Is Cybersex The New Mistress?

Powerful men are famous for taking extra-marital lovers. Way back to Henry the Eighth who was a known philanderer, Napoleon who had women follow him around battlefields and Caesar who lusted after the gorgeous Cleopatra .

Hollywood stars are continuously being ‘exposed’ for their liaisons outside marriage. And it seems there is a great hunger for the gossip about these goings on right down to little towns and villages and suburbs right near you – in your community. We all love to hear about the trists that are occurring in the building we live in, or just next door and across the street.

It always causes a ruckus when the office becomes aware of a budding romance between Mr Married Smith and Mrs Married Jones. The lengths they go to in order to hide their liaisons are usually absolutely worthless because the grapevine grasps the goss and quicker than CNN has it out on the streets, doing the rounds of the neighbourhood and chatted about in the pub.

But what if the new mate, male or female, is online? Who is going to know?

Image from Sydney Morning Herald

Swinburne University researcher, Marcus Squirrell, has been looking into the cyber antics of those seeking sexual liaisons on-line. His research surveyed 1325 Australian and American men and found that 65% went on to meet the women they had been interacting with on-line for sex.

Now you might be tempted to think this profile fits the old adage of the ‘dirty old man’, someone in his latter years seeking virtual sex with younger women. However that is not the case and Squirrell found the average cyber sex user was 41 years old, well educated and preferred to look at sexual images rather than to chat on line. It seems women prefer sexual chatter and men prefer images, especially film or real images transferred by webcam.

A disturbing fact from the research is that there was a high rate of poor mental health in the sample group. Men who indulged in cyber sex had what Squirrell says was an alarming rate of stress, depression and anxiety. Some men spent up to 10 hours a day indulging their sexual fantasies on-line.

Squirrell’s survey also found that over half the respondents who were using cybersex sites were married or in a serious long term relationship.

It’s enough to make you wonder if people who are inclined to ‘stray’ in real life share the same conditions – anxiety, stress and depression. And does the office romance fix it for them? Does cyber sex play a role in addressing depression, anxiety and stress? Maybe that is the question for further research.