Recently, I discovered that my husband has been using adult chat rooms online and seems to have been communicating in sexually explicit ways with other people. When I challenged him, he was embarrassed and then defensive saying it was just harmless flirting and that he had not gone over any line.
I still feel really unhappy about what he has done. I feel a bit betrayed and worry about whether I can trust him. A With people spending more and more time online, accessing pornography and adult websites can be a big problem in modern marriages. Relationship counselling agencies report that a growing number of couples are now seeking help due to infidelity online or to one partner accessing adult websites.
How much of a problem it is, depends on the degree and type of access and what it means in the context of the marriage. There is a big difference between a person occasionally viewing pornography with the knowledge and even involvement of their partner to a full-blown betrayal and using adult websites to start affairs with other people. Like many problems, it can start innocently at first, with a person visiting sexually titillating sites perhaps out of boredom or a seeking escapism but then it can escalate to other behaviours, such as directly communicating with other people online and over time can become addictive and harmful.
You might benefit from going to counselling especially if you feel traumatised and need to the help of an impartial listener to process some of the feelings. To move forward, it is important that you continue to talk to your husband and try to understand the extent of his difficulties and what the underlying issues are for him.
A second issue for a marriage is that one partner turns to the internet for flirting and sexual excitement rather than to their partner. When this happens frequently, it can lead to a reduction in their sex-life together, a growing sense of disconnection and an erosion of the marital bond. Of course your husband should not blame you and he must take responsibility for how he has hurt you with his online behaviour, but the two of you must take responsibility for improving the marriage.
