Op-Ed Revision

“Life is short. Have an affair.”


“Have you ever found yourself on a really bad blind date? Now imagine that date lasting the rest of your life. Isn’t it time for AshleyMadison.com?” That’s the dialogue from a commercial for Ashley Madison a dating website, much like Eharmony or match.com, but dedicated to facilitating extramarital affairs. A website for cheating (or is it kindred?) hearts to link up for some no-strings-attached affairs sounds like a seedy, morally vacuous service, right? Believe me, I’m sure there are PTC moms and parishioners everywhere that are at odds with the service, but perhaps we should all take a deeper look.

When asked if Ashley Madison promotes adultery, Noel Biderman, the founder and CEO of the company responds with a solid “No”. He explains his position: “Ashley Madison does not encourage anyone to stray … Providing a service like ours does not make someone more likely to stray any more than increasing the availability of glassware contributes to alcoholism.”

Biderman’s position brings us back to the good old-fashioned debate of providing condoms in school; is it better to promote safe sex because teenage sex is inevitable, or is it better to promote abstinence? Clearly, adultery has been around as long as marriage has, and it’s not going anywhere. To offer a “safe alternative” to office romances, or linking up with people that a prospective cheater’s family may know, Ashley Madison isn’t convincing happily married men and women to stray, but rather is creating a better way to engage in an age old practice that and unhappily wed person would do regardless.

According to the National Science Foundation, one in 10 married men and women have sex with someone who is not their spouse in any given year. Over the long haul, estimates from various sources say that anywhere from 15 to 40 percent of married adults will have affairs, ranging from one-night stands to long-term relationships that coexist with marriages. Men are still more likely to have sex outside of marriage than are women, but newer data suggest that women are closing the infidelity gap in every age group.

One in 10. Those odds certainly don’t create optimists out of vulnerable men and women. Something it does create, however, is a market. Ashley Madison is simply following the Great American Business Model: find a need, fill it, and make lots of money. The company itself is just that—a company. It doesn’t rip apart families or break doting wives hearts, the cheating spouse does. To bring in yet another analogy: guns don’t kill people, people with guns do. Taking it a bit further, Biderman states that many site members are trapped in sexless marriages, feel that they are being neglected, or some even be questioning their sexuality, but don't actually want to leave their spouses and families. Thus, he suggests that the company "preserves more marriages than we break up."

A final practical note: in these trying economic times, many married couples are foregoing or delaying divorce, because of the costly court and attorney fees. Ashley Madison offers a less expensive way to seek some “carnal comfort” and an escape from a doomed marriage.

So, it may seem sleazy and wrong at first glance, but Ashley Madison isn’t just harmless, it may be just the site to save America’s dismal 50% divorce rate.