Ashley Madison and the Business of Adultery

AshelyMadison.com is a dating website for people in a relationship who are looking to have an affair. If you didn't already know that.

An excerpt from this NPR article:

"This is just a business to me. This is a market need, just like any other business that's successful. There's huge demand for it," says Chief Operating Officer Noel Biderman, who is married with children. Biderman says he is faithful to his wife, but he doesn't object to the fact that cheaters have helped his online business make more than $20 million since it started in 2002.

"This is just a fact of life. Monogamy is not in our DNA," he says.

And he may have a point.

You can read a positive appraisal of the site HERE.

A decidedly more judgmental appraisal HERE.

I'm the last person who should be talking about what it takes to keep a long-term relationship alive. I understand the temptations and, from a male perspective, the deeper primal instincts.

At a certain point, everyone's got to decide for themselves what they can live with. I think it's natural and easy to develop a crush on someone new when you're in a long-term relationship. It's natural to long for something different as the years go by and you start considering the relative brevity of life. It's so easy to find deficiencies in what you're getting from your partner after a long-enough period of time, and to see them possibly fulfilled by someone new.

But, as with everything, you've got to weigh the cost and value.

What you stand to gain and what you stand to lose for something that may be fleeting. (And the excitement of someone new is ALWAYS fleeting.)



[Of course, I'm divorced so I don't have a horse in this race...]