DAMMAM, 23 December — If the Internet has brought some people closer, it has unfortunately separated others and in some cases even broken up marriages. Sometimes a bored wife finds an interesting person and decides that her relationship with her husband has gone stale. Through the Internet, she feels she has begun a meaningful and lively relationship. In such cases, the Internet has been the means of destroying relationships.
In the early days of Internet chatting, newspapers reported these break-ups. Now, however, such things have become so common that they hardly provoke any interest at all. They have now become another accepted fact of social life. Perhaps it all began in fun but the end result was anything but — broken marriages and unhappy people.
Recently, a young Pakistani housewife who had been in the Kingdom nine months ago returned to Karachi, leaving her husband behind. When she first arrived, things went very well but then her husband suddenly began coming home later than usual. He was spending extra time on the computer visiting chatrooms. Her protests failed to bring him home on time so she returned to Karachi. Luckily the conflict has not yet reached the stage of divorce and so there is a chance of reconciliation.
Not long ago an Indian couple who were addicted to chatting went from the Kingdom to the United States for a vacation. While there, the wife met one of her male chat friends, an Indian software engineer. The husband never suspected anything though his wife and her chat friend saw each other for almost three weeks. From the US, the couple went to India where the wife remained while the husband returned to the Kingdom. In a few weeks, the man received a letter from his wife; she was in Chicago and she wanted a divorce. She confessed that after the time she had spent with her chat friend, she wanted to marry him.
There have also been cases in which petty interests motivated people to leave their spouses and marry their chat friends. These interests include the lure of a green card for the United States or a UK work permit. The attraction of a Western lifestyle has also been the reason for many women leaving their husbands. A Pakistani accountant who had dreamed for years of migrating to the US found a single American mother on the Internet. Their cyber-relationship lasted for almost a year and the American woman wanted to marry. The accountant who had been married for five years went to the US and married his chat friend. He, however, was honest enough not to divorce his first wife and he admitted to his friends that he was marrying the American woman in order to get a green card.
It is beyond doubt that man by nature is not monogamous. At the same time, indulging in relationships based mainly on deception and dishonesty is no justification for anything. Similarly, when a woman forgets her marriage vows and leaves her husband for someone she knows only from an Internet chatroom, serious doubts are cast on her intelligence and integrity.
Internet chatting was originally to allow people to interact and learn about personal differences and differences in ways of living. The idea was to make the world what has been called a global village. It was not intended to break up marriages and destroy relationships. As we all know, this is what has happened. Is it not a misuse of the Internet and a reflection of the faults of Internet users?