Every night Somen Seth, a Delhi-based IT professional in his late 30s, stole out of his bed while his wife Sunaina slept soundly. Seth turned on his computer and sat in front of it for hours. Even after his wife came to know about Seth’s late night forays, she thought he was hooked to some online game. But gradually she got suspicious, and after a month of watching him carefully, she realised that he was actually having an affair with a German girl. A virtual affair — but an affair, nonetheless.

Rajeev Singh, 35, who runs a school in Giridih, Bihar, is yet another lover who is wired to the virtual realm. He can’t wait to reach home from work each day so he can log on to “married but looking” chat rooms and strike up a conversation with one of his 20-odd chat friends. Needless to say, all of them are women.

Shabaaz Alam, a 32-year-old school teacher, has just bought himself a laptop to chat with his virtual girlfriend. His wife doesn’t know of the relationship as yet.

Seth, Singh and Alam are not alone. They are part of an ever-growing number of people who have decided to commit adultery in the virtual world. But even though their adultery is virtual, the toll it is taking on their marriage is all too real. The more so, because many of these online affairs are often a hop, skip and jump away from a serious offline relationship.

In fact, a couple in the UK separated recently after the wife found out that the husband had fallen in love with a virtual female character on Second Life, an online Internet game.

Social scientists say that online infidelity has become par for the course for a lot of net-savvy adults. “At present we are putting together the results of two surveys concerning the use of technology in terms of forming personal relationships, establishing online affairs, and sexual harassment/bullying online,” says Professor Nada Kakabadse, a social scientist at Northampton University, UK. “My current studies indicate that online infidelity is widely prevalent. And age is often not a factor here — so you get both the very young and the very old practising it.”

One of the main attractions of a virtual fling is obviously that it comes without the messy repercussions of a real life extra-marital affair.

“Not having to reveal one’s identity makes the game much more interesting,” says sociologist Prashanta Ray. “Moreover, one can conjure up whatever image one wants to of the virtual partner. This, coupled with the no-strings-attached nature of the affair, makes virtual relationships attractive.” Also, most people feel that as long as the affair is virtual, they need not really feel guilty about it. After all, it is not for real, they reason.

Singh admits to having exchanged smutty talk with his virtual lady friends. He also admits to having had cyber sex. However, he says, “I don’t think that my wife should have an issue with that. It’s just for fun.”

However, most spouses do not take the matter of online cheating quite so casually. Besides, private investigators hired to check if a spouse has been unfaithful or not say that many of these online affairs do mutate into offline ones. “A lot of these virtual lovers do meet up,” says Kunwar Vikram Singh, managing director, Lancers Network Ltd, a Delhi-based detective agency. According to him, such cases are on the rise in India. “The fact that the number of online dating and social networking sites is increasing with every passing day confirms the trend,” he says.

Detectives claim that in 90 per cent of the cases they do find proof of infidelity. An investigator relates a case where a married woman with two grown up children studying in management schools got hooked to a college student via a social networking site. After the customary introduction, the virtual couple decided to convert it to a real romance.

The trend is evident in Calcutta as well. Says Raman Khanna, managing director of Hawk Intelligence Services, Calcutta, “While investigating these cases I have found that they looked upon a virtual fling as a safe way of venting their sexual frustration. I have also found that in most cases the chat content was pornographic in nature.”

Psychiatrists reveal that the number of couples coming for counselling after one partner has strayed online is on the rise. Says Dr J. R. Ram, consulting psychiatrist, Apollo Gleneagles, Calcutta, “People engaging in such activities are men and women between 30 and 40 years of age and most of them have a web-based working profile. Housewives too indulge in such affairs. In most of the cases counselling helps such people cement the rifts in their personal lives.”

Adds Anindya Sanyal, CEO of Relations Marriage Consultancy House, Calcutta. “Interestingly, in many of the cases we have come across, it’s the partner who has had an online affair who comes and seeks our help to give his marriage a second chance.”

So how damaging can online extra-marital relationships be? Psychiatrists feel that even if it remains confined to a virtual world, the affair can definitely lead to a sense of betrayal in the mind of the spouse. “A marriage is based on trust. An affair — whether it is online or offline — violates that trust. So in many cases, a virtual extra-marital affair could be as damaging for the marriage as a real life one,” says Dr Ram.

Clearly, even virtual infidelity is not without pitfalls.

(Some names have been changed on request)