For a guy like Rep. Anthony Weiner, sending naked photos over the internet to six different women doesn’t mean he was “cheating” on his wife. In fact he said “I never had sex outside my marriage.”
Living with the pronunciation of his unfortunate last name his whole life, you would think Weiner would try to avoid so much embarrassment in adulthood.
But making a fool of himself as an adult must come easy. In response to press questions he initially denied that the photos he sent were even of him. While this is understandable given that our first instinct is to cover up and hide things we get caught doing, as the truth comes out, Weiner appears more adolescent then my fourteen year old son.
Doesn’t Anthony know that anyone can find anything on the internet these days and that as a public figure he might want to avoid “exposing” himself all over the virtual globe?
I try to talk to my teenagers about the dangers of posting photos of themselves online that they may not want someone to see someday; future partners, bosses, children. They think I am worrying over nothing.
Teens have a sense of insulation, perhaps, as we all do about our online behaviors. It feels anonymous; it’s not. It feels private; it never is. And it feels temporary, like the moment won’t last longer then a key stroke. It does.
What you post on the internet lives there for your lifetime.
So what would make a politician like Weiner behave this way? He sent half naked pictures of himself as well as shots of his penis to six women. (By the way, women are not turned on by penis photos, but I guess he didn’t know that).
Maybe he is an exhibitionist and likes people to see how hot he is. He actually has a rather well developed chestal region. And he looks well man-scaped. No chest hair in those photos. Perhaps the idea that someone is watching him and getting off gets him off.
Maybe he was trying to engage in virtual sex; anonymously picking up women and trying to entice them to some webcam mutual masturbation.
Or maybe he is still a teenager himself, convinced he is the center of the universe and that there will never be a consequence to his actions.
Does it matter that he never met any of these women “in person”? Internet infidelity or what Dr Joe Kort and I call “sex on the download” is certainly a type of affair. An affair is characterized by three things, one or more of which indicate that the partner being cheated on will be hurt and angry. First, there is some type of outside sexual behavior. Second, there can be an emotional relationship formed with someone outside of the marriage and three; there is some form of dishonesty. It is the lying and denying – especially once the affair has been discovered – that can be particularly hard to get over.
Peggy Vaughan, author of the The Monogamy Myth, did a survey and found that both men and women agreed that it is more difficult to get over being dishonest about infidelity then it was to move past the sexual affair itself.
If Rep. Weiner was honest with himself he might see that the internet can be fun but getting caught sending naked photos of yourself is not. And lying about it doesn’t make it better. Maybe one thing to remember is that if you are in the public don’t be so public.
Or perhaps that was the turn on; the very real possibility of being exposed.
I hope Weiner’s wife can keep her privacy through this ordeal and that they will work through it as a family. I’ll check online to see how they are doing.
Dr Tammy Nelson is a sex and relationship specialist and the author of Getting the Sex You Want; Shed Your Inhibitions and Reach New Heights of Passion Together as well as the upcoming The New Monogamy; Erotic Recovery After Infidelity.
Leave a Reply