Suppose, however, that a man and woman had been married for fifteen years and had two children, he was a straight-arrow programmer type, she was funny and sexy, he introduced her to the Internet, and she got crushes on men whom she befriended over the wire—a marriage just might fall apart because a stranger might actually fly in from out of town wanting to get to know her in a biblical way. Such was the case of Phil* and Jayne*. While I have scrambled the details of the story, it is entirely true in spirit. They lived in Cincinnati, and Bill worked as a programmer and an Internet administrator for his employer. He had arranged for his wife to be able to dial up the office computer from home and send and receive e-mail. That, as we’ll learn in a moment, was a key fact.
In many ways Phil and Jayne were a contrast. He could “readily repair my hurt emotions when it comes to betrayal, be it from friends, or from my wife.” Phil held himself to the highest of standards no matter how low-minded the rest of the cosmos was. Jayne, on the other hand, was wild and loved to party and speak up. “She can drink anyone under the table,” Phil said. “She has a loud voice and a happy disposition. She can talk to anyone and make them feel at ease. She is a joy to be with. A blonde with striking blue eyes. She has the attitude of a redhead but we never fight. She rarely sports a smile, but when she does, it is radiant. She has an excellent body, but she keeps on thinking it is not quite desirable. She has gone in for plastic surgery because of her low self-esteem.”
For some years in her life, Jayne suffered from another problem—stodginess, of all things. Taxiing children around, nagging them to do their schoolwork, playing the good mother, had made her too conservative. Phil wanted the old sparks back. So he introduced her to “an e-mail friend of mine who had been a catalyst for many parties as well. I hoped this would spur her into action.” It did. She began a love affair over the Net. “I often ran to the computer room after getting home from work to find Jayne engrossed in some letter writing. She would immediately cover the screen and ask me to leave. I could see the discomfort in her face. This was one of my clues to ask around and to check up on what might be happening. I caught them in the act in a swank hotel.” For the sake of the children, however, Phil forgave her and did not divorce. He even revived his friendship with his e-mail friend.
A second man, however, cuckolded Phil a few years later, and like the first, he was an alcoholic. “He would hound her,” Phil said, “and send copious amounts of e-mail, call her from wherever he was regardless of how distant. He had an attitude that ‘no one can tell him what to do, even if it is an affair.’” So Phil, despite his forgiving nature, did what many red-blooded men would have done in his place as a local Internet administrator. He deleted their electronic mail from the office system. “The second affair rekindled after the lover’s wife left him,” Phil says. Lawyers successfully pried Jayne and the man apart.
“She has ‘fallen’ into love with other people on the Net,” Phil said, however, “and some have even taken the trouble to fly in to meet her.” Fortunately the moon and the stars and the hormones weren’t right. So where on the Net did Jayne hook up with these winners? Alt.sex.wanted? No, Phil said—rec.humor. And he actually feared rec.humor more than he did the plain, sex-oriented areas of the Net, because it might pave the way for a relationship based on more than carnal impulses.
I asked, “As a local Net administrator, do you think that people on the Net play around more or less than does the general population?”
“About the same,” Phil said. “But there are a lot more insecure personalities acting out an alternate personality on the net. This will often lead, I think, to more misunderstandings. Someone can appear to love you a lot, over e-mail, but cannot carry through in person.” And then Phil came up with another fascinating insight, which could also apply to some relationships on the Internet between single people. He observed that certain Netfolks really didn’t care that much about the men or women at the other end. Rather they used electronic mail as a diary. “Jayne cherished the e-mail she got from one of her lovers,” Phil said, “but in person he is a lying, cheating, and abusive drunk with a far more shallow agenda.”
Phil and Jayne were doing what they could to repair the damage. The two had undergone marriage counseling. “Stop trying to think so much,” Phil was told. “This makes you appear to be walking on eggshells, making it harder for Jayne to be honest with you.” I hoped the counseling would work. As if her infidelity weren’t enough, she now cried because she might have contracted the virus that causes AIDS. “One of her lovers has slept around a lot and shot up drugs,” Phil said. “He hasn’t seen a doctor in ages because of his alcoholic tendencies, and on one occasion he has said he could have the HIV virus. I assured Jayne ... we will handle any result from the test one day at a time.” The same thought might apply to his life with Jayne. One day at a time. In the future, I hoped, she won’t be so secretive about the dots on her computer screen.
Greg and Sue, an Update
I promised to update you on Greg and Sue. In late May 1995 Greg told me they were still moving ahead, except that they’d decided it would be much easier for her if they lived in the States. He would arrive at the Kansas City airport on Wednesday, July 12, at 11:11 P.M. on American Airlines. “My parents know,” he said. “On the surface they’re bitchy about it—well, Mum is—but underneath they’re cool with it. Especially my dad. He wants to come too.” The older Smith had taken his family to Colorado years earlier during a teacher-exchange program.