Speaker 1: I felt as if here I was hiding, I was
Speaker 1: doing something that was wrong. I was scared to be caught.
Speaker 1: I was actually having this quote unquote famous nap on
Speaker 1: the Sunday, and I think my husband had come into
Speaker 1: the room. Here I am, you know, sexting, pretending that
Speaker 1: I'm having a nap, and I'm thinking you're really like
Speaker 1: working as right now, as if why are you interrupting? Right?
Speaker 1: That is Olivia. She's describing a moment where her husband
Speaker 1: entered her bedroom and unwittingly interrupted her having an orgasm
Speaker 1: after she read sexy texts from another man on her phone. See.
Speaker 1: A few years ago, Olivia reconnected with an old coworker
Speaker 1: and they started texting. Then they started sexting. Olivia had
Speaker 1: been unhappily married for more than two decades, but then
Speaker 1: a sold co worker came along and his texts became
Speaker 1: a virtual affair that completely changed her life. I felt
Speaker 1: very naive. I felt as if, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is such a taboo, like this is crazy. And I
Speaker 1: remember telling this to my girlfriends and they said, immediately
Speaker 1: change his name but the alias, because you really don't
Speaker 1: want your husband seeing that. I'm Joe Piazza, when you're
Speaker 1: listening to She Wants More, the podcast where real women
Speaker 1: talk openly and honestly about the extra marital affairs that
Speaker 1: have completely changed their lives. One thing that has really
Speaker 1: struck me while interviewing women for this podcast is just
Speaker 1: how much technology has changed the landscape of extra marital affairs.
Speaker 1: The women I've talked to completely rely on technology to
Speaker 1: meet men, to plan and execute their affairs, and to
Speaker 1: keep them a secret. Take Olivia, she conducted an entire
Speaker 1: affair strictly on her smartphone. It was completely based on
Speaker 1: getting text messages and voice memos from her old coworker.
Speaker 1: Like we said earlier, nothing physical ever actually happened. Technology
Speaker 1: has changed absolutely everything about having an affair, from dating
Speaker 1: websites for married people and Facebook and Craigslist to burner
Speaker 1: phones and WhatsApp. Technologies made it easier than ever for
Speaker 1: women to step out. For example, Michelle. Michelle was on
Speaker 1: the podcast a few episodes ago when she hit her
Speaker 1: breaking point with her husband, she signed up for Ashley Madison.
Speaker 1: And when Michelle signed up, within minutes, she started getting
Speaker 1: all kinds of responses from all kinds of men. She
Speaker 1: actually had to adjust her geography filter to make the
Speaker 1: radius smaller. That's right, smaller, because there were just so
Speaker 1: many available married men looking to meet married women close
Speaker 1: to her house. I asked Michelle what she thought it
Speaker 1: must have been like to be a woman in the
Speaker 1: pre internet days who wanted to have an affair, back
Speaker 1: in the Stone Age at the nineties, in early two thousands.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine being a woman pre internet who wants
Speaker 1: to have an affair? Right? Did they just walk into
Speaker 1: a bar? Right right? Lee, You're wedding me at home
Speaker 1: and hope nobody found out? Like, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't I mean, I mean, I think about that all
Speaker 1: the time. I think maybe I need to talk to
Speaker 1: more women who had affairs in the pre digital age
Speaker 1: because it just seems so much easier now. Well, and
Speaker 1: it seems easier to find somebody that's not in your
Speaker 1: social circle because you could find somebody probably pre online
Speaker 1: dating and stuff, but the chances are it's somebody that
Speaker 1: you meet at work or something where there's likely to
Speaker 1: be like overlap. You're right, yeah, yes, someone at church exactly.
Speaker 1: But is it really that easy? I wanted to see
Speaker 1: just how easy it was to find someone who wants
Speaker 1: to have an affair online. So, along with my intrepid
Speaker 1: producers Jab and Allie, we decided to sign up for
Speaker 1: Ashley Madison. Have you create a profile? Okay, so relationship
Speaker 1: status attached female, So use your name, You're like, no
Speaker 1: one uses their real make up? Something. Time you put
Speaker 1: in a greeting, Hey, sexy man, dear birth feels like
Speaker 1: a lot of personal information. Something long term. I want
Speaker 1: to say, cyber affair, erotic chat. Okay, okay, undecided, undecided,
Speaker 1: I'm undecided. Wait, fuck off? Why don't you to give
Speaker 1: your weight? Do you have to give your weight on
Speaker 1: any other dating thing? No, definitely not. You need your
Speaker 1: height also, height, body type? You all right? I'm giving
Speaker 1: my email. I guess people create fake emails for this,
Speaker 1: right probably that's so all right. It's telling me to
Speaker 1: add a disguised photo, disguise your identity, and add some
Speaker 1: privacy to your photos. More about you? Okay, I'm a
Speaker 1: forty something forty some thing writer, just here to explore.
Speaker 1: You're all signed up? I have to verify my email. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so many guys on there. Wow, I mean that
Speaker 1: took us how long that was? Five minutes? And look
Speaker 1: there's like bazillion men here, there's a bazillion man's kind
Speaker 1: of cute you think handsome stud forty six Philadelphia. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, they know and I'm in Philadelphia. Are not
Speaker 1: even in Philadelphia. I don't think I gave them. I
Speaker 1: didn't tell them anything. And that right there, that is
Speaker 1: how easy it was for a woman to sign up
Speaker 1: for a married person stating site that will deliver a
Speaker 1: gazillion men for you to have an affair with within
Speaker 1: a fifty mile radius of your house. We'll be back
Speaker 1: after a short break. We're back. Technology has allowed individuals
Speaker 1: to have affairs from the comfort of their own home.
Speaker 1: You may be sitting next to your partner on the
Speaker 1: couch and watching TV while also engaging an affair from
Speaker 1: your smartphone. That's Jacklin Cravens Pickens. Jacqueline is a marriage
Speaker 1: and family therapy professor at Texas Tech University and is
Speaker 1: also a licensed marriage and family therapist. Her research is
Speaker 1: on relationships, technology, and monogamy. I called Jacqueline because she's
Speaker 1: pretty much the leading expert out there on the intersection
Speaker 1: of tech and infidelity, and one of the things she
Speaker 1: told me is that the evolution of technology enabling affairs
Speaker 1: has been happening pre smartphone, and she took me back
Speaker 1: about twenty years ago, back to the beginning of Facebook
Speaker 1: and a virtual reality game called Farmville. One of my
Speaker 1: first couples that I had worked with, it was a
Speaker 1: heterosexual couple. The female partner had been having a relationship
Speaker 1: with a game player on farm Ville that they met
Speaker 1: through the game, and the husband had said, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't believe you love this person. You don't know
Speaker 1: who they actually are. You've never met them in person.
Speaker 1: So you think you want to leave me for this
Speaker 1: person on Farmville. I'll kind of call your bluff and
Speaker 1: I'll pay for you to go meet this person in
Speaker 1: real life, offline all Farmville, and this will settle everything,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna come back and want to be with me.
Speaker 1: So when her husband found out and he said, how
Speaker 1: about you going to meet the guy in person and
Speaker 1: you'll realize just how crazy you're being. As you might imagine,
Speaker 1: this did not go as the husband expected. Meeting all
Speaker 1: fline ended up being even better than their online relationship,
Speaker 1: and so when the wife came back to town and
Speaker 1: they were back in session, she said, yeah, no, I'm
Speaker 1: leaving you. I want to be with this person. She
Speaker 1: left her husband for the Farmville guy, a guy she
Speaker 1: never would have met in real life, but because of
Speaker 1: a game where you buy and sell virtual livestock, an
Speaker 1: affair was made possible along with the dissolution of an
Speaker 1: unhappy marriage. Now, like I said, this was almost twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, and it's about the same time that Craigslist
Speaker 1: Casual Encounters became popular for people looking for casual sex
Speaker 1: or extra marital affairs. In fact, remember Monique from episode three,
Speaker 1: Craigslist Casual Encounters is how she started her first affair.
Speaker 1: You could go on Craigslist and you could find anything
Speaker 1: from adult nursing relationship to garden furniture. I had a
Speaker 1: girlfriend who had just separated, and one day she was
Speaker 1: over and we'd been kind of drinking and looking at Craigslist,
Speaker 1: and I saw this ad that I thought was just brilliant,
Speaker 1: and I replied. We kept corresponding, and then at some
Speaker 1: point we decided to have a beer together and it
Speaker 1: had it. And now with smartphones, internet capable devices and
Speaker 1: all the social media affairs have reached a whole new
Speaker 1: level of accessibility. The Internet has really arrived at a
Speaker 1: place where it greatly approximates offline life. We used to
Speaker 1: not have things like video capabilities or virtual reality. That's
Speaker 1: Jacklin Craven's pickens Again, it's created very unique ways in
Speaker 1: which we can engage in online infidelity. You could be
Speaker 1: using teledildonics or USB capable devices that are sex toys
Speaker 1: that somebody else can be operating on the other side
Speaker 1: of the world, and we can be having sexual affairs
Speaker 1: through technology. What is a teledildonic? Did I say that right?
Speaker 1: Is that a teledildo? Yes? Absolutely so other words use cyberdildonics,
Speaker 1: but it's basically a fancy word for a USB capable
Speaker 1: sex toy. Then all sorts of different types exist. So
Speaker 1: if you're you're curious, I want to do a quick
Speaker 1: Google search from dildos to mouths that are USB operated
Speaker 1: by a partner in another location. So we think about
Speaker 1: online affairs being direct messages, secret chats that are happening,
Speaker 1: and I think with virtual reality and things like teledyldonics,
Speaker 1: you know, our imagination is probably pretty endless now about
Speaker 1: how people are having online affairs. How you just I
Speaker 1: really like it when I learn new words and what
Speaker 1: are some ways specifically that you've seen people using technology
Speaker 1: to cheat and We've heard about women using Ashley Madison
Speaker 1: and then What's App, separate emails, burner phones, all of
Speaker 1: these things to schedule and track their affairs, similar to
Speaker 1: introducing you to the concept of teledyldonics. I think the
Speaker 1: options are so far reaching. I've seen people engaging in
Speaker 1: affairs through Reddit. They were in special communities on Reddit
Speaker 1: and built a connection and meeting people through social media apps.
Speaker 1: The Calculator app was one I saw for a while,
Speaker 1: which was an app that allows you to have a secret,
Speaker 1: hidden compartment in your phone where you could have dating
Speaker 1: apps and text messages. That looks like the Calculator app
Speaker 1: until you click it and it asks you to put
Speaker 1: in a password and then write It's like opening the
Speaker 1: subfolder of a phone where hidden information exists. No, it
Speaker 1: looks like the Calculator and so no one's ever going
Speaker 1: to open it. But it's actually got all of your
Speaker 1: secret dating and text messaging stuff in it. Yes, Calculator apps,
Speaker 1: Reddit affairs, virtual dildos. These lines are blurry as f
Speaker 1: and it is hard to figure out where fantasies end
Speaker 1: and reality begins. But we're about to see just how
Speaker 1: real a virtual affair can get to be. Walking in
Speaker 1: the street and to be able to reach it to orgasm.
Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, this is and this is when you
Speaker 1: start realizing the power of the mind. You know, an
Speaker 1: affair doesn't necessarily have to be that physical sexual relationship,
Speaker 1: or that orgasm doesn't necessarily have to be the actual penetration.
Speaker 1: That's Olivia again, the woman who orgasmed while her husband
Speaker 1: was just in the other room, while she was receiving
Speaker 1: a sexy text from another man. And after the break,
Speaker 1: we are going to hear every detail of her virtual affair.
Speaker 1: We're back. The text messages continue, but they kick it
Speaker 1: up a notch a little bit. It's as if we're
Speaker 1: raising the volume. I felt very naive. I felt as if,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is such a taboo, like this
Speaker 1: is crazy. And I remember telling this to my girlfriends
Speaker 1: and they said it changed his name, but the alias,
Speaker 1: because you really don't want your husband seeing that. That's
Speaker 1: Olivia telling me about how her virtual sexting affair got started.
Speaker 1: After reconnecting with her for our coworker, that coworker started
Speaker 1: playfully sending some texts, but they quickly got pretty racy.
Speaker 1: Her friends told her to change his name on her
Speaker 1: phone in case her husband got suspicious. But let's back
Speaker 1: up for a moment and find out how this all
Speaker 1: started for Olivia. When we first started talking, Olivia told
Speaker 1: me that she was the kind of person who would
Speaker 1: never have an affair, who would never cross a line.
Speaker 1: And so I asked her how she ended up getting
Speaker 1: into this. She told me it was because at that moment,
Speaker 1: the moment when she started talking to her former co worker,
Speaker 1: she'd reached a point in her marriage where she really
Speaker 1: felt like she'd lost herself, and in that moment, she
Speaker 1: was much more receptive to sexting advances. You know, with
Speaker 1: my husband, if he would put his foot in his mouth,
Speaker 1: or if he would just start drinking, he would say
Speaker 1: things without measure. He would be disrespectful to women who
Speaker 1: was like, I'm the man of the house, I'm the
Speaker 1: ruler control, I pay, so I decide what it's done.
Speaker 1: It just became worse and worse and worse. I had
Speaker 1: to change who I was to satisfy him. The way
Speaker 1: the hair was done. The hair had to be blonde,
Speaker 1: it had to be straight. And he would say this
Speaker 1: to people. He would say this to my kids. You know,
Speaker 1: your mother would be perfect if she would just have this,
Speaker 1: and why won't she do this for me? And I
Speaker 1: think I was just so desperate to feel alive. I
Speaker 1: was willing to take that risk. I felt giddy, I
Speaker 1: felt beautiful. I allowed myself to be taken to this fantasy,
Speaker 1: and yes I did fantasize about it. I did take
Speaker 1: it to a whole other level. I think the fantasy
Speaker 1: also the taboo, right, there was something so mysterious about it.
Speaker 1: Do you think it was hotter because it wasn't physical. Yes,
Speaker 1: I felt as if I had this secret and it
Speaker 1: was this wonderful secret or piece of information that was
Speaker 1: filling my cup in every possible way, Like to be
Speaker 1: walking in the street and to be able to reach
Speaker 1: an orgasm. I'm like, wow, I've got to ask what
Speaker 1: was in the text message that made you have the
Speaker 1: orgasm walking down the street. I think it was just
Speaker 1: in the way he was saying how he was going
Speaker 1: to touch me in just such an incredible way, in
Speaker 1: a very sensual, very erotic way. The touch, the caress,
Speaker 1: the oil, what he was going to do to me,
Speaker 1: how he was going to do it to me. It
Speaker 1: was the foreplay, It was the excitement, it was the stimulation.
Speaker 1: You know, how do you like this? How do you
Speaker 1: want this? How many fingers? Positions? Things like this? Literally
Speaker 1: lost for like twenty minutes, so like me to where
Speaker 1: I was going, and I was like, what the hell
Speaker 1: is happening to me? And you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: funny thinking here I'm walking in the street and having
Speaker 1: this crazy ass orgasm and all these people passing me
Speaker 1: and they have no fucking clue what's going on. And
Speaker 1: it was just incredible. And I also realized that I
Speaker 1: am very sexual, that I enjoy the connection, I enjoy
Speaker 1: the intimacy, and I think in that week he brought
Speaker 1: that back. I had actually asked him to get me
Speaker 1: one of those remote control vibrators which a friend of
Speaker 1: mine had told me about, that you can control it
Speaker 1: through Bluetooth, and you know, I was willing to experiment
Speaker 1: certain things with him. It was as if Pandora's box
Speaker 1: had opened up with him. I asked Olivia if there
Speaker 1: were a lot of other times that she messaged with
Speaker 1: her former co worker while her husband was right there,
Speaker 1: and if she did, if there was a thrill or
Speaker 1: a power she got from the secrecy, Yes, there'll be
Speaker 1: a gun for dinner, and that we were going to
Speaker 1: the theater and he started texting me, and my husband
Speaker 1: is sitting right in front of me, my daughter's right
Speaker 1: beside me, and the phone is on my left side.
Speaker 1: And I remember my daughter wanting to get my phone.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, no, no no, you can't use your dad.
Speaker 1: And she just turned to me and she's like what,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, god, I was too scared that the
Speaker 1: message would come up. I went to the washroom and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I can't I'm at the theater.
Speaker 1: And he didn't get it. You just didn't get it.
Speaker 1: Then we were at the theater or waiting to go in.
Speaker 1: During the play, you know how, the light kind of
Speaker 1: flashes on, and of course my husband is beside and
Speaker 1: he's like, you know, who's texting you? I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: no much. I think it's just you know, work related. Luckily,
Speaker 1: what I was doing for work, it was pretty much
Speaker 1: twenty four seven. But yeah, it was exciting. It was
Speaker 1: very exciting. Did you ever think about it as an affair? No, don't.
Speaker 1: I don't even know the title. There's so many different
Speaker 1: titles that one could put on it, or there's so
Speaker 1: many different meanings. I guess if you want to put
Speaker 1: to the word affair, is an affair being disloyal to
Speaker 1: your partner, Because if that's the case, then emotionally, I
Speaker 1: guess I did have an affair. Do I feel guilty
Speaker 1: about it? No? Not once did I feel guilty. This
Speaker 1: was the part that was so interesting to me. Olivia
Speaker 1: never considered this to be an affair because nothing physical happened. Sure,
Speaker 1: she was having the best orgasm of her life. She
Speaker 1: was feeling free and open and fucking amazing. She was
Speaker 1: talking to this man about the most intimate parts of
Speaker 1: her body, but she didn't consider it cheating. And that
Speaker 1: right there, that is another way that technology has changed
Speaker 1: how women can cheat on their husbands. You can have
Speaker 1: an affair that's maybe not even an affair. I think
Speaker 1: that there are some really great theories that help us
Speaker 1: better understand how this happens. Even with people that, like
Speaker 1: I said, don't get online or reach out to people
Speaker 1: or meet people with the specific purpose of having an affair.
Speaker 1: That's Jaqueline Cravens Pickens Again. They get on for gameplay,
Speaker 1: or they reach out to a high school friend or
Speaker 1: a college ex partner just to check in, and very
Speaker 1: quickly it moves into very vulnerable personal information where we're
Speaker 1: building these really quick, emotionally intense connections and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden we've crossed a boundary. And one of the
Speaker 1: things we know about computer mediated communication is people talk
Speaker 1: about how quickly they feel more comfortable being able to
Speaker 1: disclose personal information. So I didn't realize I was going
Speaker 1: to open up and share all of these intimate details
Speaker 1: in the way in which I did, and so much
Speaker 1: more rapidly. Online people feel emotionally close and connected than
Speaker 1: what happens and offline interactions. And that's why I use
Speaker 1: that term that slippery slope of like, well, I didn't
Speaker 1: think that this was what was going to happen from
Speaker 1: this interaction, and here we are. I feel so connected,
Speaker 1: this person really understands me. I feel so close, so connected,
Speaker 1: so quickly. Right, it really is a slippery slip. And
Speaker 1: we will be going write down that Slabrislow next week
Speaker 1: when we dive into an affair that took a very
Speaker 1: unexpected twist. Over the past seven episodes, we've learned that
Speaker 1: infidelity and non monogamy for women can be a lot
Speaker 1: of things, empowering, freeing, even self esteem building, but they're
Speaker 1: also complicated, and if I'm being honest with you, I'm
Speaker 1: still trying to figure out what does it all mean
Speaker 1: for female sexuality and agency and for breaking down the
Speaker 1: stigmas that have allowed men to cheat and kept women
Speaker 1: faithful for so long. That is all Next week this
Speaker 1: has been She Wants More. I'm your host, Joe Piazza.
Speaker 1: She Wants More was inspired by the book A Passion
Speaker 1: for More by Susan Shapiro Bearish. It was adapted for
Speaker 1: audio by executive produces Merrill Poster, Kara Pfeiffer, and Susan
Speaker 1: Shapiro Parish. She Wants More is hosted and reported by
Speaker 1: me Joe Piazza. Jennifer Bassett is our lead producer and
Speaker 1: story editor. Our sound design is by Jessica Crunchich. Our
Speaker 1: theme was composed by Anna Stumff and Hamilton Lighthouser. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers for iHeart are Ali Perry and Nikki Etour.
Speaker 1: She Wants More as a production of iHeart Podcasts. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.