Internet addiction destroys marriage and family life

FrICTION Internet addiction: can it be cured?

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"I spend 12 hours a day online and I will not stop"

[How to treat shopping addiction and compulsive spending]

We talk to Ethan, 48, who is a self-confessed and unrepentant internet addict. During the week he works for an insurance company, but all his evenings, lunch breaks, and weekends are spent online. He spends about 20 hours online each weekend. He hopes one day to quit his day job and earn a good living blogging about internet addiction.

Question: Ethan, you are aware you have a problem?

Ethan: Absolutely, I'm a cyber junkie. My wife has left me, I don't go out. On Saturday, I wake up have breakfast at the computer and I'm still there 12 hours later.

Question: When did this start?

Ethan: I got into the internet a long time ago, more than 10 years ago, when it was dial-up, real slow. I felt like a pioneer back then. I got into chat rooms, there was one called Cyber Spice and another called Powwow. My handle was Snoopy. I met a bunch of women that way. I was among the first, I guess, to be having regular sex online. We didn't call it online sex in those days. It was cybersex. My phone bills were so high I couldn't pay them some months.

Question: Did you consider yourself addicted back then?

Ethan: No way. I thought of myself as a pioneer getting into this totally new technology. It was exciting. The internet was new to ordinary folks. I got into it because of that, and it was a great way to to meet people. I met more people online in the first month than I did offline in five years. It was awesome. I felt like an explorer, an adventurer.

Question: Were you married at the time?

Ethan: No, but I was living with a woman. She wasn't into the internet at all. She was suspicious of it, couldn't see the point in chatting. She thought the internet was just a game or a fad that would never catch on. How wrong she was!

Question: What was the thrill of chat rooms back then?

Ethan: In the early days, it didn't occur to me you could invent characters, make up a new persona for yourself. I was just myself. I didn't care about security, I don't think anyone did. You put all your personal details out there, including your email address and your Inbox would fill with these weird messages and offers, even insults and personal attacks. I became close online friends with a of different people from all over the word. In my first week online, I'd had sex with about 15 people. It was incredible. It was a whole new world.

Question: Did you meet any of these people in real life?

Ethan: Yes. I was living in Nashville at the time. I met this woman, Sassy, online. She lived in Bowling Green, Kentucky. We agreed to meet near Vanderbilt University Campus, at a deli called Noshville. She was coming to Vandy for a grad school interview. I remember sitting in a booth by the window, looking out at anyone I imagined to be this slim, tall woman, blonde hair, beautiful, how she described herself online. Anyhow, this person slides into the seat opposite me, says "Are you Snoopy?" "Yes," I say cautiously, and it's a dude. Sassy is a dude! I felt such an idiot.

Question: What happened next?

Ethan: The guy is like, "I bet you thought you were gonna be screwing today, right?" Which is exactly what I thought I'd be doing. But it was just a big joke for him. That was the first time I realized you could be anyone you wanted to be online , you could make up a character, be exactly what you wanted to be and people would buy into it.

Question: What happened to Sassy?

Ethan: He went back online telling everyone in the chat room how he'd met and made a fool of Snoopy, so I just disappeared as Snoopy and reappeared as James Jones, named after the writer. Sassy taught me a very valuable lesson, to be careful online and to disguise my real self. It also made me extremely cautious about meeting people in real life. I didn't do that again for another seven or eight years.

Question: Did you spend more and more time on the internet over the years?

Ethan: Back then, I couldn't spend all day online because it was too expensive. I had to limit internet time. But I was one of the first people I knew who had a personal website. That was in the days when you had to learn html and a website was a photo of you and your family, information about your dog, your favorite music, your hobbies, and you got maybe two visitors a month if you were lucky. There were no blogs, no videos, pictures took forever to download.

Question: When did the internet begin to take up most of your non-working life?

Ethan: It was when broadband became really fast and affordable, when the internet stopped being this slow, stuttering thing and allowed you smooth, immediate contact with people, when you could share video clips, images, music. That's when it became more fun than the life I was leading away from the computer. It pulled me in more and more.

Question: Were, and are, you a consumer of internet porn?

Ethan: No, not really. I'm not into that stuff. I used to like live camera chats with women, but that gets old very quickly. You don't see much unless you pay a lot, and it's not genuine, it's business. I think most porn sites are a rip-off. I prefer meeting people, chatting, talking about stuff, then maybe you have sex, maybe you don't. It can happen so quickly. You can fall in love like instantly. Then it can be over in a couple of weeks. That doesn't happen offline. There's all this drama and boredom, it's much more complicated offline. I think people are themselves online, I mean they are who they really want to be: uninhibited, outspoken, sexy.

Question: Did you meet your wife online?

Ethan: No. I was pretty suspicious of the internet for meeting a woman to marry. That's changed of course. It's normal now to meet online, Match.com, all that stuff. When I met my wife, I still thought of the internet as a place with more than it's share of weirdos and wackos. It was fun, but I didn't want to marry someone who turned out to be a wacko. I met my wife at a banking and insurance conference.

Question: Did your wife-to-be know about your interest in the internet ?

Ethan: It's easy to fool people who don't know a lot about computers. In the early days it was even easier. I said I was a freelance progammer. When you were writing html longhand, it looked like programming to someone who didn't know. It looked technical. That impressed her before she knew any better.

Question: Did you spend a lot of time online in the early years of your marriage? Did marriage change your internet habits?

Ethan: I spent just as much time online, maybe more, but i disguised it as freelance work. I said I was building up a web design business. My wife called my bluff on that because I never had any income to show for my efforts. I was chatting most of the time. It was my hobby, a way of relaxing, but I felt guilty about it so I called it work.

Question: Did your wife complain to you about the time you spent online?

Ethan: Frequently. She'd want to go to the movies or go grocery shopping with me, and I'd go along sometimes but I'd start to feel really restless. I'd need to get back home to see if I had any new messages, see if there were any new discussion threads I wanted to take part in. I didn't want to get left out of chats that were going on. This has become easier to do with wireless in every coffee shop, handheld devices, you're never out of touch. Five or more years ago, I'd have to rush back to my desktop at home.

Question: Did your wife ever use the word addiction?

Ethan: Yes. She said I was an addict, dysfunctional. She thought I was having online affairs, which I guess I was but it was just shortlived fun. My main interest was the chats and discussions, not the sex.

Question: Was your sex life with your wife adversely affected by your internet addiction?

Ethan: It was like all marriages, I think. The sex is great in the beginning, then it gets routine, then you don't bother. My wife was always on my case, so I had to sneak around and use the internet when she wasn't watching. I'd wake up in the middle of night, check the computer on the way to the bathroom, then I'd get stuck there. My wife would wake up, I'd hear her shout stuff like, "I wish I was that damn computer. It gets a lot more attention than I do." Often she'd say much worse stuff than that. Once, she picked up the monitor and just dumped it in the yard. She was sick of it, sick of me.

Question: How did your marriage end?

Ethan: I was having sex with this woman online. She emailed me a whole bunch of very explicit pictures. I liked to look at them, relieve the tension by looking at them. She also sent some incredibly detailed emails about the kind of sex she liked, pretty extreme stuff, not nasty but s&m. It really turned me on, so anyhow, I kept the photos and the emails, didn't delete them as I usually do. By mistake, I left my email account open one day and my wife started going through my emails. She printed out all the photos and emails from the s&m woman. I was caught with my pants down. My wife was like, "Is this what you're into, is this what you really want? I can't give you this." I just stood there and listened and it seemed totally unreal. The person she was accusing wasn't really me, it was a different me, it wasn't part of the life I had with her. My wife told me I had to quit immediately or she'd leave me and take our two kids with her.

Question: Did you quit?

Ethan: I did for like a week. I really tried. I stopped talking to the s&m woman. I went into counseling because my wife insisted on it, but it was kinda humiliating so I skipped out on that. I went back online, tried to be secretive about it, use my laptop out of the house more and more, use my blackberry. I realized I didn't want to be offline, the internet was such a big part of my life and my enjoyment. Then I discovered blogging, which was fantastic for me. I could spend hours and hours online, write and write about all the crap that was happening, and I could make money doing it.

Question: Blogging became a job, a source of income?

Ethan: Yeah, these days I make about a thousand bucks a month blogging. At first it was like $20, $30 a month. But when you get it right, you can earn a lot. I thought this would impress my wife. I could show her I was making money, but she hated the idea. She was into doing stuff together, being with the kids at the mall, going to movies and restaurants, going ice skating, the normal family stuff that has never appealed to me.

Question: So then your wife left you?

Ethan: No, she kicked me out. She made me leave. She had the kids so she stayed in the house. I got a small apartment. She divorced me. I see my kids as much as I want, I don't have much to do with my wife anymore. I spend more time online than ever now. I can be on all weekend. I'll eat at the computer, I make about a quarter of my income online.

As I see it, the internet is such a big part of our lives I don't think you can talk about real life and and online life being different anymore. It's all real, it's all about contact with people, a different kind of contact, but it's still real.

Question: What is it that you especially like about online life compared to the world out there, offline?

Ethan: Online is more immediate, spontaneous, not so inhibited. You can relax online, be more sexual without it being offensive. You don't need to be so guarded. Flirting online is almost the rule. In real life, people are so defensive and anxious. It takes forever to get to know someone. Online, you can be fu-king the same day you meet someone. That hasn't happened to me offline. I can be who I want to be online. That's the big difference.

Question: Being yourself often takes the form of being a character, doesn't it?

Ethan: That's done to protect yourself from conmen, scammers and sociopaths. You have to be careful with personal details. When I'm online, I'm not taller or more handsome, if that's what you mean. I'm a more open, more confident version of myself that uses a handle to protect my personal information. But you are right, plenty of people invent a totally new persona for themselves, maybe they invent lots. That's cool, too. It shouldn't worry us.

Question: How do you see your internet addiction changing or developing in the future?

Ethan: I kinda miss married life, having someone in the house, someone actually there in your space. I want to have that again. I want my children to be proud of me. I'd like to imagine I could limit my use to four, five hours a day. I want to see if I can develop an interest and friendships outside the outside, away from the computer. But I also want to be so successful at blogging, rake in so much money, I can tell my critics, "I told you so. I knew it would pay off one day."

by Marcia Thompson, an avid long distance runner who helps couples with issues of fitness, physical, emotional, and sexual mismatch.

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Ethan, 48, is addicted to chatrooms and cybersex. He spends up to 12 hours a day online at weekends. His wife has left him, he rarely goes out, and he has no social life offline. He is battling with his addiction: "I can't kick the habit," he says.