I have another theory: the Web. No, the Internet didn’t make him do it, but I suspect it is a significant factor here, and it’s worth considering how it’s changing the nature of personal fantasy within relationships.

There is no one definition of infidelity. Generally, it’s having sex with someone other than your partner, but couples work out all sorts of different understandings of what constitutes cheating. Take a female friend of mine who identifies as straight and yet she likes to kiss girls, and her boyfriend “allows” it — but if she did the same with a guy, they would both consider it a form of unfaithfulness. These rules can be complicated enough in the real world, but in the Wild West of the Web it’s even more so. People pretend to be something they’re not, and share things they never would in-person. What happens online is real, but it also isn’t; it’s whatever you want to believe that it is. Given that, it’s incredibly easy to justify to oneself that online flirtation doesn’t “count,” that it can be categorized within the realm of porn and personal fantasy, as opposed to actual cheating and betrayal — especially when it isn’t actually consummated in person.

For plenty of couples, watching online porn is considered OK or is at least tolerated. But what if you pay for a live cam show where you interact with the performer, or you strike up a Web relationship with your favorite porn star via Twitter or Facebook? How about if you post solo videos of yourself masturbating, as countless men and women do, on Xtube and then wait for the comments to role in? Maybe you decide to flirt with exhibitionism and log onto Chatroulette or you see where a virtual relationship can lead in Second Life. Then there’s the ever popular pastime of logging into OKCupid, even after you’ve paired up with someone, just to survey what’s out there, maybe even interacting with a few people. If you’re wondering how someone other than your spouse responds to your physical endowments, you can post a shot to Craigslist casual encounters just to see what kind of a reaction you get (or there’s the more direct route of RateMyCock.com).

I don’t mean to excuse Weiner’s behavior or endorse any of the scenarios above, but I do think that the congressman’s scandal serves as a reminder of how technology has forever changed the landscape of intimacy and fidelity. Of course, sex scandals have been happening since forever — that’s nothing new — but the Web provides countless new avenues for the sort of escape and validation that has always driven people’s affairs. Just consider the Weiner photos released earlier today. We see him flexing his waxed, gym-rat chest for the camera, his face taking on a scowl, either in an attempt at “sexy face” or from concentrating his energies on portraying his pectorals in their best light. Then there is the classic “Myspace photo” composition — arm outstretched, holding the camera at a flattering angle — with an attempt at an alluring smile. Perhaps worst of all is the one of him grinning while sitting fully clothed on his couch next to his cats, which was allegedly sent with the email subject line, “me and the pussys.”

On the embarrassment scale, not even a photo of one’s junk can compare with shots like these. It’s like catching someone checking themselves out in the mirror — or Narcissus gazing into the lake. The self-fascination and posturing make it a moment of both arrogance and deep vulnerability. The latter is only exaggerated by the framed photo of Weiner and wife Huma Abedin snuggled up together, which is visible in the background of one of the shots. There’s also a photo of the congressman posing with none other than Bill Clinton, a man who might serve as a strong reminder of the dangers of extramarital dalliances while living in the public eye, and yet Weiner was apparently beyond reason or caution. While talking to a male friend about the new shots, I speculated that Weiner must have gotten a sexual charge from the element of danger: He was potentially destroying his hard-earned career, not to mention his picture-perfect marriage. You know, self-sabotage as a fetish, or something. My friend responded that I might be overanalyzing it: Maybe Weiner just wasn’t thinking, period.

Whatever the case, this is just the most recent literal illustration of a congressman undone by his penchant for extramarital flings. It is yet more unnerving proof that even — perhaps especially — the most powerful among us sometimes feel powerless to sexual desire. These new shots may not be as raunchy or suggestive as the original but they are much more revealing — and not just about Weiner. They show a person wanting to be wanted, trying pathetically to be desirable, and that I dare say is a universal. It hints at how human sexuality can be at once narcissistic and self-destructive. As Susannah Breslin recently wrote for the Forbes website, “Americans are fascinated by political sex scandals because the politician is doing what Americans are doing but won’t admit, or what they wish they were doing but won’t say, and Americans, rather than confess their natural tendencies or sexual fantasies, would rather criticize those political figures who there, but for the grace of God, are doing what Americans wish they were doing.”

Another piece of progress was that Freddie’s wife, a diabetic, had finally wrung a disability pension from the government. But as the couple came home from the shopping trip for groceries and baby clothes that the first check made possible, some young men mugged them, taking all the merchandise and the remaining cash and stabbing Freddie.

That was several days before I saw him. He had still been dragging himself to work. He would not go to the hospital (which was free for the poor), because he made only enough money to feed 11 people, and a second disability check wasn’t coming until next month. By the barest luck, a local charity could learn through my companion and me of the family’s crisis and give enough money to keep the household in groceries for the two weeks Freddie had to be hospitalized to save his life.

We read a lot about the lack of family planning killing women, but it kills men too. Even in a relatively well-resourced Third World country like South Africa, many thousands of men die in the violent struggle to support their many dependents. Though pundits, when they bother to consider population at all, usually debate whether or when the earth’s resources will run out, for many people they have run out already.

For example, during the first few years after the liberation from apartheid, the new South African government heroically built a million public housing units, pledging to free the poor from the hell holes of cardboard and tin shacks. The waiting list for public housing only grew longer. In every part of social welfare, fast African population growth pushes conditions backward: It’s the major reason so much of the “developing” world isn’t developing. Rising GDP? Well, duh: if GDP grows 3 percent a year and the available (what an optimistic word) workforce is growing at 6 percent, those in the grip of these statistics can only (1) win the lottery of getting noticed by the privileged, (2) take the means to live from somebody else, or (3) go under, like the Cape Town women lying down across railroad tracks with their babies.

So why is the U.S. actually cutting back on family planning aid? Religious conservatives are an obvious influence. This breaks my heart. Evangelicals and Catholics in Africa really care; I have seen them walk the steep, lonely, stony walk. Politicians from near and far, tourists and pundits and profiteers sashay through, but a single Catholic priest had been running a school in Lesotho for 50 years by the time I got there — for a conference. The only flying doctor in the country was a Quaker, but Evangelical Vietnam veterans were flying her around the perilous terrain, going without every sort of material comfort, living their faith.

The outright opposition to family planning breaks my heart also because, as a biblical scholar, I know it’s not necessary. In fact, it’s downright un-Christian. The Apostle Paul, the founding authority on Christian family life, was probably the greatest force in moving childbearing from the place it still occupies in the Third World into the realm of freedom and responsibility — to the great benefit of us Westerners.

The critical Bible chapter is 1 Corinthians 7. Paul did not consider marriage to be as good as celibacy — hardly a surprising opinion, considering that in the Roman Empire marriage was typically a business relationship between clans, for their benefit, not the couple’s. The institution was one of the chief ways the society locked people — especially women — into a single, quite taxing way of life, of questionable value for fulfilling personal aspirations.

Greco-Roman marriage featured a wildly skewed sexual relationship, in which a young girl was initiated by rape and was never in her life supposed to feel pleasure, while her husband went to girlfriends (who were on their own with any pregnancies) for “love” and to prostitutes for fun. The point of the marital union was childbearing, in a crude, materialistic sense: All of the imperfectly formed babies, and many of the girls, were to be thrown away and the survivors to be raised for the clan’s purposes in their turn. A wife who was “thrown out” (divorced) lost all rights to her home and children.

Paul was therefore deeply concerned that, in the new Christian community, any marriage entered into at least be voluntary, loving, equal and secure. Mutual erotic attraction was the right reason to get married, and mutually generous sex was the basis for a harmonious union. The double standard was out: Men now had no more right than women did to visit prostitutes or have affairs. There would be children (given the state of medical technology, Paul couldn’t have imagined any choice about that), but they were not the point. He mentions them a single time, in Verse 14. Interestingly, Paul writes that they are “holy” whether their parents have a religiously mixed marriage or not, which suggests that he — with only Jesus as his authority on this — thought of them as having value and integrity in themselves. Like slaves, women, the poor and foreigners in the Christian “assembly,” children seem not to have been regarded as things. In Christian marriage, “throwing out” was banned — except in certain nonnegotiable cases of incompatibility, and then women could do it too.

Paul condemns by clear implication most of the conditions in the Third World that are blamed for catastrophic overpopulation: the forced marriage of young girls, the general oppression of women, marriage as “just what you do” and marriage as a mode of production. He insists that both men and women consider their own needs and choose freely what the best life will be for them as individuals. Astonishingly, he even writes that a widow can either keep to the celibacy he thinks will make her “happier” or marry “whomever she wishes” (Verses 39-40).

I hope conservative American Christians, in thinking about family planning in the Third World, will consider first of all the famous words in 1 Corinthians 7:7: “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God …” Paul invited his followers into a community that made those words real.

In the industrialized world, we can have large families without condemning them or ourselves to misery. We can also have few or no children, whereas most people in Africa and South Asia cannot make that choice even by not marrying. A favorite South African township student of mine, Shiela, once fixed her eyes on mine and said, “I want to go where you are. I want to see how you do things. This is what I need.” Christians betray their tradition by saying no to that plea.

There are countless books on the subject that boast secrets to prevention (for example, “Emotional Infidelity: How to Affair-Proof Your Marriage and 10 Other Secrets to a Great Relationship”) or evidence-gathering (“Is He Cheating on You? 829 Telltale Signs”). Naturally, the Web provides even sadder examples: There are sites promoting everything from GPS tracking devices to computer spyware to lessons on “how to become a human lie detector.” My favorite is the website for the guide “How to Detect An Affair,” which promises “rock solid proof that your partner is cheating on you in 48 hours.” It’s rather poetic that it specifically promises damning proof of an affair — rather than evidence one way or another — because, I mean, if you’re paying $50 for the eBook on cheating, chances are there’s a reason. Similarly, Catch a Cheat boasts “3 sure-fire tactics of getting them to cheat right before your eyes.” Buy your self-fulfilling prophecy now!

This sort of advice is only fueled by news of celebrity affairs. Cosmopolitan magazine just ran a feature titled “How to Tell if a Guy Is Cheating” with the warning, “Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t the only man to stray when he already has a fabulous woman by his side. Do the headlines have you spooked? Here are the surprising signs a dude is being unfaithful.” The magazine, good at nothing if not repacking the same content over and over again, also ran a piece titled “How to Keep Him From Cheating” after Angelina Jolie confirmed that she fell for Brad Pitt while filming “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” That article cautioned, “Man-eating coworkers aren’t occupational hazards just in Hollywood.”

Clearly, there is a hunger to learn from these women’s supposed missteps. Did Jesse James cheat because Sandra Bullock was boring in bed? Should Jenny Sanford have known her hubby was going to cheat when he removed the infidelity clause from their prenup? Could Hillary Clinton have picked up on Bill’s interest in Monica and circumvented the fling? Identifying an egregious mistake on the woman’s part might give insecure wives and girlfriends an illusion of control and power, but you don’t end up “being Maria Shriver” without some critical underlying relationship problems.

That’s part of why the search for evidence is so misguided. It’s not as though mistrust and emotional disconnection are OK so long as he isn’t really cheating. The truth is that if you’re entertaining the idea of buying “How to Detect an Affair” the marriage has much deeper problems than whether our not your man is sleeping with someone else. But it’s far more difficult to address those issues than it is to read a magazine article on sexy new moves to keep your man excited in the bedroom. It’s much easier to blame cheating on the fact that so-and-so let herself go or didn’t give him enough BJs — but the reality is that cheating is less often about attraction or pleasure than it is about feelings of emotional disconnection, under-appreciation or personal unhappiness; and sometimes it’s just an exit strategy.

Despite all the commentary on recent high-profile infidelities, you rarely see experts proffering tips for men to avoid straying. You just don’t hear experts telling guys, “Hey! Maybe instead of banging your secretary you should talk with your wife about your feelings of inadequacy.” Instead, women are encouraged to snoop, second-guess and manipulate, as though they were solely responsible for keeping their partner on good behavior (in therapist speak, I believe that’s called “codependency,” and it isn’t very becoming). If you didn’t have marital problems before following this advice, you sure will afterward.

I genuinely can’t comprehend how any person could watch this video — and there are tens of thousands of couples in the same situation — and support this outcome; that includes — perhaps especially — “small government” conservatives incessantly insisting that the Federal Government should not be intervening in people’s lives and making decisions for them.  Imagine if you were barred from living on the same continent as the person you love most and had to watch your own government try to deport them from your country all because they’re not the gender the government decrees you should have for your spouse (the group Stop the Deportations suggests actions here for those so inclined):

We are seeking counseling and here is where I become incredibly conflicted. My wife and I are operating a small business and it is constant stress and frustration that never relents. We only talk (or, to be more honest, fight) about work or this third person and we are becoming consumed by this. The problem I have is that I know the only solace and comfort she has right now is him. From what I have read online and in books, it seems one of the first steps the counselor will suggest is severing ties with this man. I know that will send her into depression and possible resentment to me for making her choose.

I want to be with my wife and I want our marriage to recover and heal, but am afraid I will merely drive a further wedge into our already strained relationship. I also cannot imagine an open or sharing relationship in that regard.

Do I just bottle up my depression in exchange for her happiness? Do I just admit it is over and let her go? Do I fight to keep her and possibly lose her?

Conflicted and Confused

Dear Conflicted,

If you want your marriage to recover and heal, and your wife wants that too, it can happen. It’s good that you are seeking counseling. You can get through this.

No, don’t just bottle up your depression in exchange for her happiness, and no, don’t just admit it’s over and let her go, but yes, do fight to keep her even though you feel that means possibly losing her. No relationship is risk-free. Not to be alarmist, but just as we risk death by freak accident every day, you risk losing her every day whether you fight for her or not. So you might as well fight.

Here is some advice about the marriage counselor. You are paying for the services of someone who is there to help you. That person cannot force you to do anything. You are in charge. Yes, the counselor might suggest that she stop seeing this man. The counselor might suggest a variety of things. But if you feel you can’t say no, you need another counselor. If the counselor pressures you or your wife, you need a different counselor.

So don’t be afraid to talk to somebody. Talk to several until you get a feeling for somebody. Say right upfront what is off the table.

When you actually get started meeting with a counselor, prepare to go slowly. This stuff is not like other stuff. It’s not like mechanical stuff, where you just go in and fix it. It’s more like, first you have to sit outside the car and wait until you can really see the car. It’s weird. But you’ll know what I mean once you’ve spent some time talking in a therapy kind of way. It’s different from direct problem-solving. Though there is some of that. Other things take time — it takes time for the mystery of why things are happening to clear up.

On the other hand, it’s obvious you and your wife have a big-time, real-world stress factor. Your business. Holy mother of the universe. Being in a business with your wife. I know about that. Boy. Want to talk about testing the limits of a relationship? And the worst part is, you simultaneously introduce big stressors into your life and you eliminate all your free time that you might otherwise use dealing with the new stressors.

Recipe for craziness, no doubt about it.

Yet it can be done.

You have time.

That’s the great thing about getting into a counseling situation: It does give you time that you might otherwise not be able to carve out of your schedule. When you can take the time to look at the stresses in your lives, you see the concrete reasons your relationship is in trouble. Your relationship needs certain things to survive. Under intense pressure, without the things it needs, of course the relationship will wither. But if you can give it what it needs, it may come back.

The relationship was strong at one point. Identify what was strong in the beginning. Pull those things back in.

I know what it is like to realize that you and your wife talk only about business. My wife and I run a small business and sometimes it is all we talk about. And no matter how much we talk about it, it still needs to be talked about more. When things get really bad, sometimes it is because we haven’t driven up to Mount Tamalpais lately to sit on a mountaintop and look south at the shoreline and the bridge and the city. We haven’t put the dogs in the car and driven up to Tomales Bay. Then we do that and it helps.

When relationships are working, we don’t pay much attention to why. We just think it’s great. We don’t notice all the concrete things that are making the relationship work. So when things change, we don’t immediately say, well, this is sure going to put pressure on the relationship. We don’t think like that. But a relationship needs constant fuel. When it stops working, we think, Oh, something terrible has happened. The relationship has stopped! It must be broken!

Sometimes it’s just out of fuel.

If you know what fuel it uses, you can get it running again. Even if it turns out that it’s not the relationship you want to keep forever, right now you need it running. So figure out what things make it work, and consciously bring those things into the relationship.

Just to get it running again.

You can think about the long term after you get some breathing room.

And please remember this: It’s your life and your money. You’re in charge. Do not choose a counselor you can’t argue with.

What? You want more advice?

• Read more Cary Tennis in the Since You Asked directory.
• See what others are saying and/or join the conversation in the Table Talk forum.
• Ask for advice. Letter writers: Please think carefully! By sending a letter to advice@salon.com, you are giving Salon permission to publish it. Once you submit it, it may not be possible to rescind it. So be sure. If you are not sure, sleep on it. You can always send tomorrow. Ready? OK, Submit your letter for publication.
• Or, just make a comment to Cary Tennis not for publication.
• Or, send a letter to Salon’s editors not for publication.