SceneandHeard.ca: Friday July 9th, 2004
Story By: Daniela Luchetta

Whatever happened to good old-fashioned swinger bars?

Ashley Madison responsible for hooking up married folk… with more married folk

Ever seen married friends sneaking around, keeping odd hours or meeting with people you’ve never seen before? Ever wonder what that’s all about?

Enter the Ashley Madison Agency. The agency is essentially the married person’s Lava Life. It provides a safe and consensual environment where committed people can meet and date online. It is, essentially, a corporation built on adultery.

Keeping morality out of it, the agency seems like an ingenious brainchild. “The idea behind Ashley Madison is smart marketing,” said Sue McGarvie, sex therapist and host of CFRB’s Love and Romance radio programme. “It fills the gap in the market.”

From a marketing standpoint, the agency seems like a winner. But what does the site offer aside from the obvious? “We give people a safe forum to discuss their feelings,” said Darren Morgenstern, operations director for Ashley Madison. “For a person to be on Ashley Madison, they’ve already strayed and are making the decision to cheat on their spouse.”

What people seek in an agency like this is not always sexual, which is a big misconception. For the most part, men associate love with sex, sex with being touched. When married life becomes static with the comfort of routine and keeping up careers and children, couples don’t touch regularly, which can signal to men that they aren’t loved. Stories are heard about men hiring prostitutes and just talk or cuddle with them. They are looking for an emotional connection stronger than sex.

Women are typically less concerned with their partners engaging in inconsequential sex, as opposed to a long-term relationship, where their partner has forged a meaningful relationship with their mistress. Many people, especially women say that if their spouse cheated on them even once it would be over, but it usually does not mean the end of the relationship. It has been found that who a person has coffee with at work is much more of a concern than someone meeting up with a sex professional to have a quick sexual encounter with.

Long-term relationships are much more detrimental versus abbreviated appointments because emotional connections is what long-term commitments (i.e. marriages) are about.

Another motive for using a service like Ashley Madison is to explore a more kinky side of one’s sexual character. Some thirty per cent of the population has some kind of sexual fantasy they are too timid or embarrassed to ask their spouse to indulge in. Therefore they look for a willing partner to explore their fetish with, without emotional ties or subjection to ridicule they may experience once they voice their desires to their partner.

But what happens after the exploration? Once a cheater always a cheater? For some, cheating becomes like a game, with each conquest undiscovered, more anticipation builds for the next encounter. But for most, once the desire is satiated, they don’t feel the need to do it again.

“Women think ‘been there, done that, got the T-shirt, not interested in doing it again,’” said McGarvie, “and most guys want to be able to say that they’ve tried it. As we get older we don’t have the same sort of inclinations to be as wild as we can be.”

While McGarvie cautions that cheating alone has never been proven to help a relationship, it can cause the cheater to start thinking about the relationship and start taking steps toward fixing the problems. “After my affair ended I started wondering why I started one in the first place,” said Linda who carried on an affair for three months. “My marriage was lacking something.” If the offending partner begins to feel guilt about the affair, they are going to have to deal with their feelings on their own. It is incredibly selfish and hurtful to unburden oneself and tell their partner about it.

If you thought there wasn’t a market out there for this, the Ashley Madison Agency has dispelled that myth. They have done their homework and know their niche market well. And you thought you knew your friends…