March 28, 2023 • 23 mins
Twenty years ago you'd need to meet someone in person to cheat. Now, technology has enabled women to carefully curate and select available men on any number of digital dating or social media websites, and hide their indiscretions through a number of different tools. Affairs can be conducted in real life or entirely virtually.
In this episode, technology and relationship expert, Dr. Jaclyn Cravens Pickens, explains all the different ways women use technology to step out on their husbands – and why technology makes the boundaries of what it means to have an affair blurrier than ever before. We also talk to "Olivia" who had an affair with a former work colleague that took place entirely over her phone, often with her husband sitting right beside her.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
I felt as if here I was hiding, I was
doing something that was wrong. I was scared to be caught.
I was actually having this quote unquote famous nap on
the Sunday, and I think my husband had come into
the room. Here I am, you know, sexting, pretending that
I'm having a nap, and I'm thinking you're really like
(00:25):
working as right now, as if why are you interrupting? Right?
That is Olivia. She's describing a moment where her husband
entered her bedroom and unwittingly interrupted her having an orgasm
after she read sexy texts from another man on her phone. See.
(00:46):
A few years ago, Olivia reconnected with an old coworker
and they started texting. Then they started sexting. Olivia had
been unhappily married for more than two decades, but then
a sold co worker came along and his texts became
a virtual affair that completely changed her life. I felt
(01:08):
very naive. I felt as if, oh my god, this
is such a taboo, like this is crazy. And I
remember telling this to my girlfriends and they said, immediately
change his name but the alias, because you really don't
want your husband seeing that. I'm Joe Piazza, when you're
listening to She Wants More, the podcast where real women
(01:29):
talk openly and honestly about the extra marital affairs that
have completely changed their lives. One thing that has really
struck me while interviewing women for this podcast is just
how much technology has changed the landscape of extra marital affairs.
The women I've talked to completely rely on technology to
(01:51):
meet men, to plan and execute their affairs, and to
keep them a secret. Take Olivia, she conducted an entire
affair strictly on her smartphone. It was completely based on
getting text messages and voice memos from her old coworker.
Like we said earlier, nothing physical ever actually happened. Technology
(02:14):
has changed absolutely everything about having an affair, from dating
websites for married people and Facebook and Craigslist to burner
phones and WhatsApp. Technologies made it easier than ever for
women to step out. For example, Michelle. Michelle was on
the podcast a few episodes ago when she hit her
(02:37):
breaking point with her husband, she signed up for Ashley Madison.
And when Michelle signed up, within minutes, she started getting
all kinds of responses from all kinds of men. She
actually had to adjust her geography filter to make the
radius smaller. That's right, smaller, because there were just so
(02:58):
many available married men looking to meet married women close
to her house. I asked Michelle what she thought it
must have been like to be a woman in the
pre internet days who wanted to have an affair, back
in the Stone Age at the nineties, in early two thousands.
Can you imagine being a woman pre internet who wants
(03:21):
to have an affair? Right? Did they just walk into
a bar? Right right? Lee, You're wedding me at home
and hope nobody found out? Like, I don't know, I
don't I mean, I mean, I think about that all
the time. I think maybe I need to talk to
more women who had affairs in the pre digital age
because it just seems so much easier now. Well, and
it seems easier to find somebody that's not in your
(03:43):
social circle because you could find somebody probably pre online
dating and stuff, but the chances are it's somebody that
you meet at work or something where there's likely to
be like overlap. You're right, yeah, yes, someone at church exactly.
(04:06):
But is it really that easy? I wanted to see
just how easy it was to find someone who wants
to have an affair online. So, along with my intrepid
producers Jab and Allie, we decided to sign up for
Ashley Madison. Have you create a profile? Okay, so relationship
(04:28):
status attached female, So use your name, You're like, no
one uses their real make up? Something. Time you put
in a greeting, Hey, sexy man, dear birth feels like
a lot of personal information. Something long term. I want
(04:50):
to say, cyber affair, erotic chat. Okay, okay, undecided, undecided,
I'm undecided. Wait, fuck off? Why don't you to give
your weight? Do you have to give your weight on
any other dating thing? No, definitely not. You need your
height also, height, body type? You all right? I'm giving
(05:11):
my email. I guess people create fake emails for this,
right probably that's so all right. It's telling me to
add a disguised photo, disguise your identity, and add some
privacy to your photos. More about you? Okay, I'm a
forty something forty some thing writer, just here to explore.
(05:40):
You're all signed up? I have to verify my email. Yeah,
there's so many guys on there. Wow, I mean that
took us how long that was? Five minutes? And look
there's like bazillion men here, there's a bazillion man's kind
of cute you think handsome stud forty six Philadelphia. Oh
my god, they know and I'm in Philadelphia. Are not
(06:01):
even in Philadelphia. I don't think I gave them. I
didn't tell them anything. And that right there, that is
how easy it was for a woman to sign up
for a married person stating site that will deliver a
gazillion men for you to have an affair with within
a fifty mile radius of your house. We'll be back
(06:25):
after a short break. We're back. Technology has allowed individuals
to have affairs from the comfort of their own home.
You may be sitting next to your partner on the
couch and watching TV while also engaging an affair from
(06:46):
your smartphone. That's Jacklin Cravens Pickens. Jacqueline is a marriage
and family therapy professor at Texas Tech University and is
also a licensed marriage and family therapist. Her research is
on relationships, technology, and monogamy. I called Jacqueline because she's
pretty much the leading expert out there on the intersection
(07:08):
of tech and infidelity, and one of the things she
told me is that the evolution of technology enabling affairs
has been happening pre smartphone, and she took me back
about twenty years ago, back to the beginning of Facebook
and a virtual reality game called Farmville. One of my
(07:29):
first couples that I had worked with, it was a
heterosexual couple. The female partner had been having a relationship
with a game player on farm Ville that they met
through the game, and the husband had said, you know,
I can't believe you love this person. You don't know
who they actually are. You've never met them in person.
(07:52):
So you think you want to leave me for this
person on Farmville. I'll kind of call your bluff and
I'll pay for you to go meet this person in
real life, offline all Farmville, and this will settle everything,
and you're gonna come back and want to be with me.
So when her husband found out and he said, how
about you going to meet the guy in person and
you'll realize just how crazy you're being. As you might imagine,
(08:17):
this did not go as the husband expected. Meeting all
fline ended up being even better than their online relationship,
and so when the wife came back to town and
they were back in session, she said, yeah, no, I'm
leaving you. I want to be with this person. She
left her husband for the Farmville guy, a guy she
(08:37):
never would have met in real life, but because of
a game where you buy and sell virtual livestock, an
affair was made possible along with the dissolution of an
unhappy marriage. Now, like I said, this was almost twenty
years ago, and it's about the same time that Craigslist
Casual Encounters became popular for people looking for casual sex
(09:00):
or extra marital affairs. In fact, remember Monique from episode three,
Craigslist Casual Encounters is how she started her first affair.
You could go on Craigslist and you could find anything
from adult nursing relationship to garden furniture. I had a
girlfriend who had just separated, and one day she was
(09:20):
over and we'd been kind of drinking and looking at Craigslist,
and I saw this ad that I thought was just brilliant,
and I replied. We kept corresponding, and then at some
point we decided to have a beer together and it
had it. And now with smartphones, internet capable devices and
(09:42):
all the social media affairs have reached a whole new
level of accessibility. The Internet has really arrived at a
place where it greatly approximates offline life. We used to
not have things like video capabilities or virtual reality. That's
Jacklin Craven's pickens Again, it's created very unique ways in
(10:05):
which we can engage in online infidelity. You could be
using teledildonics or USB capable devices that are sex toys
that somebody else can be operating on the other side
of the world, and we can be having sexual affairs
through technology. What is a teledildonic? Did I say that right?
(10:28):
Is that a teledildo? Yes? Absolutely so other words use cyberdildonics,
but it's basically a fancy word for a USB capable
sex toy. Then all sorts of different types exist. So
if you're you're curious, I want to do a quick
Google search from dildos to mouths that are USB operated
(10:51):
by a partner in another location. So we think about
online affairs being direct messages, secret chats that are happening,
and I think with virtual reality and things like teledyldonics,
you know, our imagination is probably pretty endless now about
how people are having online affairs. How you just I
(11:13):
really like it when I learn new words and what
are some ways specifically that you've seen people using technology
to cheat and We've heard about women using Ashley Madison
and then What's App, separate emails, burner phones, all of
these things to schedule and track their affairs, similar to
(11:33):
introducing you to the concept of teledyldonics. I think the
options are so far reaching. I've seen people engaging in
affairs through Reddit. They were in special communities on Reddit
and built a connection and meeting people through social media apps.
The Calculator app was one I saw for a while,
(11:56):
which was an app that allows you to have a secret,
hidden compartment in your phone where you could have dating
apps and text messages. That looks like the Calculator app
until you click it and it asks you to put
in a password and then write It's like opening the
subfolder of a phone where hidden information exists. No, it
(12:17):
looks like the Calculator and so no one's ever going
to open it. But it's actually got all of your
secret dating and text messaging stuff in it. Yes, Calculator apps,
Reddit affairs, virtual dildos. These lines are blurry as f
and it is hard to figure out where fantasies end
(12:40):
and reality begins. But we're about to see just how
real a virtual affair can get to be. Walking in
the street and to be able to reach it to orgasm.
I'm like, wow, this is and this is when you
start realizing the power of the mind. You know, an
affair doesn't necessarily have to be that physical sexual relationship,
(13:03):
or that orgasm doesn't necessarily have to be the actual penetration.
That's Olivia again, the woman who orgasmed while her husband
was just in the other room, while she was receiving
a sexy text from another man. And after the break,
we are going to hear every detail of her virtual affair.
(13:27):
We're back. The text messages continue, but they kick it
up a notch a little bit. It's as if we're
raising the volume. I felt very naive. I felt as if,
oh my god, this is such a taboo, like this
is crazy. And I remember telling this to my girlfriends
(13:48):
and they said it changed his name, but the alias,
because you really don't want your husband seeing that. That's
Olivia telling me about how her virtual sexting affair got started.
After reconnecting with her for our coworker, that coworker started
playfully sending some texts, but they quickly got pretty racy.
(14:08):
Her friends told her to change his name on her
phone in case her husband got suspicious. But let's back
up for a moment and find out how this all
started for Olivia. When we first started talking, Olivia told
me that she was the kind of person who would
never have an affair, who would never cross a line.
And so I asked her how she ended up getting
into this. She told me it was because at that moment,
(14:32):
the moment when she started talking to her former co worker,
she'd reached a point in her marriage where she really
felt like she'd lost herself, and in that moment, she
was much more receptive to sexting advances. You know, with
my husband, if he would put his foot in his mouth,
or if he would just start drinking, he would say
things without measure. He would be disrespectful to women who
(14:56):
was like, I'm the man of the house, I'm the
ruler control, I pay, so I decide what it's done.
It just became worse and worse and worse. I had
to change who I was to satisfy him. The way
the hair was done. The hair had to be blonde,
(15:17):
it had to be straight. And he would say this
to people. He would say this to my kids. You know,
your mother would be perfect if she would just have this,
and why won't she do this for me? And I
think I was just so desperate to feel alive. I
was willing to take that risk. I felt giddy, I
(15:38):
felt beautiful. I allowed myself to be taken to this fantasy,
and yes I did fantasize about it. I did take
it to a whole other level. I think the fantasy
also the taboo, right, there was something so mysterious about it.
Do you think it was hotter because it wasn't physical. Yes,
(16:00):
I felt as if I had this secret and it
was this wonderful secret or piece of information that was
filling my cup in every possible way, Like to be
walking in the street and to be able to reach
an orgasm. I'm like, wow, I've got to ask what
was in the text message that made you have the
(16:22):
orgasm walking down the street. I think it was just
in the way he was saying how he was going
to touch me in just such an incredible way, in
a very sensual, very erotic way. The touch, the caress,
the oil, what he was going to do to me,
how he was going to do it to me. It
(16:43):
was the foreplay, It was the excitement, it was the stimulation.
You know, how do you like this? How do you
want this? How many fingers? Positions? Things like this? Literally
lost for like twenty minutes, so like me to where
I was going, and I was like, what the hell
(17:03):
is happening to me? And you know, it's kind of
funny thinking here I'm walking in the street and having
this crazy ass orgasm and all these people passing me
and they have no fucking clue what's going on. And
it was just incredible. And I also realized that I
(17:27):
am very sexual, that I enjoy the connection, I enjoy
the intimacy, and I think in that week he brought
that back. I had actually asked him to get me
one of those remote control vibrators which a friend of
mine had told me about, that you can control it
through Bluetooth, and you know, I was willing to experiment
(17:51):
certain things with him. It was as if Pandora's box
had opened up with him. I asked Olivia if there
were a lot of other times that she messaged with
her former co worker while her husband was right there,
and if she did, if there was a thrill or
a power she got from the secrecy, Yes, there'll be
(18:12):
a gun for dinner, and that we were going to
the theater and he started texting me, and my husband
is sitting right in front of me, my daughter's right
beside me, and the phone is on my left side.
And I remember my daughter wanting to get my phone.
I'm like, no, no, no no, you can't use your dad.
(18:35):
And she just turned to me and she's like what,
And I'm like, god, I was too scared that the
message would come up. I went to the washroom and
I said, you know, I can't I'm at the theater.
And he didn't get it. You just didn't get it.
Then we were at the theater or waiting to go in.
(18:56):
During the play, you know how, the light kind of
flashes on, and of course my husband is beside and
he's like, you know, who's texting you? I'm like, no,
no much. I think it's just you know, work related. Luckily,
what I was doing for work, it was pretty much
twenty four seven. But yeah, it was exciting. It was
very exciting. Did you ever think about it as an affair? No, don't.
(19:20):
I don't even know the title. There's so many different
titles that one could put on it, or there's so
many different meanings. I guess if you want to put
to the word affair, is an affair being disloyal to
your partner, Because if that's the case, then emotionally, I
guess I did have an affair. Do I feel guilty
(19:42):
about it? No? Not once did I feel guilty. This
was the part that was so interesting to me. Olivia
never considered this to be an affair because nothing physical happened. Sure,
she was having the best orgasm of her life. She
was feeling free and open and fucking amazing. She was
(20:06):
talking to this man about the most intimate parts of
her body, but she didn't consider it cheating. And that
right there, that is another way that technology has changed
how women can cheat on their husbands. You can have
an affair that's maybe not even an affair. I think
(20:27):
that there are some really great theories that help us
better understand how this happens. Even with people that, like
I said, don't get online or reach out to people
or meet people with the specific purpose of having an affair.
That's Jaqueline Cravens Pickens Again. They get on for gameplay,
(20:49):
or they reach out to a high school friend or
a college ex partner just to check in, and very
quickly it moves into very vulnerable personal information where we're
building these really quick, emotionally intense connections and all of
a sudden we've crossed a boundary. And one of the
(21:10):
things we know about computer mediated communication is people talk
about how quickly they feel more comfortable being able to
disclose personal information. So I didn't realize I was going
to open up and share all of these intimate details
in the way in which I did, and so much
(21:30):
more rapidly. Online people feel emotionally close and connected than
what happens and offline interactions. And that's why I use
that term that slippery slope of like, well, I didn't
think that this was what was going to happen from
this interaction, and here we are. I feel so connected,
this person really understands me. I feel so close, so connected,
(21:52):
so quickly. Right, it really is a slippery slip. And
we will be going write down that Slabrislow next week
when we dive into an affair that took a very
unexpected twist. Over the past seven episodes, we've learned that
infidelity and non monogamy for women can be a lot
(22:14):
of things, empowering, freeing, even self esteem building, but they're
also complicated, and if I'm being honest with you, I'm
still trying to figure out what does it all mean
for female sexuality and agency and for breaking down the
stigmas that have allowed men to cheat and kept women
(22:36):
faithful for so long. That is all Next week this
has been She Wants More. I'm your host, Joe Piazza.
She Wants More was inspired by the book A Passion
for More by Susan Shapiro Bearish. It was adapted for
(22:58):
audio by executive produces Merrill Poster, Kara Pfeiffer, and Susan
Shapiro Parish. She Wants More is hosted and reported by
me Joe Piazza. Jennifer Bassett is our lead producer and
story editor. Our sound design is by Jessica Crunchich. Our
theme was composed by Anna Stumff and Hamilton Lighthouser. Our
(23:19):
executive producers for iHeart are Ali Perry and Nikki Etour.
She Wants More as a production of iHeart Podcasts. For
more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
I felt as if here I was hiding, I was
doing something that was wrong. I was scared to be caught.
I was actually having this quote unquote famous nap on
the Sunday, and I think my husband had come into
the room. Here I am, you know, sexting, pretending that
I'm having a nap, and I'm thinking you're really like
(00:25):
working as right now, as if why are you interrupting? Right?
That is Olivia. She's describing a moment where her husband
entered her bedroom and unwittingly interrupted her having an orgasm
after she read sexy texts from another man on her phone. See.
(00:46):
A few years ago, Olivia reconnected with an old coworker
and they started texting. Then they started sexting. Olivia had
been unhappily married for more than two decades, but then
a sold co worker came along and his texts became
a virtual affair that completely changed her life. I felt
(01:08):
very naive. I felt as if, oh my god, this
is such a taboo, like this is crazy. And I
remember telling this to my girlfriends and they said, immediately
change his name but the alias, because you really don't
want your husband seeing that. I'm Joe Piazza, when you're
listening to She Wants More, the podcast where real women
(01:29):
talk openly and honestly about the extra marital affairs that
have completely changed their lives. One thing that has really
struck me while interviewing women for this podcast is just
how much technology has changed the landscape of extra marital affairs.
The women I've talked to completely rely on technology to
(01:51):
meet men, to plan and execute their affairs, and to
keep them a secret. Take Olivia, she conducted an entire
affair strictly on her smartphone. It was completely based on
getting text messages and voice memos from her old coworker.
Like we said earlier, nothing physical ever actually happened. Technology
(02:14):
has changed absolutely everything about having an affair, from dating
websites for married people and Facebook and Craigslist to burner
phones and WhatsApp. Technologies made it easier than ever for
women to step out. For example, Michelle. Michelle was on
the podcast a few episodes ago when she hit her
(02:37):
breaking point with her husband, she signed up for Ashley Madison.
And when Michelle signed up, within minutes, she started getting
all kinds of responses from all kinds of men. She
actually had to adjust her geography filter to make the
radius smaller. That's right, smaller, because there were just so
(02:58):
many available married men looking to meet married women close
to her house. I asked Michelle what she thought it
must have been like to be a woman in the
pre internet days who wanted to have an affair, back
in the Stone Age at the nineties, in early two thousands.
Can you imagine being a woman pre internet who wants
(03:21):
to have an affair? Right? Did they just walk into
a bar? Right right? Lee, You're wedding me at home
and hope nobody found out? Like, I don't know, I
don't I mean, I mean, I think about that all
the time. I think maybe I need to talk to
more women who had affairs in the pre digital age
because it just seems so much easier now. Well, and
it seems easier to find somebody that's not in your
(03:43):
social circle because you could find somebody probably pre online
dating and stuff, but the chances are it's somebody that
you meet at work or something where there's likely to
be like overlap. You're right, yeah, yes, someone at church exactly.
(04:06):
But is it really that easy? I wanted to see
just how easy it was to find someone who wants
to have an affair online. So, along with my intrepid
producers Jab and Allie, we decided to sign up for
Ashley Madison. Have you create a profile? Okay, so relationship
(04:28):
status attached female, So use your name, You're like, no
one uses their real make up? Something. Time you put
in a greeting, Hey, sexy man, dear birth feels like
a lot of personal information. Something long term. I want
(04:50):
to say, cyber affair, erotic chat. Okay, okay, undecided, undecided,
I'm undecided. Wait, fuck off? Why don't you to give
your weight? Do you have to give your weight on
any other dating thing? No, definitely not. You need your
height also, height, body type? You all right? I'm giving
(05:11):
my email. I guess people create fake emails for this,
right probably that's so all right. It's telling me to
add a disguised photo, disguise your identity, and add some
privacy to your photos. More about you? Okay, I'm a
forty something forty some thing writer, just here to explore.
(05:40):
You're all signed up? I have to verify my email. Yeah,
there's so many guys on there. Wow, I mean that
took us how long that was? Five minutes? And look
there's like bazillion men here, there's a bazillion man's kind
of cute you think handsome stud forty six Philadelphia. Oh
my god, they know and I'm in Philadelphia. Are not
(06:01):
even in Philadelphia. I don't think I gave them. I
didn't tell them anything. And that right there, that is
how easy it was for a woman to sign up
for a married person stating site that will deliver a
gazillion men for you to have an affair with within
a fifty mile radius of your house. We'll be back
(06:25):
after a short break. We're back. Technology has allowed individuals
to have affairs from the comfort of their own home.
You may be sitting next to your partner on the
couch and watching TV while also engaging an affair from
(06:46):
your smartphone. That's Jacklin Cravens Pickens. Jacqueline is a marriage
and family therapy professor at Texas Tech University and is
also a licensed marriage and family therapist. Her research is
on relationships, technology, and monogamy. I called Jacqueline because she's
pretty much the leading expert out there on the intersection
(07:08):
of tech and infidelity, and one of the things she
told me is that the evolution of technology enabling affairs
has been happening pre smartphone, and she took me back
about twenty years ago, back to the beginning of Facebook
and a virtual reality game called Farmville. One of my
(07:29):
first couples that I had worked with, it was a
heterosexual couple. The female partner had been having a relationship
with a game player on farm Ville that they met
through the game, and the husband had said, you know,
I can't believe you love this person. You don't know
who they actually are. You've never met them in person.
(07:52):
So you think you want to leave me for this
person on Farmville. I'll kind of call your bluff and
I'll pay for you to go meet this person in
real life, offline all Farmville, and this will settle everything,
and you're gonna come back and want to be with me.
So when her husband found out and he said, how
about you going to meet the guy in person and
you'll realize just how crazy you're being. As you might imagine,
(08:17):
this did not go as the husband expected. Meeting all
fline ended up being even better than their online relationship,
and so when the wife came back to town and
they were back in session, she said, yeah, no, I'm
leaving you. I want to be with this person. She
left her husband for the Farmville guy, a guy she
(08:37):
never would have met in real life, but because of
a game where you buy and sell virtual livestock, an
affair was made possible along with the dissolution of an
unhappy marriage. Now, like I said, this was almost twenty
years ago, and it's about the same time that Craigslist
Casual Encounters became popular for people looking for casual sex
(09:00):
or extra marital affairs. In fact, remember Monique from episode three,
Craigslist Casual Encounters is how she started her first affair.
You could go on Craigslist and you could find anything
from adult nursing relationship to garden furniture. I had a
girlfriend who had just separated, and one day she was
(09:20):
over and we'd been kind of drinking and looking at Craigslist,
and I saw this ad that I thought was just brilliant,
and I replied. We kept corresponding, and then at some
point we decided to have a beer together and it
had it. And now with smartphones, internet capable devices and
(09:42):
all the social media affairs have reached a whole new
level of accessibility. The Internet has really arrived at a
place where it greatly approximates offline life. We used to
not have things like video capabilities or virtual reality. That's
Jacklin Craven's pickens Again, it's created very unique ways in
(10:05):
which we can engage in online infidelity. You could be
using teledildonics or USB capable devices that are sex toys
that somebody else can be operating on the other side
of the world, and we can be having sexual affairs
through technology. What is a teledildonic? Did I say that right?
(10:28):
Is that a teledildo? Yes? Absolutely so other words use cyberdildonics,
but it's basically a fancy word for a USB capable
sex toy. Then all sorts of different types exist. So
if you're you're curious, I want to do a quick
Google search from dildos to mouths that are USB operated
(10:51):
by a partner in another location. So we think about
online affairs being direct messages, secret chats that are happening,
and I think with virtual reality and things like teledyldonics,
you know, our imagination is probably pretty endless now about
how people are having online affairs. How you just I
(11:13):
really like it when I learn new words and what
are some ways specifically that you've seen people using technology
to cheat and We've heard about women using Ashley Madison
and then What's App, separate emails, burner phones, all of
these things to schedule and track their affairs, similar to
(11:33):
introducing you to the concept of teledyldonics. I think the
options are so far reaching. I've seen people engaging in
affairs through Reddit. They were in special communities on Reddit
and built a connection and meeting people through social media apps.
The Calculator app was one I saw for a while,
(11:56):
which was an app that allows you to have a secret,
hidden compartment in your phone where you could have dating
apps and text messages. That looks like the Calculator app
until you click it and it asks you to put
in a password and then write It's like opening the
subfolder of a phone where hidden information exists. No, it
(12:17):
looks like the Calculator and so no one's ever going
to open it. But it's actually got all of your
secret dating and text messaging stuff in it. Yes, Calculator apps,
Reddit affairs, virtual dildos. These lines are blurry as f
and it is hard to figure out where fantasies end
(12:40):
and reality begins. But we're about to see just how
real a virtual affair can get to be. Walking in
the street and to be able to reach it to orgasm.
I'm like, wow, this is and this is when you
start realizing the power of the mind. You know, an
affair doesn't necessarily have to be that physical sexual relationship,
(13:03):
or that orgasm doesn't necessarily have to be the actual penetration.
That's Olivia again, the woman who orgasmed while her husband
was just in the other room, while she was receiving
a sexy text from another man. And after the break,
we are going to hear every detail of her virtual affair.
(13:27):
We're back. The text messages continue, but they kick it
up a notch a little bit. It's as if we're
raising the volume. I felt very naive. I felt as if,
oh my god, this is such a taboo, like this
is crazy. And I remember telling this to my girlfriends
(13:48):
and they said it changed his name, but the alias,
because you really don't want your husband seeing that. That's
Olivia telling me about how her virtual sexting affair got started.
After reconnecting with her for our coworker, that coworker started
playfully sending some texts, but they quickly got pretty racy.
(14:08):
Her friends told her to change his name on her
phone in case her husband got suspicious. But let's back
up for a moment and find out how this all
started for Olivia. When we first started talking, Olivia told
me that she was the kind of person who would
never have an affair, who would never cross a line.
And so I asked her how she ended up getting
into this. She told me it was because at that moment,
(14:32):
the moment when she started talking to her former co worker,
she'd reached a point in her marriage where she really
felt like she'd lost herself, and in that moment, she
was much more receptive to sexting advances. You know, with
my husband, if he would put his foot in his mouth,
or if he would just start drinking, he would say
things without measure. He would be disrespectful to women who
(14:56):
was like, I'm the man of the house, I'm the
ruler control, I pay, so I decide what it's done.
It just became worse and worse and worse. I had
to change who I was to satisfy him. The way
the hair was done. The hair had to be blonde,
(15:17):
it had to be straight. And he would say this
to people. He would say this to my kids. You know,
your mother would be perfect if she would just have this,
and why won't she do this for me? And I
think I was just so desperate to feel alive. I
was willing to take that risk. I felt giddy, I
(15:38):
felt beautiful. I allowed myself to be taken to this fantasy,
and yes I did fantasize about it. I did take
it to a whole other level. I think the fantasy
also the taboo, right, there was something so mysterious about it.
Do you think it was hotter because it wasn't physical. Yes,
(16:00):
I felt as if I had this secret and it
was this wonderful secret or piece of information that was
filling my cup in every possible way, Like to be
walking in the street and to be able to reach
an orgasm. I'm like, wow, I've got to ask what
was in the text message that made you have the
(16:22):
orgasm walking down the street. I think it was just
in the way he was saying how he was going
to touch me in just such an incredible way, in
a very sensual, very erotic way. The touch, the caress,
the oil, what he was going to do to me,
how he was going to do it to me. It
(16:43):
was the foreplay, It was the excitement, it was the stimulation.
You know, how do you like this? How do you
want this? How many fingers? Positions? Things like this? Literally
lost for like twenty minutes, so like me to where
I was going, and I was like, what the hell
(17:03):
is happening to me? And you know, it's kind of
funny thinking here I'm walking in the street and having
this crazy ass orgasm and all these people passing me
and they have no fucking clue what's going on. And
it was just incredible. And I also realized that I
(17:27):
am very sexual, that I enjoy the connection, I enjoy
the intimacy, and I think in that week he brought
that back. I had actually asked him to get me
one of those remote control vibrators which a friend of
mine had told me about, that you can control it
through Bluetooth, and you know, I was willing to experiment
(17:51):
certain things with him. It was as if Pandora's box
had opened up with him. I asked Olivia if there
were a lot of other times that she messaged with
her former co worker while her husband was right there,
and if she did, if there was a thrill or
a power she got from the secrecy, Yes, there'll be
(18:12):
a gun for dinner, and that we were going to
the theater and he started texting me, and my husband
is sitting right in front of me, my daughter's right
beside me, and the phone is on my left side.
And I remember my daughter wanting to get my phone.
I'm like, no, no, no no, you can't use your dad.
(18:35):
And she just turned to me and she's like what,
And I'm like, god, I was too scared that the
message would come up. I went to the washroom and
I said, you know, I can't I'm at the theater.
And he didn't get it. You just didn't get it.
Then we were at the theater or waiting to go in.
(18:56):
During the play, you know how, the light kind of
flashes on, and of course my husband is beside and
he's like, you know, who's texting you? I'm like, no,
no much. I think it's just you know, work related. Luckily,
what I was doing for work, it was pretty much
twenty four seven. But yeah, it was exciting. It was
very exciting. Did you ever think about it as an affair? No, don't.
(19:20):
I don't even know the title. There's so many different
titles that one could put on it, or there's so
many different meanings. I guess if you want to put
to the word affair, is an affair being disloyal to
your partner, Because if that's the case, then emotionally, I
guess I did have an affair. Do I feel guilty
(19:42):
about it? No? Not once did I feel guilty. This
was the part that was so interesting to me. Olivia
never considered this to be an affair because nothing physical happened. Sure,
she was having the best orgasm of her life. She
was feeling free and open and fucking amazing. She was
(20:06):
talking to this man about the most intimate parts of
her body, but she didn't consider it cheating. And that
right there, that is another way that technology has changed
how women can cheat on their husbands. You can have
an affair that's maybe not even an affair. I think
(20:27):
that there are some really great theories that help us
better understand how this happens. Even with people that, like
I said, don't get online or reach out to people
or meet people with the specific purpose of having an affair.
That's Jaqueline Cravens Pickens Again. They get on for gameplay,
(20:49):
or they reach out to a high school friend or
a college ex partner just to check in, and very
quickly it moves into very vulnerable personal information where we're
building these really quick, emotionally intense connections and all of
a sudden we've crossed a boundary. And one of the
(21:10):
things we know about computer mediated communication is people talk
about how quickly they feel more comfortable being able to
disclose personal information. So I didn't realize I was going
to open up and share all of these intimate details
in the way in which I did, and so much
(21:30):
more rapidly. Online people feel emotionally close and connected than
what happens and offline interactions. And that's why I use
that term that slippery slope of like, well, I didn't
think that this was what was going to happen from
this interaction, and here we are. I feel so connected,
this person really understands me. I feel so close, so connected,
(21:52):
so quickly. Right, it really is a slippery slip. And
we will be going write down that Slabrislow next week
when we dive into an affair that took a very
unexpected twist. Over the past seven episodes, we've learned that
infidelity and non monogamy for women can be a lot
(22:14):
of things, empowering, freeing, even self esteem building, but they're
also complicated, and if I'm being honest with you, I'm
still trying to figure out what does it all mean
for female sexuality and agency and for breaking down the
stigmas that have allowed men to cheat and kept women
(22:36):
faithful for so long. That is all Next week this
has been She Wants More. I'm your host, Joe Piazza.
She Wants More was inspired by the book A Passion
for More by Susan Shapiro Bearish. It was adapted for
(22:58):
audio by executive produces Merrill Poster, Kara Pfeiffer, and Susan
Shapiro Parish. She Wants More is hosted and reported by
me Joe Piazza. Jennifer Bassett is our lead producer and
story editor. Our sound design is by Jessica Crunchich. Our
theme was composed by Anna Stumff and Hamilton Lighthouser. Our
(23:19):
executive producers for iHeart are Ali Perry and Nikki Etour.
She Wants More as a production of iHeart Podcasts. For
more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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