Differences between Physical and Emotional Cheating. One time lapse versus long-term cheating on your spouse. Using social media to cheat – how all you say on Facebook, Instagram and other platforms will be used in court against you. All explained by Divorce Attorney Marina Shepelsky.

Michael Levitis  00:00

Hello everybody, this is Michael Levitis. With JurisQ.com Attorney, divorce attorney, Marina Shepelsky, and we come to you with another great topic. And as I was saying all along, Marina is not just an attorney, she has seen a lot in her cases. She saw behind the scenes what’s going on what we’re getting divorced, how to avoid divorce, whether you should get divorced or not. And we’re gonna hit now a topic regarding people getting hurt by cheating. From what you have seen, from what you have heard from your clients, what do they tell you? What’s worse, physical one time cheating. Or if your spouse has a whole long and drawn out emotional affair, where they are emotionally invested with the person that cheating. What do you say?

Marina Shepelsky  00:53

Right.  So I mean, now being a divorce lawyer has become, you know, almost like I have to be a relationship expert and a psychologist. And we even approach however, we represent men and women, sometimes differently, even though I believe everybody’s equal in the eyes of law, but still, you know, the way things play out the way fathers are treated is always a little bit less than mothers, which is unfair. But still, that’s a fact. So we always try to fight that. So cheating is a very common cause for divorce. Right? It comes up over and over again, on both sides, by the way, and there’s now there was a study done where they asked women and men in a blind study, you know, saying look, if you had a way to guarantee Absolutely, to cheat without your spouse ever finding out or your partner, whatever, would you do it? And like I think 85% says, Yes, men and women with sex hold said, if they if their spouse didn’t find out, they would go and cheat, which proves that people are polyamorous, polygamous, polyamorous, whatever you call it. People like diversity in their lives, even obviously, even under sexualized. So, of course, you know, cheating is a very complicated phenomenon.

Michael Levitis  02:16

What do you see, you see more men come to you, because their wife cheated, or vice versa? Or is the same?

Marina Shepelsky  02:25

I see both. I see both. But it presents itself differently. Because women generally cheat almost to punish the husband to get like revenge and the husband for something he might not even know he might not even understand what she’s taking revenge on him. For. And men are more like stepchildren. They’re cheating. But it’s not always sexual. So this is what it comes down to. For some people, they tell me some women, they’ll say, okay, my husband was cheating on me. But, you know, it would have been okay, if it was like a one or two times thing. But it turns out that he had like a friend that they had an emotional affair with. It turns out they didn’t even have sex. But that’s even worse. So then we’re talking about why is it worse? Yeah. emotional affair. Right. So an emotional affair has a couple of components to it. Why it’s worst? Generally speaking, it’s worse because he found somebody else who is his like, favorite person, let’s just be honest. Right? My husband every time he can confide. Look, my husband tells me every night when we fall asleep, that I’m his favorite person. Doesn’t even have to say who loves me or whatever. Obviously, we exclude kids and parents from this. But don’t you want to be your spouse’s favorite person? I mean, why else in this time and age do you want to be married? You don’t have to, you really don’t have to. You could just leave, right? But you want to be your spouse’s favorite, right? That’s the person you want to always tell first, when something really awesome happens. Yeah. And if you’re no longer that person, you lost the very thing that makes a marriage tick. You know, the very thing that’s the foundation of your marriage, and emotional affair means he might leave and marry her. And you know, that’s why it’s worse because when they say, well, it was just a one time thing. You know, it was a one time mistake. It was just sex. I love you. She means nothing to me. Many usually mean it. They really do. They’re not joking, and they’re not aligned. When they say it was a one time thing. It probably was right. They’re afraid to leave. They’re afraid to leave that stability of the marriage and give up their children or their financial stuff that has to happen in divorce. But when they have an emotional affair, and they’re constantly talking and telling the other woman stuff and you know his emotional and intimate style You shouldn’t be telling his wife, right? Then that then you have a real problem because that means he has a relationship. That means he has another relationship that’s more interesting to him. And he’s hiding it from you. And I personally do not really believe in friendship between men and women, although I have lifelong men friends, but we always keep a distance, there’s always a line, you don’t cross like, like, if I have a friend who was a woman, we could go to like a spa together and look at each other naked. And you know, I’m not gay, so it’s fine and whatever, it’s fine, even when even if you’re gay, but, you know, I’m just saying it’s not sexual. But for man and woman, you can do that for that period. Right? We can talk about this for hours. And I’m not a feminist. I’m just saying this is America. If you and Phil Yeah, that’s a different story. Right? If you were just a straight person of any gender, and you have friends of the opposite gender, you potentially would be for them. Okay. You know, it’s as simple as that, um, because you choose your friends, because it’s somebody who’s interesting for you.

Michael Levitis  06:03

Marina, you and I are friends but I promise we will keep it very professinal.

Marina Shepelsky  06:09

Right? We’re friends is happens, right? We always go if we do hang out, it’s always this couple. We’re not like directly talking behind anybody’s back. Right? We never have any conversations behind our back. Yeah. And it’s fine. But I’m saying like real friends like that level of intimacy. That’s like an emotional affair. That Don’t you know, that doesn’t happen with if you’re struggling with your girlfriends, you know, or with girlfriends. So that’s the problem is that they have an emotional relationship of the loving kind with someone else. And it is worse for me.

Michael Levitis  06:43

But the good news is that this day and age, it’s not that hard to obtain divorce, although you have to be prepared for it. Right? You should probably before you announce to your spouse. With divorcing, you should probably go to the attorney first and consult an attorney some certain steps in preparation for proposed because

Marina Shepelsky  07:07

I want to add to this as, as an attorney, I’m not just like a relationship expert. I’m actually an attorney. So here’s some advice. That’s legal advice. If you are in this situation.

Michael Levitis  07:24

Even if you expect that you’re going to reach a very friendly divorce with a spouse, you should still go to an attorney. Consult with your own attorney who is independent, and get some real advice. And the person that goto is Marina Shepelsky. Marina, thank you for your insight into the psyche, human psyche.

Marina Shepelsky  07:51

And I’m wanting to add before we say goodbye, here, some pointers, some legal advice. Number one do not cheat using social media is discoverable in divorce, which means the other side’s that subpoena, they can get the court to sign a paper that they will require Facebook and all your social media to produce to them if you want if you refuse to your evidence of cheating. And in New York State and New Jersey state, it doesn’t really matter whose fault it is, it’s really No Fault states, which means financial division will be the same, whether cheated or not, but it makes you sometimes look like a bad parent, or it makes you look stupid, frankly, you know, so I’m telling you now if you were going through this do not cheat using social media or any of those messengers is just try to stay away.

Michael Levitis  08:45

That’s a good advice. Because I’ve read that majority of divorce proceedings in the paperwork. It has the word Facebook in it. So you know, generation using Facebook was was enough now but I have a follow up question for now because I want to teach people how to how to cheat and get away with it. What if somebody is using Have you seen in your practice where people are using messaging services from outside USA for example, they using telegram and I think they’re based in UK? Or they’re using contacts from Russia or something like that? Have you seen where that also was discoverable or it’s impossible to get it.

Marina Shepelsky  09:29

it’s very difficult to get it that’s why if you’re gonna you know I hate to teach people how to do this yeah, I’m just delete it and delete it because in Facebook if you deleted Facebook, saves it on their platform because they’re using all your information to run algorithms of what you like and sell things to you non stop. So even I just heard and I just learned this check this out. Right? Facebook knows you’re cheating before anyone else does. You know how They have special algorithms and system will compare. If you write even wants to someone on Facebook, just a messenger saying I’ll see you there one time, right? They connect to the other person, they start to track your location at different time points. And if you are in a hotel together at the same time, maybe you went for coffee to Starbucks, maybe somewhere else. Facebook is tracking you and they know your location, even that discoverable. Right, and people don’t know how deep it goes, and you should watch this movie on Netflix, which I forget what it’s called. But basically they talk about all of these things. It’s not like a big secret it’s only secret if you don’t care to find out honoree right? Yeah.

Michael Levitis  10:44

So what about like Snapchat with Snapchat? Have you seen discovery from Snapchat because they are the erased,

Marina Shepelsky  10:53

Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, they’re all have us platforms all able to get discovery through a divorce proceeding.

Michael Levitis  11:02

Okay, very good. Thank you for your legal advice for your psychology advice. And I guess also your private detective advice. It was always a pleasure. We’ll keep it always interesting. And you bet we’re gonna see you again with more questions. If you have any questions regarding any upcoming divorce issues you have you think you’re going to get divorced. You want to stick it out, see what are the options? Marina Shepelsky. The number is on the bottom of your screen. Thank you, everybody. Until next time, thank you, Marina.