Do you have anything to hide? Infidelity-related behaviors on social media sites and marital satisfaction

Abstract

Social media provides one route to behaviors that may be potentially harmful to romantic relationships, such as communicating with alternative partners, which can sometimes create relationship conflict, breakups, or divorce. Limited empirical evidence exists concerning social media infidelity-related behaviors and marital relationships. This study examined whether married/cohabiting individuals are using social media sites to engage in online infidelity-related behaviors and to what extent this related to relationship satisfaction, ambivalence, and relational attachment characteristics as reported by 338 married/cohabiting individuals from 176 families. Only a small percentage of married/cohabiting couples reported engaging in social media infidelity-related behaviors; however, more engagement in infidelity-related behaviors on social media was significantly related to lower relationship satisfaction, higher relationship ambivalence, and greater attachment avoidance and anxiety in both women and men. Additionally, attachment anxiety and gender interacted with relationship satisfaction in predicting online infidelity-related behaviors when controlling for other variables. Implications are discussed.

Relationship Satisfaction and Infidelity-Related Behaviors on Social Networks: A Preliminary Online Study of Hispanic Women

“…The novelty of our study was the inclusion of measures of sexual satisfaction and emotional intimacy. In this sense, our research expands the work done by McDaniel et al [4], finding significant and inverse correlations between infidelity-related behaviors on social networks, sexual satisfaction, and emotional intimacy. Similarly, our study showed, like other studies [25,29], that emotional intimacy contributes more to a couple's well-being than sexual satisfaction.…”

“…Digital media worsens the complexity of formulating consistent and clear criteria for judging the infidelity behaviors that already exist outside digital platforms [8][9][10]. While we know that infidelity behaviors on social media also contain sexual and emotional variants-some of which are easily defined, such as flirting and intimate conversations-others may be more controversial, such as remotely chatting with someone, even with strangers [2][3][4]8,10]. On the other hand, researchers have detailed how certain behaviors that might be considered problematic are not perceived and described as such by certain groups.…”

Digital Outing Confidence as a Mediator in the Digital Behavior Regulation and Internet Content Awareness Relationship

“…Social media use often impacts a couple's life. In the United States studies show that 1 in 5 marriages are ruined for this reason (McDaniel et al, 2017). Either there is already a problem in the relationship and because people do not know how to deal with them, one or both partners resort to this mechanism which unfortunately creates a rupture even more dangerous and the gap between the two deepens even more or the accessibility of social media is the one that determines the problems, there is a clear connection between the two.…”

Helpful or harmful? Exploring the impact of social media usage on intimate relationships

“…A recent study noted that those with a household income lower than $30,000 USD were likely to argue about the time their partner spent online, or to find '...the online activity of their partner upsetting' (Pew Research Center, 2014 p. 16). Use of social media can cause conflict and drive dissatisfaction with relationships, as the platform provides a means for partners to meet others, leading to potential infidelity (McDaniel, Drouin, & Cravens, 2017). Dang-Pham, Pittayachawan, and Nkhoma (2015) point out that stalking and harassment are among the negative behaviours enabled by such social networking services.…”