Virtual disillusion

I thought my actions marked me out as odd and strange, in the way people addicted to online activity can be, but, in fact, I am one of thousands, perhaps millions. I realised this after a visit to a website called PeoplesProblems, which was filled with stories of people facing real-life difficulties. Every night after work, I would return helplessly to this website: I desperately needed a channel for my twinges, for my confusion. And I wanted to see how others had lived, to learn from their lessons and to realise that it was best, ultimately, to appreciate what I had. It always left me feeling better about myself after a few hours of reading the posts here. And then, I suppose, like everyone else on the site, I went off and behaved recklessly anyway.

Here's a post I found by someone called LostAt39: "Writing all this down will perhaps give me some closure. At the curtain call of my thirties, I made mistakes, and I hope I learned from them. I am truly sorry for my actions, and now I need to move on. I hope in putting it all down, I am not revealed as evil or malicious, but merely as ordinary and typical. Until recently, I lived a fairly blameless life. I had a decent career. I ate well (mostly), exercised regularly, had never been too fat, nor too thin, and I had come to accept my imperfections. I would like to think I had a competent grasp of fashion and had been told I was attractive enough, or at the very least not overly unattractive. I was a home owner, and though my career had recently been downgraded, I had been retained by the company on a part-time basis. Losing the earlier professional routine was not exactly what I was expecting at my time of life, but I was just grateful to have any job at all and I never really had been the ambitious type. Elsewhere, I was relatively sane, reliably monogamous. In other words, life was good. It was fine. It could have been worse, and in many ways I was lucky."

"But over the past couple of years, boredom of a very unexpected kind had begun to seep into my days. I came to feel stifled in what fairy tales would describe to you as wedded bliss. Age perhaps played a part in this, but circumstance, too. My husband was four years past his fortieth birthday and mired in a job he increasingly disliked. It made him tired and he needed recuperative sleep. He snored terribly. I had lost all interest in our relationship. And so, after a lot of initial timidity, and many waves of guilt, I did what so many of us do: I sought destruction. I got hooked to virtual affairs, and in doing so, stumbled across a great many like-minded souls whose posts on PeoplesProblems divulged not merely their fantasies but also their personal problems with a frankness they could never do with their partners, their families, their best friends even."

Another post from somebody called BruteFruit read: "Okay, so basically xMW broke the NC out of the blue, no warning, and contacted me to say she had been missing me like hell this past year. Am I tempted? Of course I am! But look, it's difficult. She hurt me, bad, and afterwards I had to get my life back on track. It was hard, but I did it. But now, it's like, all those lessons are forgotten. Part of me wants to see her again, another part wants to run away, afraid of being hurt again. She told me her marriage is no better today than it was last year, but she has not mentioned any intention of a divorce, so I am figuring: what's the point? And, at the risk of TMI, I am not having much fun at home. But I know the consequences of fun (and I didn't back then!). Damn! I was doing so well, but now the old feelings come right back up, and I am confused. Help!!!!"

I read on, fascinated and appalled at the confessions, the exclamation marks, the mysterious short forms. NC, I eventually worked out, was "no contact", TMI "too much information", xMW I am yet to figure out. You could send me its full form to the email address below, in case you figure out. In almost all cases here, everyone had started out convinced of their own innocence, their pursuit of harmless online fun, but every time each EA (emotional affair) eventually became ruinous. Many were repeat offenders: LostAt39 had posted several messages, setting out in detail not just her own online adventures but also, as past master, offering advice and support to others.

Many are still seeking her advice.

Note: The posts have been edited for clarity.

ashish.sharma@bsmail.in