Overcoming Pornography in Christian Marriage

How does virtual infidelity warp man’s identity?

Alexandra Alter of The Wall Street Journal wrote several years ago about a growing trend of virtual affairs starting on gaming sites such as “Second Life.”

Family-law experts and marital counselors say they’re seeing a growing number of marriages dissolve over virtual infidelity. Cyber affairs don’t legally count as adultery unless they cross over into the real world, but they may be cited as grounds for divorce and could be a factor in determining alimony and child custody in some states, according to several legal experts, including Jeff Atkinson, professor at the DePaul University College of Law and author of the American Bar Association’s “Guide to Marriage, Divorce and Families.”

This past June, the American Medical Association called for more psychiatric research on excessive gaming, but backed away from classifying videogame addiction as a formal disorder.

 A typical “gamer” spends 20 to 40 hours a week in a virtual world.

Some gamers say the addictive dangers have been overstated, citing surveys that show most players spend fewer hours online than the average American spends watching television. And unlike television, online games are social. In June, when Mr. Hoogestraat first logged on to Second Life after he had his gall bladder removed, he was greeted with 50 messages from virtual friends asking him how the surgery went.

Still, some antigaming organizations and psychiatrists say the social aspects of such games may be driving up pressure to play for longer stretches. Kimberly Young, a clinical psychologist and founder of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, said the majority of the 200 cases a year she sees for counseling involve interactive fantasy role-playing games. “They start forming attachments to other players,” she says. “They start shutting out their primary relationships.”

Other experiments show that people socializing in virtual worlds remain sensitive to subtle cues like eye contact. In one study, participants moved their avatars back if another character stood too close, even though the space violation was merely virtual, says Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, which was created five years ago to study social behavior in virtual worlds. “Our brains are not specialized for 21st-century media,” says Prof. Reeves. “There’s no switch that says, ‘Process this differently because it’s on a screen.’ “

I suggest you go read the full article to get the scoop on one man’s slump into this gaming life and how quickly it became a consuming obsession for him.

Be sure to read through to the end and get his wife’s perspective.

See the excerpt below.

Sitting alone in the living room in front of the television, Mrs. Hoogestraat says she worries it will be years before her husband realizes that he’s traded his real life for a pixilated fantasy existence, one that doesn’t include her.

“Basically, the other person is widowed,” she says. “This other life is so wonderful; it’s better than real life. Nobody gets fat, nobody gets gray. The person that’s left can’t compete with that.”

Don’t try to compete.  

Instead, confront the situation with the truth.

Click the “Solutions” box below to learn how.