For months, my friend Timothy has been asking me to come and visit him and his new fiancée in their lovely home in the south of France. Every time he’s issued the invitation, I’ve declined, citing work or prior commitments, and being a smart man, he eventually twigged that my excuses were just that – excuses.

“Are you broke?” he asked. “I’ll buy you a ticket.”
But no, my finances, precarious at the best of times, were not the issue. Instead it was our relationship, which I’d begun to think had strayed over an invisible line marked “inappropriate”.
The last time we’d seen one another drinking and flashing had occurred. Naturally I’m blaming the flashing on the drinking, but truth be told, our relationship has always been more than a little flirtatious – banter and innuendo mostly, although we do have a bit of previous, but that was a long time ago.
It was late, around one in the morning. He suggested another drink and when he stood up to refresh his whiskey, I noticed something about him was different.
“Have you lost weight?” I asked. Yes he had, and since he was proud of his newly acquired six-pack he was more than happy to show me, pulling up his shirt so I could take a good gander.
“How about you?” he inquired.
“Lost some too, by accident, not design.”
“Let me see,” he said.
I stood up, lifted my hands over my head and did a little twirl. Why? Well duh, because if you put your hands in the air, your stomach flattens out and your breasts perk up – it’s a flattering angle for girls like me who are vain enough to worry about this kind of nonsense, but not vain enough (or possibly just too lazy!) to have anything more than a sporadic relationship with the gym.
As I executed this little manoeuvre, my shirt rose up and the lace trim of my knickers was visible over my now slightly too large low-riding jeans.
“Nice pants,” he said with a cheeky grin. “Can I see more?”
Later on he persuaded me to show him my bra, to prove I was a lady and therefore wearing a matching set. Of course it would have been far more ladylike not have done any flashing at all, but after three glasses of wine, his logic made a kind of perverse sense, especially since he promised to show me his silk boxers.
The next day, I had an attack of the guilts – after all, he is recently betrothed. In fairness, there was no physical contact. That would have been impossible, since I was in Dublin and he was on a business trip in London or Lagos or Los Angles or someplace else. He travels a lot for work, and instead of accessing the hotel’s collection of porn, like a regular person, he Skypes me. You see what I mean, not bad behaviour as such, but yes, definitely a little inappropriate.
Knowing Timothy as well as I do, I had no doubt that, were I to accept his invitation to visit, he would behave as a perfect gentleman. In person, his behaviour is exemplary. It probably helps that we disagree about almost everything and instead of flirting we spend hours arguing about politics, books, movies or religion. In real life, he’s good as gold; online it’s a different story.
Modern technology has many advantages for personal relationships, but it can get a bit confusing as to what is, or is not, acceptable behaviour. In 2008, a British woman named Amy Taylor divorced her husband David Pollard for infidelity when she caught his avatar having virtual sex with another woman in the game Second Life. While he had never met the woman in real life, for Amy the virtual infidelity was enough, especially since she and David had first met in an internet chat room and had held a Second Life wedding as well as a real one.
Obviously that’s an extreme example, but earlier this year, the Catholic marriage counselling service Accord claimed that there has been a whopping increase in couples seeking advice because of internet-related behaviours between 2007 and 2009, including gambling, pornography and cyber sex. I don’t doubt it.
I think worrying about pornography is a waste of time, but I can understand why people get a little bit uncomfortable if there is another person involved, even if he or she is no more than a set of pixels on a screen. Furthermore if you are looking for sexual excitement, the internet is swamped with people more than willing to play along.
I would never bother with Chatroulette to talk to randomers. Having Sexton as a surname means I get enough horny strangers wanting to connect through Skype and Facebook. One friendship request in particular stood out – this enterprising bloke thought a profile picture of his half-erect penis would clinch the deal. It didn’t.
Facebook in particular can be dangerous territory for couples, so much so that a British divorce information service, Divorce-Online, recently claimed that one in five divorce petitions cite Facebook as part of the reason for marital breakdown, in particular inappropriate sexual chats.
It’s easy to see how this happens. The rules that govern face-to-face interactions don’t apply in the same way online and it’s far easier to make a brazen statement from the safety of your desk than it is over a coffee.
You can’t blame modern technology for inappropriate behaviour, but it is fair to say that it certainly makes it easier. Missing your ex? Find them on Facebook. Having an affair? Download the Tiger Text app and it’ll delete text messages sent and received to and from your bit on the side. Horny and alone? Log onto an adult chat room. Horny and married? Try a site dedicated to helping married people find affairs, or if you’re cheap, post a message on Craigslist or Gumtree.
If you’re married, online flirting presumably feels less like a violation of the sanctity of a relationship than anything that occurs in the flesh. Cyber affairs straddle a grey area between fantasy and reality and we haven’t had online lives long enough to be able to separate the two.
I didn’t want to be Timothy’s, or anybody’s other woman, even if it was just virtually. That’s way too complicated for my liking. As far as I can tell, an online affair offers most of the problems associated with a real-life one, such as the need for secrecy, accepting a low rank on your partner’s list of priorities, and guilt, but few of the thrills, except for the ones that happen in your head – and I don’t really need a keyboard or a web cam for that.
Fantasy is all very well – but given the choice, I’d chose real sex over the virtual kind any day.