By Paul Daveport
“Maybe you have a good career, family, success, everything is together except for one thing that you need,” Person no. 924902369 on craigslist personals predicts, “you crave cock and want to be treated like a slut.” Person no. 924902369, whose real name is anonymous and pretty much untraceable on craigslist’s massive and always changing personal’s database, is “Married – Looking for Older Married,” is 50, and is a man looking for a lady. He will probably find such a friend on craigslist judging by the frequency and variety of users with similar interests who flood the site daily. One will generally find people searching for a “first time encounter” with another married individual, or an old pro who’s scouring the field for some “new tail”, in numbers and variety that show this site is doing something right in providing a space to solicit something society generally views as morally wrong.
With around 40-60 posts under “miscellaneous romance” in the Boston area craigslist on any given work day, a little more than half of them involve married people looking for some kind of satisfaction outside of their legal spousal commitment. The internet has always been a place where people are free to anonymously air their indiscretions without fear of judgement, and usually to find friends. But the anonymity of most scandalous internet industries has long been in tact throughout the general public, especially during the daytime. All this is changing, though, as other internet sites devoted to just this specific secretive activity have started emerging, taking the position that everyone should know this is happening, but no one has to know who’s participating.
AshleyMadison.com, whose motto is “life’s short, have an affair,” provides services in every major city in the US and Canada and guarantees complete discretion to those who “feel neglected and are in need of some excitement.” Founded in 2001, it prides itself on being the worlds’ number one “married dating service” for those “looking to have an extra marital affair.”
Now, you can hear about this website, and soon others, on almost any major Boston area FM Radio station, sitting in traffic on the way to work, or dreaming of your “bit of a fetish for a woman in boots” while driving back to your boring old wife, like craigslist Person no. 924416588.
The website features an extensive catalog of TV commercials that may not all be seen before bedtime, but also print ads, radio ads, and extensive media coverage that is bound to infiltrate the days of many of the morally superior “majority.”
Earlier in the decade, the website even went so far as to put up a billboard with their motto “Life’s short, have an affair” in America’s premier tourist crossroad Times Square in New York. This angered enough wholesome New Yorker’s that the website made onto FOX News in late 2006, and enrollment to the dating service peaked for that yeat.
Aside from being a site out there to support the unhappily or unsatisfied married, Ashley Madison is as much a cyber business as it is a cyber buddy. To use the site, sign up is free, but with every friend a user wants to contact, it costs a user 5 credits. As of 2007, it cost $55 to buy 100 credits, making each contact about $2.75. With everyone on the site sharing a common goal, it’s a pretty good bet that a person will find at least one, if not 20, potential affairs pretty soon after joining. The website’s CEO Noel Biderman claimed to the San Francisco Weekly that one women didn’t even have to put up a picture or any info to get 20 messages on her digital doorstep almost immediately after signing up.
The Ashley Madison Agency does more than just hook married individuals up for sexual encounters, but also avidly promotes monogamy as myth. Information is abundant throughout their website explaining in kind, simple, and non specific terms that cheating is largely guilt free, and most people do it anyways. The website lists eight articles, each approaching the topic in the broadest sense possible, that explain why cheating is cool, including one called “The Monogamy Myth & the Prevalancy of Affairs” by Peggy Vaughan that seems to exist only to explain why a user should trust the other articles’ non-specific and largely non-sourced data and statistics. Ms. Vaughan is the administrator for DearPeggy.com, an “Extramarital Affairs Resource Center,” and author of 10 eBooks, who, with her adulterous husband James, has been preaching the “Myth of Monogamy” for over 30 years.
“According to studies of the animal world, most of us are naturally inclined to “cheat” or have more than one mate in a lifetime,” says Dr. David D. Barash, Professor of Psychology at University of Washington at Seatle, in his 2001 book cleverly titled “The Myth of Monogamy.” His book too is promoted on the Ashley Madison website, which uses an article from his story on their “Articles” page to further explain why we cheat. Like “Dear” Peggy Vaughan’s work, most of the specifics and science of the subject in the article are simplified, if discussed at all, but provide another working professional’s okay to go ahead with the ruse and cheat away.
“I want to feel the thrill of that first kiss again,” Person no. 923838868 on craigslist explains in their ad, “(and) have a new and interesting conversation. I am a financially secure successful business owner with a flexible schedule (daytime). Not just looking for sex (but that is a major part of it), but also a conversation, a connection, passion.”
What motivates those who use these sites is hard to determine, but easy to assume. There is no universal pattern evident of necessarily deviant activity, or a common thread of abandonment and loneliness, amongst their users. Each case is unique, and each user has a different goal that they can use other participants to help accomplish, be it physical or personal.
Geneviève Beaulieu-Pelletier, PhD student at the Université de Montréal’s Department of Psychology, wanted to find out exactly why people cheat, and if there is perhaps a psychological correlation between all cheaters.
According to psychologists, people with avoidant attachment styles are individuals uncomfortable with intimacy and are therefore more likely to multiply sexual encounters and cheat. But this has never been proved scientifically, which is what Beaulieu-Pelletier attempted to do in a series of four studies.
The first study was conducted on 145 students with an average age of 23. Some 68 percent had thought about cheating and 41 percent had actually cheated. Sexual satisfaction aside, the results indicated a strong correlation between infidelity and people with an avoidant attachment style.
The second study was conducted on 270 adults with an average age of 27. About 54 percent had thought about cheating and 39 percent had actually cheated. But the correlation is the same: people with an avoidant attachment style are more likely to cheat.
It has been estimated that the probability of someone cheating in a relationship in the US is between 40-76% according to the researchers at Science Daily; a very broad number, but very telling in that it shows usually more than half of us commit infidelities.
“These numbers indicate that even if we get married with the best of intentions things don’t always turn out the way we plan. What interests me about infidelity is why people are willing to conduct themselves in ways that could be very damaging to them and to their relationship,” says Beaulieu-Pelletier about her study.
“Infidelity could be a regulatory emotional strategy used by people with an avoidant attachment style. The act of cheating helps them avoid commitment phobia, distances them from their partner, and helps them keep their space and freedom.”
Both these studies at the Université were followed up by two other studies that asked about the motives for infidelity. What they showed was the will to distance ones self from commitment and their partner was the number one reason cited.
Beaulieu-Pelletier’s studies revealed no differences between men and women. Just as many men and women had an avoidant attachment style and the correlation with infidelity is just as strong on both sides. “Contrary to popular belief, infidelity isn’t more prevalent in men,” she concluded.
A less scientific approach to figuring out why we cheat is addressed on the internet’s most common “cyber-parent/friend,” yahoo questions and yahoo health. This site narrows it down to a few general motives: a person’s quest for appreciation, revenge, and the juiciest of all, self destruction.
“Someone who is feeling unloved or unappreciated may begin looking outside their marriage for sources of comfort and affirmation. Occasionally, these partners even blame their spouses for their infidelity – rationalizing it as, ‘Well, if he paid more attention to me, I wouldn’t have to cheat,’ or ‘If she can’t give me the love I need, I have a right to seek it elsewhere,’” explains yahoo’s own intimacy expert Dr. Laura Berman, whose yahoo page and profile pic, with teased blond tresses and a knowing smerk, differ little in presentation and detail than those found on Ashley Madison’s website.
On revenge, the doctor explains, “Perhaps your partner cheated on you in the past or you merely have suspicions about their faithfulness. This might drive you to try to get back at your partner by committing similar offenses.” Maybe sociopathic, but this :revenge” theory is not an outright sign of “avoidant attachment” disorder, and not even that unreasonable.
Here’s where stuff starts getting psychological, but perhaps not in the direction that the students at the University of Montreal were hoping. As the doctor has noticed, “Some people have such low self-esteem that when something good happens to them (such as meeting and dating a great man or woman), they think they don’t deserve that gift. In response to such feelings, these people may go out of their way to self-destruct their relationships. Other people keep their feelings hidden, thinking “better to break their heart before they can break mine.”
Infidelity often affects more than just those two members of the union whose sanctity is being broken; in some extreme “best-of-craigslist” moments, children of the broken couple have come across their own parents ad’s in some truly disgusting ways.
“First things first: don’t lie to these people. I have lived with you for 20 years, and you are not that fun,” one son from southern California posted in a reply post to one he found on craigslist personal’s posted by his mother in the winter of 2007, who used her real estate business card picture and address to solicit an affair on the site.
“My head is reeling right now having figured this out,” this traumatized son explains, “and I don’t think Dad knows about it, and I don’t think he’d be too happy.”
After giving his mom a few more tips about internet discretion and answering her office phone, he explains that he too partakes in internet-fueled sexual encounters and does not wish to run into his mother on his sites, and that he’ll be coming home for laundry later that weekend.
As the political climate changes, so too does cyber-affairs. Now, it is not uncommon to run into an ad for a man looking to spice up his sex life with another, younger model than the man he’s stuck at home with after getting sucked into a sexless marriage like any other after same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts back in 2006. One such ad is from a“Handsome Senior Bear” who “wants younger boyfriend, TOP(son) who is good company and likes to take day trips and dine out….maybe interested in cultural activities too/ portuguese and spanish also spoken.”
1 Comment so far
Leave a comment
English 280: The Journalistic Essay 
Excellent article: Thanks!
http://sizzlinsenior.wordpress.com/
Comment by sizzlinsenior December 26, 2008 @ 1:25 am