Can cyber jealousy ruin your relationship?

The dating scenery has changed nowadays due to online dating and due to the endless opportunities offered by a single click. We became picky with the help of online profiles and the real time chatting which made the continuous supply of new dates a near-reality.

Despite of the numerous advantages offered by the internet, there is also some downsize to that because now you can perform instant background checking with a few clicks and our lives become public on sites like Facebook. Does all this information make men more jealous? All of those photos on social networks help or damage the dating scene and relationships?

Stalking

We laugh about our hours spent on Facebook checking out our friends and lovers by calling it “stalking”, a devious, criminal pastime in the real world. Most people post about everything on their social network pages and this allows us a detailed insight on their lives.

The increased number of phone cams and smart phones allows us to see what our friends and lovers are doing, almost in real time. Although one might say that this leaves no room for imagination, this is not true as there is a lot of room or misinterpretation and thus, there are many “jealousy triggers” that cause our imagination to assumably fill in the missing blanks:

-A photo of your girl smiling at (or near) somebody in a club

-A photo of some drunk guy with his arms around her shoulders. She might be against it but you will think that she is a willing participant.

-A guy you don’t know posts a happy birthday message or comments on one of her photos in a bathing suit

Can this jealousy ruin your relationship? If a guy is not jealous, does he become embarrassed, horrified or angry over pieces of information that you wouldn’t have had in the past? Yes, sometimes it does.

Emotional cheating

There are many relationships that begin, happen and end online. These cyber-flings can also ruin solid, thriving relationships.

Men tend to become jealous when another man physically violates a woman’s private space while women become jealous on the idea that their man can share an emotional or caring bond with someone else and the online environment is the place where they both can happen.

“Erotic chat” and romantic emails are very frequent in the virtual environment where you can have the adventure you so long desired with a mere stranger. Does this compare to real cheating when it comes to our jealousy response?

A study found an interesting comparison. Men are still more jealous of the cyber-sex exploits while women are more jealous of the emotional betrayal, but both genders agreed that online infidelity is less distressful than conventional infidelity.

A few facts still remain

Jealous people are jealous people. If you are very jealous in real life, you will also be jealous on Facebook. They are not two separate things. If you are a jealous person, you will still be like that, with or without Facebook.

Secondly, the abundance of online info offers us plenty things to be jealous about. Many small details can become a bigger picture, especially when they are magnified by your assumptions.

There is no doubt that some people will use those pieces of information to dodge a bad relationship while others will ruin a great relationship because of them. Instead of all common beliefs, the reality of this virtual environment requires more face-to-face and heart-to-heart communication for couples to make it through.  There is nothing that can replace the need to nurture our relationships through human contact, emotion and intuition. There are some things that technology will never be able to replace.