Dear doc: My husband husband engages in cybersex

I  always knew that my husband liked looking at porn occasionally. I can live with that.

But the other night, I came into the room where he keeps his computer. He had left it switched on. And there on the screen was a most lascivious message, addressed to him, from a woman in Canada. I could not believe it, Doc.

I sat down and read it. It made clear that they had never met, but that she knows what he looks like. And to be frank, it indicated that her favourite occupation in the evening is to bring herself to an orgasm while they are exchanging erotic messages by email.

I am absolutely disgusted by this, Doctor. So far, I have not told my husband what I know. But he is aware that something is wrong because I have refused to have sex with him since that night.

Is he some kind of pervert? And is she the same of weirdo? Does what they have been doing count as 'cheating', and would it be grounds for divorce?

Real sorry to hear about this unfortunate situation. What your husband has been going in for is called cybersex. It is also known as Internet sex or (for some reason) mud sex.

Like you, I find this practice pretty bizarre. But there is no doubt that it is common. Experts say that hundreds of thousands of men and women throughout the world go in for it. Many participants seem to be middle-aged or elderly. My impression is that very few young people indulge in this kind of thing.

At the start, what generally happens is that somebody like your spouse clicks into a cybersex chat room. There, he is likely to find a lot of women, located in various countries, who are willing to talk to him on line.

All the participants are out for an erotic thrill, so not surprisingly they soon start chatting about sexual activity. I understand that it is extremely common for a man and a woman to form a temporary 'couple' and to begin sending each other sex messages. They might also send each other pictures, some of which might be intimate ones.

Often, the male and the female masturbate while they are talking to one another via their computers. So quite frequently, you may have a situation where both of them are orgasming at the same time, even though one of them is (say) in Australia and the other is maybe in South America.

Why do people do this? Well, very frequently it is because they are lonely, or because they are dissatisfied with their marriages. That is a most important point for you to take on board, because I do not think your husband would be doing this if he were totally happy with the marital relationship.

You ask whether what your man has been doing counts as cheating. Well, it certainly does not amount to adultery, which in Jamaican law means actual sexual intercourse between a man and a woman, at least one of whom is married to somebody else.

And whatever else one may say about your husband's behaviour, he does not appear to have had actual physical sex with the lady in Canada because she is several thousand miles away.

You also enquire whether this cybersex is grounds for divorce. Well, under Jamaica's Matrimonial Causes Act (Section Five), anybody who wants a divorce has to prove the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage. The divorce judge might perhaps take evidence of cybersex into account, but it would need quite a bit more than that to prove 'irretrievable breakdown'.

So what on earth should you do now? The first thing is to sit down and talk with your husband. Tell him how you feel about all this cybersex, including how upset you are by it. Make it clear to him that you have actually been considering divorce.

Then the two of you should go and have a session with a marriage guidance counsellor or therapist. I hope she will be able to save your marriage from the rocks.

I am female, age 27, and I have been smoking cigarettes from I was 15 or 16. I would love to give them up. But is there any point after all these years?

Yes! It is a pity that you ever took up smoking. Are you aware that people who smoke generally live around 10 years less than people who don't?

But new research indicates that if a woman can give up before the age of 30, that restores her life expectancy to almost normal.

My wife has just started using a vaginal hormone cream. Is it true that you said in your column that this stuff could affect a husband, and give him breasts?

Yes, this does occasionally happen. The important thing is that your wife should not insert the cream just before having sex with you.

She should put it in much earlier in the day, so as to give her body a chance to absorb it.

How soon after an attack of cystitis can a woman have sex, Doc?

I feel it is best to wait for a week or so, and then to take everything real gently.

Doc, every girlfriend I have ever had has LAUGHED at me. This is because my foreskin does not roll back when I am erect.

What can I do?

That is a problem which is believed to affect around 17 per cent of males. Sometimes it is possible to defeat it by gently stretching the foreskin. This should only be done under the direction of a doctor. The doc can sometimes prescribe a cream that will help.

However, it is very possible that you will have to take a little operation, probably a circumcision.

Ever since she reached her 30th birthday, my wife has been urging me to try having sex in all sorts of different positions, like doggy-style and things like that.

Doc, is this a sign that she has been cheating on me? I suspect that she may have learned these new techniques with another guy.

Forgive my saying so, but I think that idea is foolishness. What you do not realise is that when they reach their 30s, many women start to feel real confident about their sexuality. As a result, they may wish to branch out in the bedroom, and to try new variations in their sex lives, such as different positions.

So I feel you should just go along with what your wife is asking you to do.

My husband has got himself a girlfriend, and so we are divorcing. What is making me fret is that our children are suddenly behaving real badly - fighting and stealing and screaming.

Why are they doing this?

Many adults do not understand that when a marriage breaks up, that often has a real bad effect on the children, and on their behaviour. So it is urgent that you get your children some counselling from an experienced person, like a minister of religion or a therapist.