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This paper examines the extent, variety, complexity and sometimes paradoxical effects of the infiltration of the virtual into the intersubjective areas of the globalised hypermodern couple and family. The approach adopted combines psychoanalysis of the bond and intercultural psychology, and is based on the author’s clinical work and research in a socially and culturally changing Tunisian context. She draws on two vignettes illustrating the phenomenon of ‘virtual bovarianism’ to highlight two points about this space of possibility and potential. Firstly, this contributes to exacerbating misunderstandings between gender subcultures against the backdrop of a societal landscape firmly on the road to individualism and depatriarchalisation; secondly, helps to simulate and stimulate the process of interculturation, a potential means of reviving subjectivities and bonds in a state of crisis.