"Internet vs. Divorce"

The internet has its advantages and disadvantages. It opens people to a whole different world. It allows for people to communicate through email, instant messaging, facebook, myspace, etc. What people don't see is it's disadvantages. In the case of divorce, internet is said to be breaking up couples because one spouse is having an affair in a "second life." Other than what has already been mentioned, there are so many other opportunities open to each spouse. Opportunities in which sometimes they feel vulnerable or put themselves into sticky situations.

Couples become suspicious by hacking into eachother's emails or other online accounts. According to Brad Stone's Tell-All PCs and Phones Transforming Divorce article, "Divorce lawyers routinely set out to find every bit of private data about their clients’ adversaries, often hiring investigators with sophisticated digital forensic tools to snoop into household computers. Recently, I have just heard more and more stories about couples hiring private investigators to further look into what they consider being "sneaky." If you truly love the one you are with, you'll go to any level to save the relationship.

A lot of couples like to explore the internet. Some may have accounts on singles sites, have email accounts that are unknown to their spouse, or may be catching up with "old friends." Either way, this is not okay. In my previous blog I stated that honesty is everything. Stone stated in one case, a man suspected that his wife was having an affair. "Instead of confronting her, the husband installed a $49 program called PC Pandora on her computer, a laptop he had purchased. The program surreptitiously took snapshots of her screen every 15 seconds and e-mailed them to him. Soon he had a comprehensive overview of the sites she visited and the instant messages she was sending. Since the program captured her passwords, the husband was also able to get access to and print all the e-mail messages his wife had received and sent over the previous year." After what he found, he ended his marriage. For 11 months, she has been seeing another man.

The internet allows for access to anything. If it weren't for the many capabilities given to this woman, their marriage may still be standing today. If you compare the divorce rates now to the divorce rates before the internet was introduced, I feel as if they would be significantly different. People today take advantage of the ability to hide things and this is a big cause of why so many people are getting divorced. Hopefully people learn the true meaning of love and find out that the internet is not the way to find it.

Images are from flikr.