Yet Megan still can't quite pinpoint why she logged on to a hookup site that she heard about on the radio one day. "I was curious, so I started sort of snooping around. It was interesting, but to see more profiles, I had to create one for myself. So I did, thinking, I'll never actually try to meet anyone; there's no way," she recalls.
Related: How the Internet has affected women's love lives
But Megan posted her profile and was soon bombarded with responses, an average of 50 a day. She replied to Jacob, who was also married. "What he wrote made me laugh. I immediately wanted to know more about him." The two emailed for about four months. "Most of our conversations were fun and light—exactly what was lacking in my interactions with Greg," she says. Finally, they made a date to meet in person. "I told Greg I was going out with friends, and he stayed home with the baby."
Megan planned to meet Jacob at a restaurant where they were unlikely to run into anyone they knew. "I was horribly nervous. Then he called to say that he was stuck in traffic. I thought, I could still go home and stop all this right now. But he talked me off the ledge—he said it didn't have to be anything we didn't want it to be." Megan's doubts were assuaged when the two finally met: "We stayed out until 3 A.M., talking. I hadn't talked to anyone that way in forever. I was so used to worrying about my family. Being with Jacob let me escape all that."
After several more dates, they went to a hotel. "The sex was rocket ship amazing," Megan says. That tryst turned into monthly meetings for sex. "In those few hours, I felt as if I could be whoever I wanted. And I was so physically, intensely drawn to him, it was crazy." The guilt was nearly as intense. "Greg and I still had sex once or twice a week, but I felt myself pulling back, thinking about Jacob when I should have been thinking of my husband. And I felt even worse when I was with my daughter." Her remorse eventually won out: A year after their emailing began, Megan and Jacob broke things off. "I never intended to leave Greg, so it was clear what I had to do," she says. "It was tough, but it was the right thing." In the aftermath, Megan saw a therapist and has managed to reconnect with her husband and reprioritize. "I don't have a lot of answers for what happened," she says. "But I do know that the only important thing in my life is what's under my own roof."
See more: Why women seek sex online
Thinking of straying? Try this relationship fix first.
"If you're distancing yourself from your mate for another emotionally consuming relationship, online or not, ask yourself, What am I doing?" Dr. Birndorf says. "Rather than blame your real-life hubby for your unhappiness, consider exactly what your role is, pinpoint what you're not getting from the relationship, then open the lines of communication. Whatever your problems, you can't reach a resolution with a third party in the mix." It may help to remind yourself that even if you and your spouse no longer share that cloud nine infatuation you began with, you may have a deeper intimacy, which can also be fulfilling. The trick is to "focus on what you've gained, not only on what you've lost," Dr. Birndorf says.
By Ingela Ratledge. Photo: Riccardo Tinelli
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