For every happily married person who thinks that the internet just isn't a threat - you should really think again. It's just a box right? That computer over there.. the one your spouse isn't even sure how to work..? Wrong!

What follows are the letters I've received from husbands and wives who've lost their spouses or have come close to losing their spouses, to the internet.

March '99 - great site...thanks.....i got this computer about 18 months ago...no real problem except my 28 year old wife started staying up later and later....at 1am or so she would crawl into bed and i would be awakened with lets have sex.. now....i enjoyed that and assumed she was just looking around at adult sites...well ...i found a sexually explicit email in my cache and that answered that....she was having a little fling with a married man on the net for about eight months before i became aware of it,,,,,,true,,,,i just thought she actually wanted me!..well she promised to break it off as i wasnt pleased that this was happening for 8 months behind my back....one day she said it was over..well i found another email saying she enjoyed it and didnt want it to end.....i jumped in and told the net boyfriend i was gonna tell his wife.....that ended that....she chatted 5 or 6 days a week up late every nite and asked 4 somthing in bed that shocked me...exicited yes but very unlike her...so she told me "chuck" was always talking about it and she was gonna try it...although i enjoy the sex i wish she was as open to me....she kept up this relationship until i found an email that could xxx this page and i contacted him and scared him off with his home address and phone number....never heard from him again...we got on with our lives ...she still had her circle of chat friends and i reluctantly accepted her wanting to spend time chatting........well problem...she came to me one day saying she met someone in our city and actually me him at the local coffee shop a few times....well i was not really pleased but went by his work to meet him and said we could all be friends and invited him and his wife over......no go....he didnt want his wife to know...she tells me she wanted nothing so thats why she told me....i think he was expecting more if he didnt want all of us to be friends....my wife got real mad at me for meeting him....i still dont know why....any way one night his wife shows up at my house and tells my wife she knows about them....and puts a stop to it......so far i feel thats 3 attemps at a relationship that didnt work.....i wanted to see a marrige counsellor cause she always tells me the net is not our problem....it is to me!.......well she has several secret email acounts that i have only recently stubled upon and she seems so happy while shes having these ..what i call affairs........well did i make a mistake....i bought a webcam live vidio for christmas for the puter.....alittle fun at first and we even went on together to see who we were talking with and yes there was some live online shows that we did for the fun of it ...but she slowly didnt want me there any longer and kept calling one paticular guy that she finds real hot and getts pissed off if im in the same room while they are chating....she would dress real sexy and wait for his call and i would go to bed to avoid another argument...well i caught her showing herself and blowing him kisses and she just tells me it was just a little flirting....she said its just innocent chat...not even sex talk....he of course will not let his wife know she is even alive.....i came across a conversation one day that said they were gonna neet for lunch on the puter..live video...she seemed pretty exited as did he....well i set up my sony hndicam and taped her having live xxx with this guy....and handed it to her as she lied as to what she did for lunch...im hurt yes...but think it can be worked through if we try......now she was really upset that she told me she wont see him online again and its over ...well i caught her checking her secret email at a local coffee shop and found out that now they say they will just have to be more carefull cause i am on to them......she sobbs in her emails that she so gald he is still on line and after all that, the very next night she was on looking him up....ya he calls her at work...i dont know if she calls him but its hard to believe that someones need to flirt actually comes between 10 years of marrige and 2 kids.ages 5 and 7......i dont understand this at all but i saw your site and can see im not the only one having trouble with it...my wife is very attractive and likes to be the icing on the cake....but latey she has no interest in me....sleeping on the couch or the kids room or pjs up to her neck.....im leaving for a month to get a mental break and she told her on line boyfriend yippee.....i printed the emails ...gave her the video tape and expected a little effort in return.....i am seeing a personal counsellor as well as a marrige counsellor for opinions.....but she tells me she loves me ....and i can see why she has no interest in sex with me any longer..she is flooded with it all night long im the only rest from it she gets!.....wadda ya think.....just wanted to share another web horror story that is close to destoying my marriage...beleive me the lies are more than enough.

March '99 - In November 1999, I noticed a change in my husband, he was been nasty toward me and always started arguments. I knew something wasn't right. I asked him if there was another woman, he said no. I told him something is not right. One day I seen him come out of the postoffice opening mail, our mail is always delivered at our home. I confronted him several days later about him having a post office box. He denyed it several times until I told him I was in my car and seen him coming out of the post office opening mail. He said he wanted his privacy, I told him its a sudden change after 23 yrs. of marriage. Well, he got me fired up. I asked him where the phone bill was for the past two months, he said that I never look at the phone bill why now? Through the phone company I had them to send me copies. He had been making phone calls to New Zealand. The phone bill was outragious. He said he made a bad mistake doing the phone calls and apoligized. He thought that was the end of it. Wrong! that even got me more agitated. He was telling me that he talked to this woman that was married and a school teacher and they were only friends. Friends don't run up phone bills and sneak around and get p.o. boxes. That just made it worst, I knew he was lying. I hurt inside so bad I thought my chest was going to explode. I begged him to tell me what was going on and he would say nothing. I did something right or wrong I had to know, I wasn't about to let almost 24 yrs of marriage go down the tube. I took his hard drive out of his computor and put it in mine. Boy! did I find out. He was telling this woman how much he loved her and she was doing the same. She was sending him sexual fantasys in the email and anyone could tell this was not her imagination she had copied this from some book or got this off the internet, they had been sending each other gifts and I found out that she had called my house and he sent her money for her phone bill. I was a topic of their discussion it goes on and on. I called him at work and told him what I had done and what I found out he came home and told me I had no right taking his hard drive out and I told him he had no right hurting me, and acting like it was nothing. I was so upset and hurt I felt like taking a gun and blowing my brains out, I knew better I just wanted the hurting to stop. He told me that she was the most intelligent woman he's ever talked too. He was adding insult to injury and they were only friends. Lord it just got worse, I told him friends my #@$%. He said he liked talking to her. That he loved me and that he would never leave me. I asked him if he would talk to her in front of me and tell her he didn't love her, he wouldn't do it. He said no one is going to try and make him do anything. I asked him. That even hurt worse. I don't trust him anymore What can I do? I hurt so bad and my life is pure hell at the moment. Why can't he understand what he has done? This isn't over yet I'm not saying anything else to him about it, I'm just letting him think everything is okay

November 29, 1998 - For months my husband had been keeping himself locked in the extra bedroom...on the computer...supposedly doing financial stuff!!! I am a computer programmer and know that AOL is not very secure. I was able to change his password and access his account. I found dozens of long, very emotionally explicit and very sexually explicit emails to and from another woman. They had been spending many hours during the day on the phone and many hours at night online. Me and our 2 kids never spent any time with him any longer. A woman who he had never met but felt was his SOUL mate...the love of his life. We had been married 16 years at this point and I was more than a little shocked! He and his new friend even had a very involved and detailed plan on meeting only weeks from the day that I found all of this stuff. When I questioned him about his computer use and a number of hang up calls that we had begun getting, he said that I was crazy...just imagining things. When I layed the printed emails in his lap, he turned white as a ghost. He was actually surprised that I wanted him to move out of the house. After many months of separation and counseling I would like to give our marriage another try but I will always be suspicious of his computer use as well as anytime his line at work is busy. Do you think there is a chance that he will NOT do this again...or is the pattern more likely to repeat itself?

The Reply - What bothers me about this is the fact that he denied everything and tried to make you look ridiculous, until you showed him the proof. He didn't come clean and admit to what he had been doing - that just smacks of someone who intended to keep going, secure in the knowledge that you had nothing. Until you did. It's not likely he's just going to stop, I know that sounds disheartening, but what are your options? Put the computer in your bedroom and monitor his every moment on it? Even if you did that, how do you monitor things at work and why should you have to monitor him at all and wouldn't he resent it? Hang ups? Why not call the phone company and get anonymous call blocking and caller ID. If they have a phone number, it'll show on the ID box, if they have it blocked, it won't get through to you unless they unblock it. She may just stop calling at home. I don't have all the answers, if you trusted him to be honest, I think you were disappointed here, even when you expected him to come clean. The computer always seemed like a great idea huh? Something for the kids to learn on, do some banking, manage your finances, get recipes... Nobody ever realizes until it's too late that you can do all that and oh so much more on this box. Good luck.

November '98 - Hi there. Would like to tell you my story of horrors of online affairs. My wife and I had been married for 24 years and last xmas we purchsed a computer for home. In May we got hooked to the internet and we took turns playing crib on it and going to chat rooms. Well, soon my wife was spending more and nore time on it and our personal life was going down hill. She eventually began to pick on me over minor things and then 1 day in October she says to me that she needs to get away for awhile as she was confused and didn't know if she loved me any more . That she has been out of love with me for awhile. Said she was going to stay at her sisters place for a bit to think things out. As much as I didn't want to Ilet her go. Next morning her brother and brother in law show up with a truck and say that they are there to pick up furniture. She had given them a list as to what to take and hoped that I would not give them any problems. I was in total shock as I didn't things were that bad between us. So I asked them if there was another guy in her life or something and they looked at each other and said yes but if it makes you feel any better it is nobody in town. Is a guy she has met on internet. I was in shock and when they left I checked her ICQ messages and found who it was. I emailed him and asked him what the heck was going on and why was he trying to break up my marriage. He emails me back and tells me that he loves my wife very much and that he is moving to Canada to be with her and will take good care of her. Two weeks after she moved out I heard he was coming to Canada so that they could meet and then she would decide what she wanted. Well as it turned out she picked him and took the guy back to her sisters place where she is living at and that is where they are living with each other. Now I still love my wife very much and I just about cry every night as I miss her so bad and just want my wife back and kids want thier mom back as she is shunning them too for this guy. Last I have heard is that next week he is paying for her to file divorce papers against me. I have been wtiting love notes to wife and trying to talk tom her when I see her on her courier runs but people have been telling me that if I want to have a good friendly at least relationship with her that I got to leave her alone. No calls, no notes, no contacting asshe is just being driven furthur into this guys arms. Have been told that newness and novelty of this fantasy will soon wear off and when realization of a long term relationship hits her that it may be over. It may go the other way to but it is something I need to prepare myself for. So I have ben doing my best not to conatct her, no love notes on her car or even attempting to see her as I need to see how this relationship will go. But meanwhlie still love her very much and would take her back tommorow as I know I was not exactly doing my 50% to make my marriage work. Took her for granted I guess that she would be with me forever so I did not share household duties and would not do things she liked to do-swim, skate, go dancing . So i f I was ever to get a second chance which is unlikely I know I could really change my ways and stick to it as I love her so much and would do anything not to ever lose her again if given the chance. Thank you for listening to my internet romance horror story

November '98 - I have heard all those crazy stories about marriages breaking up due to meeting people online. i never thought it would happen to me ,but it did.I didnt want this pc because i knew the trouble it would cause and boy was i ever right. my husband started out using chat rooms excessively, hours on end, ignoring me and our daughter.I mean he was on 24/7.When i started to get angry over it,he said that it was innocent and at least he wasnt out at the bars,he gave me the old dont u trust me syndrome. well without going into the horrible detalis, it turns out that i was right. he met someone, and cheated on me.it was very disceptive and it was purely planned out and he calculated.he had a threesome with another couple. we have only been married for 6 months!!!!!! he commited adultery and left me devestated. i cant tell you how much pain i am in. i actually thought that he was just chatting innocently but itt wasnt that way so now here i am in a very dameged marriage with a child and one on the way.the details of this are horrific!!! it truly is an evil thing isnt it?