the reasons why he had spied on her PC, and he would forgive her if she stopped her obsessive behavior with chat rooms.
Sadly, this did not happen, and Gary would lay awake at night knowing that Sue would be on her PC and talking to Karl and all the other men friends in her life. The emotional pain he was suffering caused him to lose his appetite and lose weight rapidly.
Gary finally goes back home.
Some weeks passed and one day Sue phoned Gary and told him that he could come back to the family home but under two conditions. They were to live separate lives and she would still be talking in the chat rooms. Gary was obviously not too happy about this but he still loved her and thought that he could eventually get through to Sue and make her see that she was the guilty party, not him.
Once again, Gary would be sleeping alone while Sue was on her PC. Most reasonable people would say that Gary held the moral high ground but this wouldn’t help him as Sue was in the grip of an obsession with chat rooms. He was tortured inside but Sue’s addiction to chat rooms had made her impossible to reason with and trying to talk about it would cause another big argument. He decided to keep his feelings to himself and at least he had the support of the rest of the family who realized he was the innocent party in all this.
Then one day a breakthrough came.
One night, some weeks after Gary had moved back in, he was lying there in his single bed and Sue popped her head into the room and told him he could sleep in her bed that night but on top of the duvet. Gary was surprised at this offer and he took it gladly as it was at least a thaw in the relationship, which had been strained but polite for the last few weeks.
When he had been in bed a few minutes Sue said it would be all right for him to sleep under the duvet, which made him feel very happy inside, but he didn’t show it as he didn’t want to build up his hopes too quickly. His confidence had been knocked after what had happened over the past few weeks and he was not sure of himself any more.
Was she feeling guilty or simply sorry for him? Gary didn’t know what Sue was feeling because she had become a stranger to him for many months, ever since she had become obsessed with chat rooms.
Gradually, Sue started treating Gary with more respect. She agreed to cut down drastically on her time in chat rooms and that he could be around when she was using her PC, as she no longer wanted the attention of other men. Sue felt that the reason she had become involved with other men in chat rooms was an effort to feel loved and wanted, as Gary hadn’t been taking any interest in her. Gary began to trust her again and showed her more love and affection than he had done in years.
What was the root cause of Gary and Sue’s problem?
Gary’s realized that he had been showing a lack of attention and love towards Sue before all this had happened. It doesn’t excuse what Sue had done to Gary and her family but at least it explained why she had been drawn into the fantasy world of chat rooms, where you can be who you want and get some kind of emotional satisfaction which may be missing in real life. She had found someone who had shown interest in her and provided something she had been missing for a long time.
Sue had been crying out to Gary for love but he didn’t realize it. She hadn’t intended to get involved in an online love affair but, because she was feeling emotionally vulnerable, she had. Online relationships may start innocently but some of them turn into online affairs, which eventually become real affairs and have caused many marriages to fail. Luckily, Gary and Sue managed to survive this internet affair before it did.
More resources to help you catch a cheater
- Reverse Phone Search
- PC Pandora
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