Infatuation At 64!

How Social Media can Impact Marriage Life?

This is one of the most interesting cases with a relationship and marital issues, where social media impacted the marriage life. It was with the help of Marriage Counselling that we helped the couple gain a better insight about themselves as well as their partner.

Mr. Ajit Dixit (age 65) with his wife Mrs. Sudha Dixit (age 64) approached us with their marital issues. They had an arranged marriage and have been together since the last 40 years. The couple lived their life very happily, with the normal ups and downs like in every marriage. Mr. Dixit is a businessman, quite dedicated and busy with his job. While, Mrs. Dixit is a housewife, free of almost every responsibility at her age. They have two sons, where both are happily married and settled in Toronto and Sydney.

Mr. Dixit recently noticed that his wife has been seeing someone. He didn’t like his wife’s unusual behavior, so he came for marriage counseling along with his wife. We had a couple of sessions with them, where we got to know that Mr. Dixit is very much of an introvert, while Mrs. Dixit is quite the opposite. She loves socializing with people, but due to her age and limitations, she only has the option of social networking. Mr. Dixit is mainly involved with his business, and due to his introvert nature, he doesn’t have a social circle apart from his employees. Mrs. Dixit started feeling lonely/isolated and turned to social media.

She started communicating with her school & college classmates, and even with her crushes. As days passed, her interest in the virtual reality grew stronger. She loved art and poetry, and with no surprise, she even posted poems on Facebook. Once her poem was liked by Mr. Ramesh (her secret crush from college days), and as he liked poetry himself, he responded to it with his own style. They started posting poems on facebook and commented on each other’s poem in very artistic flair. They even started dedicating poems to each other, shared their phone numbers and it was not very soon that they started seeing each other. They met at various cafes and restaurants, watched movies together and visited several museums within the city altogether. Thus, having a similar taste in the field united them and made her fall for her old-time crush. Even Mr. Sharma by now was having a romantic inclination towards her.

We discussed the matter with Mrs. Dixit and helped her understand that she was feeling isolated and wanted a friend with whom she could share her feelings. She said that she didn’t have anything of a common hobby with her husband and due to his nature and being busy all the time, they didn’t have much in common to talk.

After her children’s marriage, she could have indulged in her hobbies that she didn’t get time for or left ages ago. It is easy to carry on activities when accompanied by someone else, so she chose her friend and it leads to the romantic inclination towards him. We requested Mr. and Mrs. Dixit to indulge in some mutual activities, going out together at least during the weekends and especially to Mr. Dixit that he spends time with his wife also, and not give too much priority to his work.

We would additionally like to highlight the role of social media, how the ordinary level of flirting can lead to a serious relationship. In certain cases, married individuals also start comparing their spouse with their online friend and unconsciously create distance within their healthy relationship. We would recommend every couple to understand your partners need and spend much of quality time with them. It would also be advised to the readers to understand that cutting off from exes, especially when you are married or in a serious relationship becomes important for your relationship to be healthy.