Adultery Benefits Women? A Case For Ashley Madison
Could Ashley Madison, a site for married people who want to have affairs, be good for women?
The secret of Ashley Madison's success has been its willingness to make an unabashed public pitch for the married-but-looking demographic, not minding that its strategy would offend far more people than it would appeal to. In fact, Biderman has counted on offending people; the Ashley Madison brand has been spread more by outrage than approval. He has been browbeaten on the Tyra Banks show. He has had his Super Bowl ad rejected. He has endured being vilified and caricatured as the Enemy of Marriage, all to reach the market that has made Ashley Madison a success: married or attached women who are interested in having affairs and prefer to have them with similarly attached men.
All online dating sites live and die by the number of women they can get to sign up, about 22 percent (800,000) of Ashley Madison subscribers are female—a much higher percentage than other so-called "adult personal" sites like AdultFriendfinder (which is 90 percent male). The numbers aren't as high as Match.com (40 percent) or eHarmony (60 percent), but those sites—in theory—are based on partnering, not stepping out on one's partner.
With an acknowledged extra-marital agenda, it's far easier to get men to sign up for Ashley Madison. The result, Biderman says, is that the Ashley Madison male is "the least choosy" in the dating spectrum. According to Biderman, this non-pickiness is a windfall for women, who have a greater chance of scoring a desirable man. The men on the site "are so maligned (as cheaters), or they believe themselves to be so maligned, that if you could somehow have a scale—let's say they're a six, and they'd usually date a five or six. They are so willing to drop five or six levels for that moment." To Biderman, this is Ashley Madison's best-kept secret. "If somehow I could let that genie out of the bottle… if women really knew how successful they could be on our service vs. any other," Biderman says they'd not be disappointed.
To be fair, women can be much more successful than men on any dating site, but Biderman means that Ashley Madison women will have a lot of men writing to them, wooing them, complimenting them, and wanting them. Yes, any attractive woman who posts a photo can have those results elsewhere, but 700 emails in two days?
The caveat, of course, is that almost all the men will be married or attached. That's a deal-breaker for many women, but obviously not all. Of the 40 or so women on Ashley Madison I'm perusing, about a third would consider a long-term relationship and a third indicate they are undecided about what they want.
Discussion
I have visted Ashley Madison a few times, created a profile to browse the website, and the deleted my profile after I was done snooping around. (ha, ha)
I've been seeing a married man for 8 months now, and I am constantly fighting with myself over if and when I will ever decide to back out of the relationship. It's literally like having a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other bickering back and forth over the issue.
Now, is it wrong? Yes and no. It's unfair to his wife and in that sense, yes, it's wrong. However, is the fact that two people like one another, are attracted to one another, and enjoy one another wrong? No. So, there is the issue.
I know, I know, I know - people will suggest that he get a divorce and if we like one another that much, we should get together.
However, this is just one of those issues that will constantly be a debate and people will always have opposing views.
In respect to this article...I think Ashley Madison is a sleeze-fest. It's filled with people who are activly looking to cheat and I think that is effed up. I wasn't looking to cheat and neither was my married partner...it just happened, over a course of several months the ball continued to roll, and one thing eventually led to another, neither of us was "looking" for anything. If you're looking for it...I think it's sleezy, if it just happens, well, it's human nature.
If there's a way to do it, people who want to do it, will. All this guy did was make money off of what some people want to do. Considering that the site is doing well, that means that there's a demand for it. What is it exactly that some people are angry with him about? Is it that he's condoning/promoting adultery (which some people have it in their minds to do, online or otherwise), or the fact that some other people didn't think of it first, and he's cleaning up?
Big tobacco makes a killing (literally and figuratively) off of smokers. This is costing people their lives, yet the government makes money off of it. They aren't seeing their profits dwindle by all that much, because there is still a demand for their product. This guy is simply making money off of what's already out there. How much different is he from a liquor store in the 'hood? Alcoholics come to the liquor store to buy alcohol, just as people who buy for a party or some other social event. Again, the government makes money off of a product that has the ability to physically harm and even kill people. But, this is also, just another business filling a need.
The problem isn't the website. The problem is the deterioration of the moral fiber in today's society.
I don't think our society has "deteriorated". We are the same old schmucks doing the same things we've always done. Cheating used to be institutionalized and a normal part of marriage. People used to go watch bears tortured as entertainment and then there was that whole slavery deal.
It's not worse. Human nature is the same.
And actually, rates of smoking and the number of smokers has significantly declined.
We've made it illegal to advertise smoking. We tax smoking heavily and limit it.
Actually, I'm not sure I'd want government involvement here. I think some things are immoral that aren't illegal. People have a choice about what kind of business they work for, etc.
Should you blame the person or the site?
It depends who you're talking to. If my husband told me that he'd cheated, but it was because of the Ashely Madison website, I would tell him to go soak his head. The website does not magically jump onto your browser, sign you up against your will, e-mail hot women, and arrange dates.
On the other hand, if I'm talking to the owner of the website, I would find it appalling that he thinks he has is not causing adultery. He's advertising and promoting the idea that people should have affairs. He's helping them to do it and making it easier. It's like saying that Joe Camel didn't cause smoking.
I just realized that I'm getting madder at the author over his use of sources than the fact that he is considering using Ashley Madison to find dates. Perhaps my priorities are a little off.
Morally, it is wrong to sleep with someone else's wife unless she is in an open relationship. The husband is expecting her to be faithful. She has made promises to him. She will have to tell lies to cheat on him. This will be bad for their relationship. Getting involved with this makes you a party to it just as you are part of the problem if you are Bernie Maddoff's business partner.
The author and his girlfriend may decide they want an open relationship. If they do, he should look for girlfriends somewhere other than Ashley Madison. AM aims it's ads at people who want to cheat and the ads the author is checking out seem to be for cheaters, not polyamorous people. Even if the woman assures you it's okay with her husband, meeting someone this way makes it a lot easier for her to lie to you about this.
Looking at it this way, a lot of the arguments in the article sound like rationalizations the author is considering before using AM, i.e. I wouldn't break up someone else's marriage if I did this because I'm going to convince myself that infidelity doesn't cause divorce and you can't blame the website or the cheaters, there must be a bad marriage if people get divorced.
"Biderman doesn't think Ashley Madison should take the blame. "If my partner were to cheat on me, the last thing I would do would be to blame an inanimate object, blame the cell phone that the people spoke on or the hotel for letting them to meet there."
Here's the thing - people are not inanimate objects. They are thinking beings who can choose their actions. So it's perfectly fair to blame them for what they do, whether they are the cheating spouse or the other woman/man.
Biderman goes on to suggest that if your spouse cheats on you, you should blame yourself. A nice self-serving philosophy if you happen to be the cheater or the person who helps them cheat.
I sympathize with the writer in trying to find the hard statistics with research to back them up. There are a lot of stats out there but not a lot of solid ones. But while an affair might be the impetus for the divorce is it the cause? Wouldn't the cause be something deeper?
I do like what one guy said about blaming the person not the site. Although I seriously doubt that it PREVENTS adultery.
I think sometimes infidelity causes divorce, pure and simple. There are experts who talk about people who cheat who say they are in happy marriages. If they get caught, the other partner may be upset enough to divorce them.
The idea that infidelity doesn't cause divorce, there must be something deeper wrong has been around since I was a kid. I think it's a cultural old wives tale that we tell ourselves to feel better about divorce. Marriages have problems and go through hard times. There are a lot of big adjustments along the way like having children and getting older. Often a couple can work things out if they're willing to work on their problems, and sometimes they can just wait them out. An affair changes things. It can make it easier for the cheater to avoid working on their problems. It puts a barrier between the cheater and their spouse and it may make the cheater less tolerant of their spouse. If the spouse finds out, they may feel hurt and decide to opt out instead of working out their problems. So I would say that even when infidelity isn't the problem, it adds to the problems and that may cause a divorce.
For a fairly nuanced report on the statistics of infidelity (and the difficulties in acquiring them), I suggest this New York Times article from June:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/fashion/28marriage.html
"Infidelity is one of the most common reasons cited by people who divorce. But surveys find the majority of people who discover a cheating spouse remain married to that person for years afterward. Many millions more shrug off, or work through, strong suspicions or evidence of infidelity."
Self-styled experts in infidelity are not necessarily experts in statistical analysis or surveying. And one can find surveys on infidelity that can buttress any point of view, really. I tried to stay toward the middle ground, relying on what I considered the best sources. As to the charge of bad journalism -- it is not a compliment to a statistic to refer to it as possibly a good guess. Bad journalism is citing statistics without qualifying them.
There is a Gallup Poll (June 2009) that I did not cite that says 92 percent of Americans think that extramarital sex is wrong. Clearly, there is somewhat of a disconnect between the poll response and the actual behavior of Americans. A thorough analysis of *that*, I think, was beyond the scope of this article but is interesting to talk about ...
The NY Times article is very good. It actually paints a very positive picture of marriage, admits that divorce is bad, and acknowledges that affairs aren't about whether or not the marriage is bad.
I still don't like what you did.
1) You quote "experts" without any reference to who they are.
2) You claim that "experts" say infidelity is often more a symptom of a bad marriage than a cause of divorce. There are plenty of experts who say that people in good marriages cheat, including one in the NYT article. Experts often disagree. This is why it's good to cite your experts.
3) If a statistic is really a guess, don't publish it. People will forget the guess part and think they know a number that means something. If it's more than a guess, let us know what the different possibilities are and which one makes the most sense and why.
4) Edivorce.com is just not a good source. It's a website that gives out free documents to help you for divorce. It seems to be supported by ads for divorce lawyers. Their statistics don't say where they come from.
5) Experts in statistics miss things that experts in therapy catch. It doesn't matter that many people manage to stay married despite an affair (possibly because they keep it secret), if affairs are seriously painful and damage many people's marriages. In any case, I think it is worth noting that the NYTimes article only cites one survey of people in affairs who say they stayed together. It may not be the final word in what's going on either.
I should have mentioned that edivorcepapers.com cites its statistics as coming from Divorce Magazine, which calls itself "the Internet's leading divorce and separation resource site." But I'll stop the discussion of sources as well; I think we've agreed that the numbers are various and subject to interpretation.
I also don't think there is any question but that infidelity is a major contributing factor in many divorces. Whatever the percentage number is, from the lowest we could find to the highest, the fact will remain that infidelity contributes to millions of divorces ... and also, that millions of marriages survive infidelity.
Actually, I would say that there are lots of different numbers thrown around about infidelity and divorce, and some are better than others. I think it matters very much which ones you use, where they're from, and how they got the number. If the answer is that nobody knows, that's what you should say.
As for millions of marriages surviving infidelity, I think it's important to say that millions of those people suffered and millions have marriages that have been damaged.
Here's another quote from the NYT article you cite:
"Such surveys say little about the private hurt and struggle that couples live with in the months and years after a discovered betrayal. A good deal of these couples limp along, laboring to repair the severed trust — and the dynamic between the couple changes forever, as millions can attest."
Benefits to women? Well, the author likes to daydream about the married women in his area who want to cheat, but most of the people on the site aren't women.
Most of the women involved in this whole sad story are wives whose husbands are trying to cheat on them. Whether or not they end up divorced, the cheating is going to hurt them.
It's not surprising that a guy who makes his living from a website devoted to lying is a liar, but let's hope single women don't believe him when he says he can help them find a good husband. Smart women don't waste their lives trying to snare a husband from a group of men who are saying they want discreet sex.
"Experts say there are no reliable figures on how many marriages break down as a result of infidelity...Are these accurate numbers? I don't know. They sound like good guesses, anyway."
This is just bad journalism. Don't cite guesses.
However, also on the website: "During the married life, 14 percent of married women and 22 percent of married men had extra-marital affairs minimum once" - lower numbers than the ones the author wants to use. These numbers do match other sources, however and are not just guesses.
From the same website: "For the question, "Should adultery be prosecuted in courts?", 67 percent replied 'Yes' and 33 percent replied 'No.' "
For the record, I suspect that the %age of divorces caused by adultery could be based on court records. Not all divorces caused by adultery will have the adultery in the court case.
Here's an expert on infidelity: "65% of marriages will end in divorce if there is an affair. That means only 35% of marriages survive. That's a pretty serious gamble to take."
http://www.momlogic.com/2008/11/shannon_fox_sarah_symonds.php
I think the author of this article is picking his experts to support what he wants.
