Internet relationships and their impact on primary relationships

This paper will present preliminary results of a survey conducted on the World Wide Web of participants who were married or in a defacto relationship and also had a romantic relationship with someone else on the internet. The 207 participants, who responded from 18 different countries, were generally well-educated, and ranged in age between 18 and 75 years. This paper will describe the reported reasons for developing Internet relationships, proportions of the sample who engaged in various behaviours, and their reports of its effect on their primary relationship. Plans for further studying these emerging behaviours, and the implications of using the internet to collect such data will also be discussed