The other day, I decided to unblock someone from my life. I decided to do that out of sheer boredom. At any rate, in the process of unblocking this person, I decided to Google his new username as well. He used a different username when we first ‘met’ online. When he first sent me a message that he changed his username, I told my husband about it. I was told that he changed his username because his account was hacked into a few weeks before. My husband rolled his eyes and said that his wife found out about his online philandering and to stay away from him – not to send him any photos or have any phone contacts with him. “What if his wife rings you up one day and asked what the hell you were doing calling her husband? What are you going to say to say to her? Worse, she finds out where you are, what are you going to do then?” I weighed that question and decided that it was not worth the aggravation. Still, I could not resist the temptation of baiting him so the other day, I unblocked him for the sheer fun of it.

In Google-ing his new username, I found him on several websites. (That is normal, right, we all do it. So what was wrong with being a member of several websites? Nothing is wrong, really. I am a member of several websites; worse, I post videos and photographs and have off the grid conversations with other members of various sites.) I found him to be a member of fubar and tubely among others. This is where I started laughing aloud, wondering what he was doing on these websites. These are dating websites; maybe not like Match.com but dating sites nonetheless. In fact, I thought fubar was a cross between MySpace and FaceBook – with the booze, the friends leaving notes/messages on your wall and those glaring glitter to “spice up” your messages to your friends. I think the only thing lacking was the music that plays automatically whenever someone visits your profile page.

I can only imagine a typical private message between him and his friends on these sites. All of his friends are females, by the way – all 900 plus of them. Right, I mentioned it was a dating site that reminded me much of FaceBook and MySpace. What is a married middle-aged man doing on a site such as that? True, many of my friends are on FaceBook poking each other every other hour for no reason other than the fact the pokes are there to be utilised and it is fun. The thing is, my friends on FaceBook are not (publicly) looking for dates. They are connecting with friends they met on twitter, pownce and other social-networking sites. They don’t even care to have 900 friends and what few hundred friends they do have there are a mix of both males and females.

Forgive me but I just find it hilarious that a happily married man is on a dating site looking to hook up like a teenager with raging hormones.

True, I am a happily married woman who is on various social-networking sites but I am not looking to hook up with anyone. It also happens that I am not keeping my husband out of the loop of what I do on or offline.

A couple of people I met last year asked in great detail what I would consider as cheating. In my opinion (and feel free to have your own opinion of course) cheating on your husband, boyfriend, wife or girlfriend simply means connecting physically with another person without your husband, boyfriend, wife or girlfriend’s knowledge. You work hard in keeping your liaisons with others a secret from your significant other. Life is already complicated why make it even harder by lying and cheating? I am sure others might chime in, what about connecting not physically but mentally? Such as having a cup of coffee at lunch or a drink after work and you find yourself drawn to this person sitting across from you and both or one of you is married. Sure, those also falls into that category I call cheating.

I do admit I talk to a few people I met online – we have telephone conversations, we send each other text messages, we share photographs, videos and adult jokes and we laugh. If the opportunity arises in the future, we might even meet each other and laugh in real time. What will not happen is neither my friends nor myself will lie to our significant others about why we are going somewhere. This person I blocked off my life came up with a plan to lie to his wife about why he was leaving town for a few days. He was planning to meet me of course and when I asked what he would tell his wife, he answered as-a-matter-of-factly; I will tell her I have to be in your area for work. My husband stared and shook his head at me when I told him. I could not help myself so I burst out laughing. What was the outcome of that plan? I told him to wait until I say he could come to town. That day never came and I am sure if I say the word now, he would be on a plane to meet me.

It feels good to have that kind of power over someone who said his vows of the sanctity of marriage to another person. It truly does make me feel good.

But no worries, I have no desire to do that because that only invites trouble down the road.

If you have the urge to see other people while you are still married, for the love of all things holy, talk to your wife, girlfriend, boyfriend or husband about it. You might be surprised to find that they would agree to it. Even if they did not, you would have gotten things off your chest and not walk around with a burden so great that you might slip up or develop an ulcer or worse, both. That is not the way to live your life, is it?