It sounds innocent. You get to wondering whatever happened to that special someone you dated in high school or college, so you track her, or him, down online and send an e-mail.
Your old flame is thrilled to hear from you. You chat online, talk on the phone, meet for coffee. And faster than you ever imagined, everything gets out of hand and someone’s marriage is ruined.
“It starts with e-mails,” says Nancy Kalish, a psychology professor at Cal State Sacramento who has studied the phenomenon. “It goes to IMs (instant messages), and the hotel room follows pretty soon afterward.”
Of course, most of them don’t intend to get into trouble when they log on, and not all of them do.
“People are just surfing the Internet on a whim,” Kalish says. “They may see some lost love and they say, ‘What the heck’ and send an e-mail.”
Sound familiar? If so, you are not alone. Reunion was created in 2002, says site spokeswoman Shari Cogan, and its growth has been “just unbelievable.” The site has profiles for 34 million people, and is gaining as many as 40,000 daily, she says.
And Reunion is just one of several sites that make it easier than ever to track down an old friend. [Read more…]