You’d think that being locked up alone with your other half would bring couples closer together. Quite the opposite! It seems that confinement actually encourages virtual infidelity.
One of the surprising consequences of Coronavirus confinement: online infidelity! The covid19 is definitely harmful in many ways, especially for couples. That’s what the extramarital dating site Gleeden has said, revealing a sharp rise in traffic. An increase that particularly affects couples who are confined to each other. Could the pandemic be revealing the unhappiness of certain couples? Should more separations be expected once confinement ends? Or is it simply a fantasy, just to “keep busy” during this period? But above all… is it wrong?
Singles and couples, the same battle
Whether you’re on your own or with someone else, finding a booty call or your significant other while you’re locked up at home is mission impossible. Getting on well with your partner isn’t always a given either when you’re locked up face-to-face with the other person, even if you think they’re the love of your life.
So for once, neither position is enviable. Especially when you’re in a relationship and the other person is fooling around online. There are a number of reasons for this: tension, lack, estrangement (when you’re in a relationship but separated for various reasons), … All of which can trigger a desire to look elsewhere, or a new way of finding a little love. And that’s why some people turn to dating apps.
Infidelity in figures
37% of French women have cheated on their partner. This is the resultofan Ifop study for Gleeden on female infidelity. Little by little, the moral taboo that hangs over women’s infidelity – much more so than men’s – is fading. As a result, this figure is up 4 points since 2016. For their part, 45% of French men admit to having already gone elsewhere.
Some studies estimate that infidelity concerns :
- 30 to 40% of men have had relationships outside couples.
- 15 to 25% of women.
But popular magazine polls and other surveys on specialist websites give higher estimates: ‘around 50% of married people are said to be unfaithful.
According to Gérard Leleu’s research, the three main causes of infidelity are as follows:
- Impossible married life (around 40% of cases).
- Feeling of lack of attention or tenderness (around 35% of cases).
- Outright loss of desire for one’s partner (around 25% of cases).
The French are the champions of infidelity! In 2019, more than one in three French people (35%) say they might be unfaithful if they were sure no one would ever find out. And the greatest champions of those who dream of being unfaithful are men! (We’re not going to say “yet?!”, are we?). Rest assured (or not yet, for that matter), women, too, are beginning to think about being trifling with someone other than their official. More than a quarter of them (27%) could be unfaithful, compared with… only 16% of British women, 17% of Belgian women, 22% of German women and 20% of Spanish women… No consolation for Italy this time (19%).
40: the average age for virtual infidelity
It would seem that the passage to 40 is a difficult time for people in their forties: they need to reassure themselves, prove things to themselves, spice up their lives a bit, start all over again, etc. While some dating applications and sites have seen their stats plummet, such as those based on geolocation or senior dating, others, like Gleeden, are happily taking advantage of this confinement. Longlivevirtual infidelity!
Indeed, the extramarital dating site recorded an increase in traffic of over 270% in March compared with the same month in 2019. What’s more, the number of new users is soaring, with registrations up by more than 170% since the start of containment (i.e. March 17), according to a press release issued by the platform on March 25.
What’s even more frightening is the change in user behavior since the coronavirus kept everyone at home. In particular, the site points out that its users are making longer exchanges with their “keys” (2h30 on average versus 1h before); they are also more active on the platform, updating their profiles more often, and above all, that discretion is the watchword among many of them. Yes, you have to keep busy!
Is it possible to be a cuckold because of confinement?
With smartphones, it’s much easier to connect discreetly to the platform and indulge in virtual infidelity. Gleeden also emphasizes this use, since 9 out of 10 connections are made from cell phones. In fact, even if it’s easier to be discreet with a cell phone, the application still offers a “discreet” mode, adopted by at least 79% of users, which offers the possibility of having an interface resembling Facebook or Twitter, perfect for deceiving the person who will glance in from afar. And for those who want to be even more stealthy in the switch when the other person gets a little too close, it’s possible to choose the “emergency exit” option, favored by 76% of users, which lets you leave the application by shaking your phone. No need to see or hear.
So is it really infidelity?
Is it really cheating? Let’s think about it for a second. Given that non-essential outings are forbidden, isn’t chatting just another way of having fun, talking to someone other than your buddies on a video chat and your partner, to whom you have little to say after 15 days of staring into each other’s eyes? Knowing that you can’t go beyond a physical encounter, isn’t it simply the fulfillment of a fantasy? Or a desire to seduce, knowing full well that it won’t go any further than screen flirting? That’s for each couple to judge, according to the limits they’ve set themselves.
For Marjorie Cambier, sex therapist and clinical psychologist
“Fantasy has an intrinsic freedom that we don’t find in the real world; it opens up the field of possibilities and can be extremely rich, as long as we give ourselves permission to fantasize”. Almost anything is possible when it comes to entering the realm of fantasy. And yet, for some of us, fantasy activity can sometimes seem shameful and guilt-inducing. For the expert, however, it is “inherent to sexual life itself.”
But fantasizing about another person irrevocably gives rise to a feeling of infidelity, whether fleeting or more deeply rooted in oneself. “We tend to think that fantasizing is cheating, or it means there’s something wrong with our partner, that we don’t love him or her anymore. But the correlation between fantasy and real life isn’t all that obvious. There’s a freedom in fantasy that you don’t find in reality. So we can indulge in a lot of things without it having any influence on our relationship with our partner,” explains the sex therapist.
In any case, virtual infidelity still has a long way to go.
