Beware: Flirting Online Can Ruin Your Relationship

Online flirting can leave us feeling less attracted to our partner, and more likely to be unfaithful, according to new research.

Studies carried out at Reichman University, Herzliya, found participants viewed their partner less favorably after social media flirtation with a stranger.

And, when asked to describe the first sexual fantasy that came to mind, it was more likely to involve the flirtatious stranger than their current partner.

“Committed individuals cope with alternative partners by using strategies that undermine their allure,” said Prof. Gurit Birnbaum, of the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, in the introduction to her research paper.

“However, in an era, in which alternative mates lurk around every corner, these strategies may lose their effectiveness.”

Her study, entitled Temptation at your door: Receiving mate poaching attempts and perceived partners’ desirability, finds that the potential damage caused by online interactions often occurs at an unconscious level.

It can facilitate the release of passionate feelings towards people other than a partner, that may have been easier to suppress in the past, she says.

People may strive to remain faithful by ignoring suitors or perceiving them as less attractive than they are, she says, but high rates of infidelity suggest this is not always effective.

Members of the research team chatted online with two groups of romantically involved participants. Half the researchers kept the conversation neutral, the other half were deliberately flirtatious.

The participants were then interviewed. Those who were flirted with perceived their current partner in a more negative light, on both the conscious and unconscious levels, compared to the participants of the control group.

Another, related experiment, also involved participants who had either a neutral or a flirty online chat. They were asked to describe in writing the first sexual fantasy that came to their mind afterwards.

Independent judges analyzed the level of desire in that fantasy towards both the current partner and the flirty online chat partner.  They found that participants fantasized more about the flirty chat partners, and expressed more desire towards them than the participants in the control condition.

Prof. Gurit Birnbaum said: “Previous studies that examined factors predicting infidelity dealt with the partners’ personalities or the nature of the couple’s relationship.

“In the current study, I chose to focus on the behavior of the suitors, and to assess whether a suitor who is more active in expressing his interest in an individual who is already in a relationship is better able to penetrate the defense mechanisms and jeopardize the strength of the relationship.”

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