“Do you know how excited I am that Valentine’s Day falls on a work day?” Dhiraj, a chartered accountant from Mumbai, asks with a coy smile. “She thinks I will be in office but I’ve already taken leave. Crystal and I are spending the day together on video call.” In case you’re wondering, the ‘she’ in question is Dhiraj’s wife and Crystal is the woman from Singapore that he’s currently dating—the two have never met, and never plan to.
Crystal and Dhiraj found each other on the subred r/OnlineAffairs, a designated space for married redditors on the lookout for a “discreet online relationship”. If your mouth fell open, may we add, there are 129k members in this community and Reddit is chock full of similar NSFW subreds like r/Adultery, r/Affair or r/NaughtyfromNeglect. Dhiraj (who prefers to go by his first name, like the others interviewed in this story) explains his reason for stepping out on his wife of four years: “I’m not unhappy in my marriage but I’m not happy either, this is an in-between.”
A pretty weak argument but the CA is among a growing crop of people who are cheating on their partners with someone they met on the internet. And if you’re even remotely online, you’ve probably been swarmed with stories of celebrities and normies straying. At the end of 2024, Saltwater-slurping Barry Keoghan allegedly cheated on pop queen Sabrina Carpenter with OnlyFans creator Breckie Hill. A couple years ago, resident nice guy Adam Levine broke hearts when his flirty DMs with (many) models and influencers were unearthed online. Even on Instagram and YouTube, countless young creators make GRWM videos where they share debilitating personal experiences with infidelity, and it’s likely that you’ve heard of at least one such tale IRL (sorry!!!). Read Darshita Goyal's story on micro cheaters and how to use relationship check-ins to safely navigate dating in the digital age.
