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The Ashley Madison hack: What to do if you suspect your partner is having an affair

Following the hack of Ashley Madison, the dating site for extra-marital affairs, many people are looking to find out if their partner was signed up. So if you suspect your partner is cheating on you, should you confront them? Does revenge ever make you feel better? And can relationships survive an affair?

 Ammanda Major in The Independent

There are no two ways about it – affairs can be hugely painful. Feelings of shock, anger and resentment can quickly set in and knowing what to do about them can seem torturous. The mere thought that your partner may be attracted to someone else or actively involved with them is tough enough, but knowing what to say or do about it is usually tougher.Perhaps a starting point is to focus on what has made you suspicious. Do you have ‘facts’? Has someone said something to you? Has your partner become withdrawn or started making more of an effort with their appearance? Have things between you been difficult recently and you have noticed that they are talking more about a specific person, perhaps a friend or work colleague? Perhaps you are concerned about what they are up to online or have discovered unusual texts or emails. Any or all of these are likely to throw most people into panic.

Often, fears about affairs arise when there may be other problems. As a Relate counsellor, I see how family life stages like looking after young children, older children leaving home (or not leaving home), redundancy, ill health, becoming carers or extra work pressures can all wear down our resources and make us feel vulnerable and insecure. It is important to remember this, because any of them might lead to a partner being less attentive or available than before, but that does not mean they are having an affair.

 But what do you do if you still suspect something is going on? Firstly, try and get clear what it is you actually do suspect. Is it sex, an emotional attachment, a cyber relationship or a friendship? Do not be tempted to go down the route of bugging your partner’s devices or using similar methods to track their whereabouts. This is unhelpful, possibly criminal and very unlikely to assist you to recover what you most want, i.e your partner.

Whilst it is true that it is good to talk, beware of telling all your friends and family about your suspicions. Remember, the more people who become involved, take sides and offer often conflicting advice, the more difficult it may be to start thinking about what the two of you want to do, if and when it turns out there has been an affair. Confiding in a trusted friend or family member can be useful to help you get your thoughts straighter and work out how to best tackle your partner about your worries.

Secondly, decide if you actually want to raise it with your partner. It is probably fair to say that many relationships continue for years with the suspicion of an affair, with nothing ever being said. Long term though, this is often a really painful option with years of resentment and feelings of abandonment building up that eat into your confidence and self-esteem. But fearing confirmation of any suspicion is powerful and it is understandable that we may try to put concerns to one side for as long as possible.

Thirdly, if you decide to raise it, choose a good time. Don’t raise it in the middle of a row about something else or when one of you is about to go out. Try and make sure you will not be interrupted. Most importantly, try and stay calm and tell your partner exactly why you are worried. Give them a chance to explain themselves but be prepared for the answer. Usually, we are hoping for reassurance that will reduce our anxieties about being left for someone else and you may not get this. The reality of having a suspicion confirmed by a ‘confession’ may come as a relief for some people but for most, it’s devastating.

However much you ask for information, your partner may not give you what you want. They may deny it outright, or tell you ‘it’s just a friend’. Either way you may be left feeling the matter is unresolved. Once it has been raised though there is often the overwhelming urge to come back to it time and time again, usually with the same outcome. Getting to this point is exhausting for both of you so it could be useful to get some professional help to try to find a way forward – whether that’s together or apart. Ultimately, if you keep suspecting and they keep denying, you may need support to help you make decisions about what to do next.

It is not uncommon for people to consider some form of revenge when they feel they have been betrayed by their partner. Some people might think it is a good idea to have an affair themselves for example, to damage the person’s property, or to name and shame the guilty party. While this may make them feel better at the time, in the long term not only do they end up having to deal with the hurt if it turns out there was an affair, but also the consequences of the revenge. If you find yourself wanting to seek revenge and even more so if you have not got all your facts straight, take a step back to recognise this is because of the level of hurt you are feeling at the time.

People tend to be pessimistic about whether their relationship can recover – indeed, Relate’s 2014 The Way We Are Now survey of over 5000 people found that only 33% thought a relationship could survive an affair. However, this was in stark contrast to the optimism of our counsellors, 94% of whom believed that a relationship can survive and potentially thrive after a partner has cheated.

So the good news is that many relationships recover from suspicions or confirmation of an affair. Despite the pain and anxiety, some couples say that an affair has given them the opportunity to examine all sorts of relationship issues and they feel stronger as a partnership afterwards. But this usually comes after a lot of soul searching and acknowledgement that no one has made your partner have an affair and that by doing so they have turned your world upside down.
Ammanda Major is a Relate Counsellor and Sex Therapist

How to humiliate brands via social media

'Don't fly @BritishAirways'? 

For those with an axe to grind and a broadband account to exploit, here are a few ways to dot-complain on social media

• 
• • Arwa Mahdawi
  • theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 September 2013 13.40 BST

Hasan Syed, disgruntled with the way British Airways handled his father's lost luggage, paid $1,000 to promote a tweet that read "Don't fly @BritishAirways. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

As the first law of digita ldynamics states, much of the energy expended within the internet relates to a) porn; b) cats; or c) complaining. The irate customer service tweet or Facebook update is familiar to us all. But while we may be used to people venting their frustrations online, Hasan Syed has just taken the power of anti-social networking to giddy new heights. Disgruntled with the way British Airways handled his father's lost luggage, Syed paid $1,000 (£640) to promote a tweet that read "Don't fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous." This has now been seen by tens of thousands of people and promptly picked up by media outlets around the world.

The fine art of complaining has come a long way thanks to technology. Back in the pre-digital day you had to sit down and write a strongly-worded letter if you wanted to call out brands behaving badly. Those wishing to take a more direct approach could go wave a placard or, as a friend of mine once did, superglue your hands to a multinational's revolving doors. Nowadays, however, you can make your voice heard without risking appendages or wasting a stamp. So, for those with an axe to grind and a broadband account to exploit, here are a few ways to dot-complain in the modern age.

1. Bashtag

Last year Starbucks attracted widespread ire after it avoided paying corporation tax in the UK. So, in one attempt to make people feel all warm and fuzzy about its brand again, Starbucks invited the twitterati to display happy holiday messages on a big screen outside London's Natural History Museum in London by using the #spreadthecheer hashtag. Visitors to the Museum were promptly treated to a number of tweets along the lines of "Hey #Starbucks, PAY YOUR FUCKING TAX #spreadthecheer".

Starbucks isn't the first victim of what is termed "bashtagging." Some bright spark at McDonald's once came up with the great idea of letting people share their heart(burn)warming experiences with the brand via a #McDStories hashtag campaign. Voila, tweets like: "One time I walked into McDonalds and I could smell Type 2 diabetes floating in the air and I threw up. #McDStories."

2. Game Google

Google isn't just a search engine, it's a reputation engine. Like it or not, in the eyes of many, you are what you are on Google. And, for several years, former Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum found that what he was on Google was a "frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." This, by the way, wasn't down to a series of questionable decisions by the OED, but the result of a carefully orchestrated campaign by columnist Dan Savage. After Santorum ludicrously compared homosexuality to bestiality in a media interview, Savage gamed Google's search algorithm so that the first result for Santorum that came up linked to a what the New Yorker described as the "unprintable definition" Savage had created to protest Santorum's homophobia.

3. Use your Wifi network name as a targeted billboard

If you live in an area full of upwardly pretentious types you may have noticed a trend of creative Wifi network naming. Instead of settling for LINKSYS53z, for example, a 21st century quipster might call their network PrettyFlyForaWifi. However, as well as using it as a vehicle for unoriginal puns, some people are harnessing their network names to passively-aggressively complain to their neighbours. There is one person in my building whose network is called YOURMUSICSUCKS, for example. I severely curtailed my moments of guilty One Direction pleasure after that appeared.

4. But, wait, the luggage?

While some casual bashtagging or Google-bombing may be cathartic, sometimes catharsis is the only payoff. However, it looks like Syed's $1,000 BA-bashing may have resulted in more than just a warm flush of vengeance. As well as providing fleeting fame, it also seems to have delivered his luggage. Early this morning Syed tweeted "I got what I wanted. I win." Revenge may be a dish best served cold but sometimes, it seems, a little digital degradation can make for a satisfying hors d'œuvre.

Press regulation: a victory for the rich, the celebrated and the powerful

This new press regulator is all about revenge, not justice. It's hard to imagine a more chilling deterrent to serious investigation

• 
• • Simon Jenkins
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 19 March 2013 20.30 GMT

Illustration by Matt Kenyon

We can agree that the press had it coming. The victims needed revenge. Celebrities wanted redress. A few tabloid moguls got a bloody nose, and Ed Miliband got to meet Hugh Grant.But what happened on Monday in Westminster was a ludicrous way to engineer a more disciplined press. We do not have an independent regulator, but the agency of a political stitch-up. Any MP who claims this is not statutory regulation is a liar, and should be forced to retract and apologise, or face a million pound fine.

Press laws should not be written in the dead of night by a coalition of those worsted by newspapers. They have produced not just a royal charter, which might be no big deal, but a detailed remit of how a press regulator should operate, down to the prominence of apologies and the size of fines. MPs on Monday were salivating with regulatory power. The truth is that parliament was drinking deep from the well of disgust and revenge. As the veteran MP Peter Lilley bravely remarked, whenever parliament gloats over such deals "we invariably make our worst blunders".

Last month the distinguished US journalist Lawrence Wright came over to seek British publication of Going Clear, his detailed exposé of Scientology already published in America. He was told by publishers to forget it. His book was not reckless or inaccurate, but the Scientologists would make defending its publication in a London court prohibitively expensive. He went home empty-handed. As Chinese communists can attest, there are many ways to kill free speech short of murder.

Any regulation of the press should pass the Wright test. Will it make publishing what someone, somewhere does not want to see in print more or less likely? This week's legislation patently means less. A few innocent victims of press unfairness may gain redress. But the cheering across town this week is from the rich, the celebrated and the powerful, with parliamentarians in the van.

This debate has been dominated by the crime of phone hacking, largely at News International. Not a news report fails to mention it. This is an illegal activity that, under existing law, has seen dozens of journalists and police officers arrested and massive compensation paid. A paper has been closed, and exemplary punishment meted out. It needed no royal charter or late-night deal.

Certainly, those who complain if papers break statute or common law deserve a better route to justice. Britain is already tough on libel, defamation and privacy, as the Wright case illustrates, but the law tends to be for the rich. The appropriate reform is for these cases, if not resolved voluntarily, to come before a small claims court, to avoid the present deterrent of legal fees. That is the solution.

This week's proposals have no bearing on this at all, any more than did the tedious Leveson report. They are not about press illegality but something mysteriously called "misdemeanour" – that is scurrility, intrusion and unfairness. No one might complain here about a tougher monitoring of a code, to reprimand and seek apology. The existing complaints procedure works without fines and compensation, and merits strengthening. But we have to accept that sometimes there will be mavericks who are beyond reprimand. Free speech within the law is their entitlement.

The new regulator allows no time for this. Parliament sees no role for mavericks. Its target is not just celebrity intrusion but bias, unfairness and gossip in the style of Private Eye and the "off Fleet Street" plethora of news-and-comment websites. The regulator is obliged to offer a free arbitration service to anyone who feels traduced or unfairly treated by the press, imposing fines and compensation. Indeed, the service will have a vested interest in fines as it will be financed by "fine farming", like traffic wardens.

Parliament on Monday proposed no safeguards against this becoming a PPI-style stampede for anyone – including lobbyists – trying to grab a compulsory correction plus aquick payoff. Fining journalists for unethical deeds is a charter for the vexatious. It is madness. Fines and compensation at the arbitration stage will put editors in thrall to chief executives and nervous publishers.

Worse ensues if editors reject the new regulator and, because a matter of law is at stake, the case goes to a proper court. They there face punitive "million-pound" fines. Smaller publications and many in the provinces could be forced into closure. Almost by definition, such matters are likely to be seen by journalists as ones of principle. It is hard to imagine a more "chilling" deterrent to serious press investigation than this.

This is blatantly one-sided justice. It is as if the BBC charter were drafted by victims of Jimmy Savile, or church law drawn up by those abused by priests. It will certainly make some sections of the press more careful in their handling of the private lives of public people. But the baby's gone out with the bathwater. Northcliffe's maxim was that "news is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising". The advantage today is with the advertisers, who will find it that much easier to stifle criticism and deter journalistic risk.

This is not the end of the world, and any such suggestion will sound self-serving from British papers. But, unlike the supine press so common abroad, they still have the irreverent vigour and diversity of a true political safeguard. This has been a grim, vengeful saga. The press faces tough times anyway, and must now do so wearing a ball and chain.

A Time For National Reflection

The secretive and stealthy hanging of Ajmal Kasab is a moment in our nation’s history when we need to pause and ponder, and reflect on the values that we, as a nation, should uphold, particularly relating to crime and punishment, justice and equity

PEOPLES UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES (PUCL)

The secretive and stealthy hanging of Ajmal Kasab in Pune’s Yerwada Prison on  21^stNovember, 2012, brings to an end the legal process involved in trying Kasab for the brutal assault by trained terrorists from across the border on Mumbai, the commercial capital of India which left 166 persons dead.

The Mumbai carnage of November 2008, more popularly abbreviated to a single term `26/11,’ constitutes one of the most heinous and deliberate attempts in recent years to cause mass mayhem and terror in India. Kasab was the only member of the terrorist team sent from Pakistan apprehended alive; he was caught on film diabolically using his modern automatic weapon in a cold blooded fashion, killing numerous people. The hanging, and the trial and legal proceedings which preceded it,  admittedly  complied with existing laws which permit death penalty, and cannot be faulted as such.  While it may be argued, as many do  that the hanging will help in an `emotional closure’ to the families of victims of 26/11, there are others who point out that other key issues still remain to be addressed.  Families of victims in specific, as also other concerned citizens, have pointed out that Kasab was only a foot soldier and not the mastermind, who still remain at large.

We cannot also lose sight of the fact the  reality that the backdrop of the 26/11 incidents is also the festering and unresolved internal conflict inside Kashmir, which provides an easy emotive tool for demagogues to indoctrinate and turn youth to become cold blooded `jihadi’ killers. To them, the execution will not be a deterrence.

The extensive legal process  ending with the hanging of Kasab is pointed out as a triumph of the of `rule of law process’ in India. In the same breath this is also contrasted to the lack of such situation in neighbouring Pakistan.  This discourse is however very worrisome; it borders on `triumphalism’ on the one hand, and on the other, it amounts to an attempt to `avenge’ or seek `vengeance’, and `eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth’ mentality, which worldview has been rejected as dangerous amongst a majority of 110 countries worldwide which have prohibited death penalty in their countries.

Such triumphalist discourse is also worrying for it hides behind emotive terminology very harsh truths of failure and miscarriage of justice in other incidents of mass killings that have occurred in India. The `cry for justice’ still remains a silent pouring of helpless anger in the hearts and souls of thousands of families of victims  in incidents like planned and cold blooded slaughter of over 3000 Sikhs during the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, the massacre of hundreds of Muslims in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992-93 (which ironically occurred in Mumbai also), the 2002 post-Godhra anti-Muslim carnage in Gujarat which saw over 2,000 Muslims killed and thousands more rendered homeless and more recently in Kokrajhar in Assam. A stark reality is the cynical manipulation and subversion of police investigation by ruling political parties and the executive  to help masterminds and perpetrators escape the clutches of the law.

In the surcharged emotional atmosphere in the wake of Kasab’s hanging,  even raising questions about the usefulness of hanging Kasab is considered to be `traitorous’, unpatriotic and anti-national.  We in the PUCL nevertheless feel that this is a moment in our nation’s history when we need to pause and ponder, and reflect on the values that we, as a nation, should uphold, particularly relating to crime and punishment, justice and equity. We need to be conscious of the fact that a nation consumed by outrage and filled with a sense of retribution easily confuses “punishment and revenge, justice and vendetta”. We, as a nation, need to begin a dispassionate public debate on the death penalty without judgmental, indignant, righteous or moralist overtones.

PUCL has always taken a principled stand against the death sentence as being anti-thetical to the land of ahimsa and non-violence, as constituting an arbitrary, capricious and unreliable punishment and that at the end of the day, the type of sentence that will be awarded depends very much on many factors, apart from the case itself. PUCL and Amnesty International have published a major  study of the entire body of judgments of the Supreme Court of India on death penalty between 1950-2008 which unambiguously shows that there is so much arbitrariness in the application of `rarest of rare’ doctrine in death penalty cases that in the ultimate analysis, death sentence constitutes a `lethal lottery’.

It may not be out of context to highlight that just two days before Kasab was hanged, on 19^thNovember, 2012, the Supreme Court of India pointed out to the fact that in practice, the application of `rarest of rare cases’ doctrine to award death penalty was seriously arbitrary warranting a rethink of the death penalty in India.

It is also well recognised now that there can never ever be a guarantee against legal mistakes and improper application of legal principles while awarding death sentences. Very importantly, the Supreme Court of India in the case of `Santosh Kr. Bariar v. State of Maharashtra’, (2009) has explicitly stated that 6 previous judgments of the Supreme Court between 1996 to 2009 in which death sentences were confirmed on 13 people, were found to be `per incuriam’ meaning thereby, were rendered in ignorance of law. The Supreme court held that the reasoning for confirming death sentences in theses cases conflicted with the 5 judge constitutional bench decision in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980), which upheld the constitutionality of the death sentence in India and laid down the guidelines to be followed before awarding death sentence by any court in India.

It should be pointed out that of the 13 convicts awarded death sentence based on this per incuriam reasoning, 2 persons, Ravji @ Ramchandra was hanged on 4.5.1996 and Surja Ram in 5.4.1997. The fate of the others is pending decision on their mercy petitions. In the meantime a group of 7 – 8 former High Court judges have written to the President of India pointing out to the legal infirmity in the award of death sentences to these convicts and seeking rectification of judicial mistake by commuting their death sentences to life imprisonment. A very troubling question remains: how do we render justice to men who were hanged based on a wrong application of the law?

It is for such reasons, amongst others, that PUCL has long argued that it is extremely unsafe and uncivilised to retain death penalty in our statutes.

It will be useful to refer to the stand on death penalty taken by 3 of India’s foremost leaders of the independence struggle.

Mahatma Gandhi said,

“I do regard death sentence as contrary to ahimsa. Only he takes it who gives it. All punishment is repugnant to ahimsa. Under a State governed according to the principles of ahimsa, therefore, a murderer would be sent to a penitentiary and there be given a chance of reforming himself. All crime is a form of disease and should be treated as such”.

Speaking before the Constituent Assembly of India on 3^rd June, 1949, the architect of India’s constitution, Dr. Ambedkar, pointed out,

“… I would much rather support the abolition of death sentence itself. That I think is the proper course to follow, so that it will end this controversy. After all this country by and large believes in the principles of non-violence, It has been its ancient tradition, and although people may not be following in actual practice, they certainly adhere to the principle of non-violence as a moral mandate which they ought to observe as dar as they possibly can and I think that having regard to this fact, the proper thing for this county to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether”.

Jayaprakash Narayan wrote more poignantly that,

“To my mind, it is ultimately a question for the respect for life and human approach to those who commit grievous hurt to others. Death sentence is no remedy for such crimes. A more humane and constructive remedy is to remove the culprit concerned from the normal milieu and treat him as a mental case … They may be kept in prison houses till they die a natural death. This may cast a heavier economic burden on society than hanging. But I have no doubt that a humane treatment even of a murderer will enhance man’s dignity and make society more humane”. (emphasis ours).

PUCL calls upon all Indians to use the present situation as a moment of national reflection, a period of serious dialogue and discussion on the values and ethics which we as a nation of Buddha and Ashoka, who epitomised humane governance, dharma and ahimsa, should accept and follow. The best tribute we can pay to the 166 persons who lost their lives due to the 26/11 Mumbai carnage is to rebuild the nation in a way that equity and justice, dharma and ahimsa prevails; in which there is no soil for discrimination and prejudice, and in which all Indians irrespective of caste, community, creed, gender or any other diversity, can live peacefully and with dignity.

We firmly believe that mercy and compassion are key values of a humane society, which are also recognised in the Indian Constitution. We also hold that abolishing death penalty is not a sign of weakness. Rather it is a stand which arises from a sense of moral authority. It is when law in tempered with mercy that true justice is done. Bereft of mercy our society would be impoverished and inhuman; mercy is quintessentially a human quality, not found elsewhere in the natural world. Excluding a fellow human being from the entitlement to mercy will make our society more blood thirsty, unforgiving and violent. We owe a duty to leave a better and less vengeful world for our children by curbing our instinct for retribution. That way we become a more humane and compassionate society. Recalling Rabindranath Tagore’s vision in the `Gitanjali’, let us re-make India into a `haven of peace’ in which future generations of Indians will rejoice and flourish.

Sd/-

Prof. Prabhakar Sinha, National President, PUCL
Dr. V. Suresh, National General Secretary (Elect), PUCL

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