SMS a trap for disloyal spouses

AHMEDABAD/VADODARA: Beep! Arun’s cellphone signals that he has received a new message, while he is in a shower.
His wife, Vandana notices the new message and is tempted to read it. But when she reads the name, she doesn’t bother; relieved that the sender is ‘Maganlal’, a peon in Arun’s office. She even mildly reproaches herself for doubting her hubby.
It is only when Arun calls up Maganlal, indulges in a copious conversation with ‘him’, that it dawns on her: it was a woman’s voice at the other end!
Gone are days when letters recovered from under a pile of clothes in the closet proved to be a damning evidence of a spouse’s disloyalty.In the hi-tech world, it is mushy SMSs that are wreaking havoc in families and romantic relationships.
Psychologists have registered a rise in the number of cases where suspicious spouses have blamed the seemingly innocuous SMSs for marital discord.
Psychologist Hansal Bhachech, says “We have assiduously believed that an extramarital affair is a western concept, which was unnecessarily being played up in television soaps. So far, there were few ways of finding out, if your spouse was cheating on you. But this new technology has led to the exposure of many deviant spouses�.
So when a spouse get messages repeatedly at odd hours of the day, and also seems eager to send a reply, it sows the roots of suspicion. It has led to people like Brijesh Kumar, to now keep two SIM cards.
“Brijesh, would tell his girl friend to call him at a particular hour, when he would switch his SIM card to be able to answer her messages. Before going home, he would revert to the old SIM, so that his wife would not suspect him even if she goes through the phone records�, says a marriage counsellor.
But do flirtatious messages always translate into an affair with another woman. Pankaj Kapoor, a medical professional from Vadodara, for instance, was in for a major embarrassment when police came looking for him. He had sent 40 messages to the wrong person—a woman he had never known.
Though Pankaj managed to convince the police it was a mistake, he had a tough time convincing his wife that he was innocent and the SMS was meant for a good friend and mistakenly landed up in some strange woman’s mobile. The wife was not taken in by the story and suspected him of an illicit relationship.
For Neeta Vyas of Surat, a working woman, SMS has become a source of frustration. Every time her colleagues dart ‘naughty’ SMS messages, her husband gets upset, assuming she is flirting with someone. Her refusal to part with her mobile phone, every time her husband wants a reality check on the kind of company she keeps, also adds to the discord.
Arya Shah got ‘exposed’ recently when he boarded a flight to Mumbai and forgot to take his mobile phone along. By the time he landed in Mumbai and rushed to public telephone to tell his wife back in Ahmedabad to switch off his phone, his wife had already thrown a fit after getting some mushy messages on his cell-phone from an ex-flame who, she thought, was out of his life for long.
Says psychiatrist Gautam Amin, “Sending SMS may lead to unnecessary secrecy and misunderstandings.� “There is no better solution of putting an end to a spouse’s apprehensions, than to share messages with her. Where there is some truth in a spouse’s allegations, we counsel couples to start over again,� explains another psychiatrist, Rajesh Maniar. (Some names have been changed to protect identities)