|
African Americans have been described as the “most
unpartnered and isolated group of people in America and
possibly the world” (Patterson, 1998). If true, what are the
causes and implications of the fractured relationships?
I spoke with noted intimacy expert, Ebony Utley, concerning
the growing alienation between black men and women.
Part three, the conclusion of our discussion, deals with the
intersection of infidelity and technology.
Perryman:
You’ve spoken broadly about digital infidelity, a topic
which takes “relationship interruptions,” to use your term,
and relationship drama to new heights.
Utley:
Yes. So the root causes are the same for why people commit
infidelity and it’s just that the machinations have gotten
more sophisticated, so there are new technologies to help
you cheat and there are new technologies to discover people
cheating.
There are apps on the
phone that can play background sound effects so if you need
to convince your partner that you are at the baseball game
or wherever you can play baseball game sound effects or
traffic sound effects when the truth is that you are
chilling at your other person’s house. So that’s a thing
that technology can now help you do.
Also, you can use apps
like Whisper or Secret to message things to other people,
messages that self-destruct. All of that makes it a little
easier, but at the same time technology is giving us tools
that can help discover someone’s infidelity.
Instagram, Snapchat and
others. Sometimes couples are now having more problems
because they follow each other’s accounts and who is this
person that liked your picture and why are you liking these
person’s pictures, and it kind of requires a whole new set
of communication that we didn’t have to do before we had
social media. Before Facebook, if you moved out of the town
where you went to high school you’re not in touch with those
people, and now the internet brings them right back into
your living room, and you’re like “Oh, that high school
sweetheart, maybe we still have things in common. He said
he’d always love me.” And you’re already in this
relationship, you are perfectly happy until you got this new
attention or even if I give it, because there’s so much
access to people to date that you don’t have to commit
anymore.
This happens more so with
men than it does with women, but it’s a real thing for men,
across races. It’s like, “Well, I don’t have to be with
you, I can be with anybody. Do you see all these women on
Tinder?” And so that’s another thing that’s making
commitment harder to come by because there’s so many options
and I think we’ve got a whole generation of people that are
growing up with options. On all those levels technology is
definitely changing the game, on meeting people, on the
actual finding of new ways to cheat and then also on
discovering infidelity.
Perryman:
You have talked somewhere about obsessions. Can you
elaborate for Truth readers?
Utley:
Yeah, so before, without the technology if you thought your
partner’s cheating you would hire a Private Investigator and
then you had to wait for your pictures to come through, but
now you can be your own private investigator and you can set
up dummy social media accounts to follow your person and
find out what they’re doing and who they’re with. You can
log onto your friend’s social media account that are friends
with your partner and get even more access that you wouldn’t
get before. You can spend all your time on the Internet
going through bank accounts, cell phone bills and phone
numbers and doing the reverse lookup and the time of day.
You can track travel arrangements when your partner is out
of town. You can use the phone Locator apps to track
exactly where their phone is and if it is where it’s
supposed to be, and this can turn into a full-time job. One
of the women I interviewed said that she wasted so much of
her life becoming obsessive about her cheating husband’s
whereabouts when she should’ve been focusing on herself and
her kids, but the technology makes it so much easier now in
so many senses to basically track your partner 24/7.
Perryman:
How does it affect men when women cheat on them?
Utley:
So much of this is anecdotal because I haven’t done
interviews with men. I have really focused on women’s
experiences because there were so many men that get to give
their apologies in the media, like I’m sorry, blah, blah,
blah, and then their wives stand behind them and then that’s
it. I was super curious about how those women feel when
you’re standing behind him at his press conference talking
about he’s sorry for x, y, z. So never anything against the
men, it was just a story that wasn’t getting told and I was
super interested in it.
So, if a woman does cheat
on her husband and gets pregnant by someone else, that
generally seems pretty devastating for most men for obvious
reasons. If she got pregnant when you were dating or she
had a kid before, for most men it’s just kind of like it’s
another kid, we’re fine, bring it into the family. But if
she’s got a kid with someone else while you were married,
that’s usually an interruption that doesn’t take things back
to normal, so that’s super devastating for most men.
The social abuse can also
be a thing, especially if your partner is a serial cheater
and everybody knows about it. If your woman is out there in
the streets and everybody knows that, you’re the dude that’s
still with her, men being men, are giving you the side eye,
like why can’t you get your woman in check. Sometimes I ask
my guy friends in general, “Hey, so let’s say you met this
woman and she’s the love of your life, but let’s say that
everyone knows that she’s also been super promiscuous and
had relationships with most of the men in your town, how do
you feel about that?” And the answer that I love the most
is for men that are really playing the game with me, is like
“She’s the love of my life, can we leave town? I don’t
really care who she’s been with. I don’t really want all
those other men giving me the side eye, so her past is not a
problem, but can we just leave town?”
Perryman:
So what is the outcome of all this? Does infidelity lead to
more mental health issues or more violence? Where does this
take us?
Utley:
It will remain to be seen in the grand scheme of things.
I’m working on another piece about infidelity’s coexistence
with intimate partner abuse (IPA). I didn’t even ask about
IPA in my interviews, but it kept coming up over and over
and over again. So does that mean that abusers are more
likely to cheat? I can’t say that there’s a correlation,
but I can say that they kind of coexist.
Infidelity hurts people’s
feelings, breaks people’s hearts, destroys their faith in
another person and sometimes in relationships at large, and
all of that is terrible. Experiencing infidelity can also
lead to depression and self-esteem issues. Some people even
have Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder -like symptoms after
experiencing infidelity. However, none of that covers this
physical, sexual abuse aspect where your partner was out
having unprotected sex with someone else and they bring home
an STI to you.
Two hundred and five of
the women in my study had contracted STIs from their
husbands. One woman in particular, her husband would say
when they would fight, “Oh you can’t leave me cause I fixed
it so no one else would want you.” She’s like, “I had no
idea what he meant. She was really sick in the hospital and
the doctors were trying to figure out what was wrong, they
ran a bunch of tests and they were like, “We’re sorry ma’am,
but you have HIV.” That’s what the husband meant.
So for me, the public
health issue has always been my main emphasis behind
infidelity. Your partner is out there telling everyone that
you’re cheating on him as opposed to the other way around so
you don’t want to show your face around your family or your
friends. He’s such a serial cheater and everyone knows he’s
cheating on you and you’re still together, but you feel like
you can’t go out anymore because everyone’s judging you when
you go out because they know about your business.
That’s also a form of
social abuse. It’s keeping you from your network and your
support system. And then there’s financial abuse, all the
hundreds of thousands of dollars that go out of households,
especially if you’re married and your partner has kids with
someone else. So not only is he cheating on you, but he’s
also in your pockets, and now his other woman, who is the
mother of his children, is also in your pockets because
you’re married? Those are all kinds of things that we don’t
really think about going along with infidelity, but they do,
and they impact women’s lives in ways that they will never
be the same again.
Perryman:
Thank you.
Ebony A. Utley, Ph.D. is an intimacy expert and associate
professor of communication studies at California State
University Long Beach. Her research explores intimacy
interrupted by infidelity and beliefs about marriage. Dr.
Utley’s expertise has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey
Network and other radio, print, and online outlets.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
The Viability of Black Family
Life: Communication |
