Internet affairs have become a new way of reaching out to people outside one’s marriage for companionship, love and sex. In this article we discuss the differences between these affairs and real time affairs.

Internet infidelity is an issue of endemic proportions not only for the sheer number of people involved in them, but also because of the endless possibilities at one’s fingertips that cyberspace contacts offer.

I see the following as some of the main differences between cyberspace and real time affairs:

1. Anonymity. This encourages people to share more personal and intimate parts of themselves; to verbalize fantasies and wishes that might be more difficult to discuss with someone in real time, and to be bolder and more experimental with specific desires and interests.
2. Containment. Lack of physical and sexual contact online makes people feel less at risk of exposure. They don’t have to be afraid to be seen; they don’t have to worry about explaining to a partner where they spent the last few hours, or where they have been, and they don’t have to worry about safe sex. This feeling of safety is illusory and misplaced, however. 50% of people who meet on line progress to communicating with one another over the phone, and 31% end up having sex with one another at some point in the course of their relationship. Other people, however, prefer to maintain a virtual-only relationship, and resist meeting and getting to know each other in real life.
3. More room for fantasizing. Because the person at the other end of the screen is not a person in flesh and bones, she or can easily become an image onto whom all kinds of fantasies can be projected.
4. Unlimited pool from which to choose the person who meets one’s fancy and desires. This almost unlimited pool is available twenty four seven, across the globe.
5. Dissociation from reality. This element contributes to secrecy, compartmentalization and denial. All affairs, including those in real time, are kept somehow dissociated from reality. However, online affairs are even more so. A large proportion of people who engage in Internet infidelity do not even believe they are having affairs. This belief reduces their guilt and responsibility about what they are doing, and discourages them from stopping these behaviors.
6. Easier to begin intimate relationships. Fears of being rejected, of being inadequate, unattractive and socially awkward are greatly reduced in online affairs, due to the lack of physical contact, at least at the beginning.
7. Relationships become intimate much faster than real time ones, due to lowered inhibitions and ease of communication by text only, rather than face-to-face interactions.
8. Easier to end relationships, without awkward explanations, guilt and repercussions. The concept of “de-friendling” used in some social networks is an example of the ease with which people on line end relationships.

Because of all these characteristics, online affairs paradoxically tend to be deeper and more intimate and at the same time more superficial than real life ones. In internet intimate relationships, the sense of time is skewed; the normal progression from superficial to more intimate knowledge of each other is different, as couples can become very intimate right away, while in other areas they may continue to be total strangers to one another.

The biggest danger of online affairs is the illusion that what is happening is real, when in fact it is walled off from reality, and totally dissociated from it. These walled off experiences represent an altered reality that is often maintained isolated, unintegrated from the rest of one’s life and secret. Its presence prevents people involved in it to deal with the problems they face in real time relationships. Instead of addressing real life challenges, people retreat in opportunities and fantasies provided by access to the internet, maintaining two realities that don’t communicate nor interact with one another.

Give us your views on this topic by clicking on comments below.

This is how it works:

•Select a room in the house that is quiet and where you won’t have any interruptions. Turn your phone off and forget about it for five minutes or so. Tell your partner, children, pets and anyone else who may be in the house not to disturb you until you come out of the room again.
•Find a comfortable chair to sit on.
•Lower the lights but make sure that the room is not totally dark.
•Close your eyes.
•Now, think about the most salient part of your day: was it successful? Did you accomplish everything you had set up to do? Why did you choose that particular moment of the day, instead of any other?
•Observe your feelings as you think about that particular moment: are you anxious, tense, happy, relaxed, upset, or anything else?
•Don’t try to talk yourself into changing your feelings, reassure yourself if you feel insecure, or chastise yourself if you made a mistake. Just observe with no judgment.
•If the moment was a successful one, congratulate yourself.
•If the moment was not successful, think if there anything you can do right now to settle whatever wasn’t settled during the day, like writing yourself a note for something you can do tomorrow.
•Now, focus on letting go. Observe, with your eyes closed, how whatever it is that you were thinking about is moving, slowly, further and further away from you, until it disappears entirely.
•Tell yourself it is gone now and commit to not revisiting until tomorrow.
•Return to the present moment and the room you are in.
•Open your eyes and observe what’s around you.
•Shift in your mind from what you were thinking earlier to where you are right now.

You can now go back to your family or to doing whatever it is that you want to do before going to bed. You will find that you are better able to relax and keep good boundaries between where you were earlier in the day and where you are now.

Try to practice this every night, ideally at about the same time and following the same routine.

Good night!

What is stress? Stress is a normal physical response to situations that are perceived as being dangerous. We perceive our abilities to cope with this danger as being inadequate to handle it. So, we get ready for a fight or flight. When we face a danger, our breathing and heart beat increase, and so does our blood pressure; we sweat, we feel a rush of adrenaline; our muscles get tense, and we become very alert. Stress, therefore, is nature’s ways of protecting us by shifting our body responses into high gear and thus increasing our chances of survival. In this way, we get ready to deal with the danger.

Some stress is to be expected, and, in fact, it can be even positive. However, when it gets too intense, or when it becomes a chronic way of life, we are likely to experience serious health problems, both physically and emotionally.

If the stress persists, in fact, our body can develop symptoms like aches and pain all over our body; we may suffer from digestive problems, we may have difficulties concentrating and remembering; we may feel anxious most of the time, irritable, overwhelmed; we cannot relax. I could go on and on, but you get my point of why acute or chronic stresses are bad for you.

And who wants all this?

When we feel stressed, we try to cope with all these symptoms by getting our minds off the areas that cause stress. However, while some of these ways are healthy, some are not. Drinking too much, for instance, or relying on drugs, cigarettes, overeating or oversleeping obviously are not good ways of coping with stress. They don’t remove the cause of it and don’t help us learn good and healthy coping skills. They are, however, quite popular because, temporarily, they allow us to tune out how we feel, so we can better manage our emotions and relax for a little bit. When their effects are over, though, we find ourselves in the same original position we were in at the beginning, or even worse, and this pushes us to seek more relief by using again. Eventually we become dependent on some substance to make us feel better, in this way adding another problem to the original one.

Some healthy ways of dealing with stress, temporarily, are: taking a relaxing bath; going for a walk; doing some relaxation and meditation exercises; listening to calming music, and so on. These are ways of getting our minds off the reason(s) for our stress and, giving us a needed break. However, they don’t address the cause(s) of the problem. So, none of the ways we discussed so far, be them healthy or unhealthy, really help you in the long run.

Are there better ways of coping with stress? Absolutely there are. These are ways that help reduce the distance between the seriousness of the problem and our abilities to cope with it. Once we feel that we have the ability to handle a stressful situation, in fact, we can reduce the amount of stress we feel.

In the following blog we will discuss some of these healthy ways of assessing both situations that can create stress and our resources in dealing with them.
Think of some of the ways in which you cope with stress: what’s helpful and effective to you? Write down some of your answers and compare them to what we will suggest in our next blog!

This attitude is often due to a temporary suspension of clear thinking these people experience when in the throw of intense desires. This suspension of judgment prevents them from reflecting on the meaning and consequences of their actions. In these cases, they act as though they were above all social and moral conventions. They may believe, unrealistically, that they can get away with what they are doing without any negative repercussions, as they tend to minimize their actions and overvalue their abilities to keep them hidden from others. When caught, they show bravado, even hubris, in justifying their actions

Yes, it is true that powerful alpha males may have more propensities for lusty conquests, as Dr. Fisher stated. They also have more resources available, which makes it easier for them to create opportunities for sexual enjoyment. The long list of politicians caught in illicit affairs and sexual activities seems to confirm this view. Add to this the fact that the media, who in the past protected these kind of “private’ activities in public people, now seem to have no qualms in exposing and sensationalizing them. This makes all of us more aware of the extent of these dysfunctional activities and of how people respond to getting exposed. The recent case of the congressman caught sexting is a case in point.

While there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that voracious sexual appetites and acting out on them may be elements associated with power, drive, success and inflated self confidence, the challenge to restrain from acting on their urges is not theirs alone. All people, at one point or another, have fought with their urges, caught on the one hand with what they want to do and, on the other, with doing the ‘right’ thing. To explain the actions of high testosterone people as purely physiological and to a great extent out of their control is too superficial and simplistic. Furthermore, this explanation seems to provide an easy justification for these people as not being able to help themselves.

The conception of manhood in the Western tradition historically emphasized the ability to control and restrain one’s sexual desires and sexual acting out through the use of willpower and the intellect as being the measure of a man. So, we may ask, how is masculinity conceptualized and viewed in our society today?

In the next blog we will address this question and discuss whether or not this concept of manhood is still relevant in today’s society.

Please stay with us and contribute to the discussion with your experiences and viewpoints.

According to Helen Fisher, an anthropologist who has been studying the role of hormones in human behaviors, people who have high testosterone levels are most likely to find this technology appealing and use it, at times inappropriately, because when the desire strikes, they don’t think but act impulsively. And since, according to Dr. Fisher, high sex drive and ambition go hand in hand, it is understandable why some men whose moral, social and political stature, one would think should provide a deterrent for these actions, are in fact particularly attracted to it. Other scientists, likewise, point out that throughout history successful and ambitious men had huge sexual appetites and expressed them openly. So, this seems to be something to be expected, not surprising.

The physiological explanation on the role of hormones may help understand why some men are more attracted to and may be more likely users of this technology than others. However, it leaves out other elements that play an important role in either mitigating or reinforcing these kinds of behaviors. I am referring to the different emotional, social, cultural and religious influences in a person’s life. The way a child is raised; the modeling from his parents and his community at large; the exposure and influence of religious/moral teachings and, later in his life, the cultural expectations about what constitutes being a man, all mold his views of how to be in intimate relationships and affect his attitudes and behaviors about sex.

How people use sexting can give us a glimpse into their minds so, in the next blogs we will go further into this discussion, and explore some general traits that apply to regular users of sexting.

Please stay with us and contribute to the discussion with your experiences and viewpoints.

I don’t think there is a simple yes/no answer, as technology can BOTH enrich and deplete real relationships. We stay in touch with people who live far way through Facebook, phone, e-mail or skype. We can communicate instantly with anybody, just at the touch of a finger. Yet, this same technology can prevent us from being face-to-face with people, as one phone call can just do it. We can “defriend” people we no longer want to associate with just by pressing a key on our keyboard. No second thoughts. No guilt. No embarrassment. We don’t even have to provide long explanations for our decisions. We can maintain more superficial contacts, avoiding getting too personal.

The most important consequence of being hooked on technology, however, is the fragmentation of our time. We cannot go through a meal without checking our Blackberries; we cannot go through a whole conversation without being distracted by our phone ringing, or by texting. Often our attention is spread between more than one focus. This is what I mean by fragmentation. We function in bits: one moment here, one moment there, and back to the first focus, and so on. Children complain their parents don’t give them full attention, as they listen to their days in school while checking their e-mails or texting. The reality is that most of us cannot do more than one thing at a time WELL. When we jump back and forth between different areas, we end up by being fully nowhere. Children, when they notice their parents not paying them full attention as they talk, may believe it’s their fault. Perhaps they are disappointing to the parents, or not interesting enough, or parents don’t love them, they may wonder. Sooner or later they will disconnect as well, creating a rift that won’t be repaired as they grow older. Eventually they, too, will get hooked to technology s they saw their parents do, and fragment their attention between different areas, people and activities.

Another insidious aspect of technology is that it is always available, and responds to our commands without complaining, without throwing a tantrum or disliking us, unlike real people who may do all these things and more. We get used giving commands and be immediately and consistently obeyed. We thus become more impatient with our partners in real life, and expect them to respond to us just like our technological devices do. Some of us may seek refuge in technology altogether, limiting human contact and deluding ourselves that we are “connected” through the use of social media and phone and e-mail interactions.

What can we do to maintain a healthy balance between technology and real life and relationships? The answer is:  MAINTAIN HEALTHY BOUNDARIES. Turn your phone off when your child comes home from school, or when you are having a meal with your spouse, family or a friend. Give the person in front of you your FULL attention when they talk, rather than moving back and forth between the person and the machine that is demanding your attention. Disconnect when you are outside, taking a walk, watering your flowers and, in general, being in contact with nature, or whenever you need a space to think, reflect and enjoy your solitude in order to feel replenished and restored.

Having a purpose

As you plan your retirement, think of what purpose you want your days to have: do you want to learn new skills? Or do you want to volunteer and give back to your community? Do you want to travel, and share with your local school the slides and experiences from your trips? Do you want to get more involved in your neighborhood? Do you want to do philanthropic work? Or do you finally want to learn to play the piano? Whatever you do, think of what purpose your choice will provide in your life and then ask yourself if this is what you want.

Retirement without any planning may lead at best to boredom and disorganization, and at worst to isolation, depression, excessive drinking and disconnection.

Being connected to loved ones is another important element that needs to be included in any retirement plan worth exploring. Being surrounded by loved ones keeps us involved, a part of a group. Loved ones, however, don’t necessarily have to be members of your biological family. They could be good friends, neighbors, fellows in the church or synagogue you attend. They can be people with similar interests to yours, with whom you resonate and feel close. Choosing a community where you can find the kind of neighborhood spirit that makes you feel ‘at home’ is very important, as isolation is dreadful, particularly as we age. So, stay involved in their lives. Ask what’s going on with them. Be interested.

If you plan your retirement right, you will get up each morning looking forward to a new day. You will be active, but not overwhelmingly so. You will feel positive. You will be better able to stay in the present and enjoy it, rather than worrying about what the future will be like for you.

After all, these are the “golden Years.” So, make sure that they are as golden as possible!

Gone seem to be the times when people retired and stayed home, played bingo, and gradually reduced their activities as their physical conditions deteriorated and their energy waned. Up until as recently as twenty to thirty years ago, when people retired they were OLD, often sick with multiple ailments, not interested in travelling and developing new interests and lifestyles. Often they lived close to family, their main activity being involvement with grandchildren and partaking of family life. A few of them, the adventurous and those who could afford it, moved to states like Arizona and Florida to live in retirement communities. These, however, were the exception, not the norm.

The idea of retirement today is quite different. A whole new industry has sprung out to cater to this growing segment of the population. A lot of people, at retirement, are still vibrant, healthy and full of energy, so this new industry is busy offering new housing facilities, new amenities, new opportunities to explore and be active in, and new medical care.

The new retirees tend to regard retirement as the time when they finally can do all the things they had to put aside when they were too busy working at their jobs and raising a family. It’s not surprising, therefore, that the ideas, plans and expectations of retirement are now quite different than what they used to be.

Because of all these differences – and because people live longer, hence they have more retirement years ahead of them – planning for retirement is an extremely important part of reaching this stage in life.

In most studies that address what makes people happy two elements are constantly reported as fundamental: having a purpose and being connected to loved ones. So, whatever you plan for your retirement, these two elements need to play a central role in it.

Having a purpose is an important driving force in selecting what we want to do and how to do it. When we work, whether we are professionals, have a trade or are stay-home parents, we like to feel that our work makes a difference. Perhaps we help people in need, or raise organic vegetables in our garden and sell them to the local farmer’s market. Or, we work in an office, or answer the phones, or clean houses, or do surgery. Or, we choose to raise our kids and spend many years involved in PTOs, immersed in after school activities and teenage angst. Whatever we do, we have a purpose, and this drives us to continue to do what we are doing …or change it, if we feel we don’t contribute enough.

As you plan your retirement, think of what purpose you want your days to have: do you want to learn new skills? Or, do you want to volunteer and give back to your community? Do you want to travel, and share with your local school the slides and experiences from your trips? Do you want to get more involved in your neighborhood? Do you want to do philanthropic work? Whatever you do, think of what purpose your choice will provide in your life and then ask yourself if this is what you want.

Retirement without any planning may lead to boredom, disorganization, and at times isolation and depression.

Being connected to loved ones is another important element that needs to be included in any retirement plan worth exploring. Isolation, particularly as we age, is a very hard thing to tolerate. Loved ones don’t necessarily have to be members of your biological family. They could be good friends, neighbors, fellows in the church or synagogue you attend. They can be people with similar interests to yours, with whom you resonate and feel close. Choosing a community where you can find the kind of neighborhood spirit that makes you feel ‘at home’ is very important, as isolation is dreadful, particularly as we age. Stay involved in their lives. Ask what’s going on with them. Be interested.

If you have planned your retirement right, you will get up each morning looking forward to a new day. You will be active, but not overwhelmingly so. You will feel positive. You will be better able to stay in the present and enjoy it, rather than worrying about what the future will be like for you.

All of us constantly carry on a conversation in our minds, commenting on events and reactions to what is going on inside and around us. Are we too harsh, berating ourselves for what we perceive as personal failures or major omissions, or do we not expect enough from ourselves, constantly making excuses for our less than perfect behaviors?

A new field in psychological research called self compassion studies how individuals rate themselves on a self compassion scale, and then applies these ratings to other behaviors, like the ability to stay on a diet.  If you interested in taking this test, go to: www.self-compassion.org

From my clinical experience as a psychotherapist, I know that most people tend to be harsher with themselves than with others. This discrepancy gets worse in people who are depressed and/or suffer from poor self-esteem and self-value, or for people with histories of trauma, especially if the trauma involved family members, like in cases of incest. When people feel they have no or little control over their emotions, they tend to be hyper self-critical and have a propensity to emphasize the negative at the expenses of whatever positive may be there.

Also, another important element that plays a central role in the kind of messages we give ourselves relates to our childhood experiences of being parented. The stricter and more critical of us the people who raised us were, the more likely it is that we will be self critical later in life. This is so because we learn to see and value/judge ourselves through the eyes of the adults who were most important to us in our growing up years. We internalize their views of us, be they supportive and positive or critical and negative, and make them our own. We tend to maintain these views, which are mostly unconscious, throughout life, unless major events and a focus on increased self awareness change them.

If you are one of those people whose inner messages tend to be mostly hyper-critical, how can you change them?

• The first step is to become aware of them. We cannot change anything, in fact, that exists below our level of awareness.
• The second step is to challenge them as we become aware of them, rather than taken them as the truth.
• The third step is to work at changing them, when appropriate.

The rule of thumb here is: treat yourself like you would your best friend, if she or he were in your situation right now. What would you tell them? Would you be supportive or critical? We shouldn’t treat ourselves better or worse than we would treat our best friend, but just the same. We should take a middle of the road position, moving away from being too critical on the one hand and too complacent and self indulgent on the other. To push ourselves a little – or a lot if necessary – can be a good thing. To be dissatisfied with our performance, for instance, can create an incentive to work harder and do better. On the other hand, to be supportive and to point out the positive things we do can provide the encouragement and support we need at a time of stress and insecurity. To give ourselves a break may, under certain circumstances, just be what we need to relax so that we can perform better.

So, the next time you engage in this inner conversation, listen carefully to the message you give yourself. If it is too slanted in one direction or the other, correct it by moving more toward the middle and work at maintaining a good balance between the two extremes, just like a caring and loving parent would do. The goal, again, is to treat yourself with the same equanimity and balance that you would offer your best friend.

The number one thing we can do is to monitor the level of stress in our lives.

When we look at ways of improving our lives, we tend to focus on physical changes like losing weight, being more active, looking better, but we tend to forget a part of our body that is central to all of this: our brain.

What can we do to maintain our brain in good health?

The number one thing we can do is to monitor the level of stress in our lives. Many studies have shown how stress can interfere with our brain’s healthy functioning and cause irreversible damage to it if it continues. When we are stressed, we cannot tune things out; we worry excessively; we obsess about what we need to do to manage the stress, and we cannot relax. Even when we sleep, we don’t give a chance to our brain to process all that happened during the day and be ready for the next day’s challenges.

Our body rests when we sit on a comfortable chair or lay down, when we take a bubble bath or when we sleep, but our brain never stops working, no matter what we do. So, if our sleep is not restful, for instance, in the morning our brain is already tired and weighted down by the many thoughts, concerns, preoccupations and emotions we dealt with throughout the night, even before we face new ones. Additionally, we know that when we are in the throws of emotions, our thinking abilities become less sharp and we tend to forget or confuse things more easily, our grasp of problems and our focus and concentration being diminished by the emotional state we are in.

So, what can we do to give our brain a well deserved rest?

Find a comfortable place to be, and try to clear your mind of all the thoughts and feelings that are there. Focus on your breath, in and out of your body slowly, and, whenever thoughts come to mind, gently push them aside and re-focus on your breaths, in-out, in-out, in-out. You will be surprised at finding yourself more relaxed, clear-minded and better focused. Just five minutes a day of this exercise will do a lot of good to your brain and, by extension, to your body as well.