8/31/09
Writer Defends Adulterers, Calls the Rest of Us “Holier Than Thou”

If you’ve listened to Howard Stern even once over the past decade (that’d be Em, not Lo), then you know that one of his most loyal advertisers is the Ashley Madison Agency — the online dating site that caters to married people with the tagline “Life is short. Have an affair.” Charming. On and off over the years, we’ve thought about reporting on Ashley Madison, but every time we did, steam would come out of our ears and we’d realize that our entire article would consist of seven words, most likely typed in all caps: “Stop cheating you slimeball pieces of shit.” Just because the site sounds like it was named by Nora Roberts, as Jezebel so brilliantly notes, doesn’t mean it’s any less sleazy, immoral, unethical, or just plain wrong. Fortunately not everyone is as “narrow-minded” as we are; Melanie Berliet, a writer for Vanity Fair recently investigated the site to find out why men cheat, which involved interviewing men who said things like “I’m a big believer in monogamy through adultery.”

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130 Comments

  1. Speaking as an English guy living in London I can honestly say that it is really hard to maintain a monogamous relationship for a long amount of time. I managed 12 years but then I saw many of my friends having a bit of fun and it seemed to brighten their day and I thought ‘why not?” I am not proud of my attitude but it means that I am more likely to say with my wife.
    I now have a longterm safe marital affair with a married woman I met on a business trip – it will never annoy either of our marriages.

  2. “What are you supposed to do if you still have a healthy sex drive and desire for sex which your partner does not share? Divorce them? Coerce them?”

    The whole point of divorce is to leave an unhappy marriage, so yeah? If you can’t fathom being faithful to your spouse for whatever reason, then you should seek an honest resolution, either through counseling or divorce. Or just don’t get married in the first place. Absolutely no one said a bad thing about open relationships, and in fact several people (including Em and Lo) made it quite clear that non-monogamous relationships are fine as long as everyone involved knows what’s going on and agrees to it. The very essence of cheating is dishonesty, and that’s what makes it unquestionably wrong. There’s nothing self-righteous about condemning it because it’s an incredibly selfish and hurtful thing to do to someone. If you want to have your cake and eat it too, find a partner who you know won’t have an issue with you having sex outside of the marriage. They do exist, and they’re relatively easy to find nowadays. But trying to force your preferences on someone who insists on sexual fidelity isn’t doing them a favor, it’s being an a-hole of the first degree. Lies and secrecy do not a healthy relationship make.

  3. People in happy, fulfilling relationships don’t cheat. Keep that, rather than old fashioned words such as ‘duty’ and ‘loyalty’ as your mantra. There are probably millions of marriages out there that are, whilst not abusive, physically or emotionally unfulfilling for one or both partners. We live in a society that embraces sexual freedom and choice, where sexual innuendo and imagery is everywhere, but we still cling to the belief that being in a long term relationship somehow switches of the parts of your brain that find people other than your spouse or partner attractive.

    Monogamy is not a universal norm, and, even in societies with supposedly strict codes of sexual fidelity, there have always been practices society turns a blind eye to. There are many traditional cultures that have allowed, or even embraced and encouraged, non-monogamous relationships and sex with other partners than your spouse/main partner.

    Sexual desire is an inescapable part of our human nature, and there are thousands of people trapped in relationships where their partner is unresponsive to their sexual needs. What are you supposed to do if you still have a healthy sex drive and desire for sex which your partner does not share? Divorce them? Coerce them?

    I’m not saying we should all run out and cheat, just that maybe we should try and be a bit more understanding and a bit less self-righteous and actually think about how we treat our partners and how we respond to their sexual desire or lack of.

  4. … I am one of a married people you know. I’m a successful businessman who has great family, two beautiful children and a great career. My marriage became sexless around fifteen years ago as my wife had no desire for sex and I finally gave up after years of begging. Being completely frustrated, five years ago I started looking through married dating sites and eventually began having an affair with a woman who was also in a sexless marriage. I was not looking for a new partner every day, neither I was interested in leaving my family or breaking somebody else. Our five-year monogamous relationship likely saved both our marriages…

  5. James say’s it all for us women & men. If my husband of 16 years cheated I would be devastated but I would still like to know and have a choice weather to stay and fix our relationship or leave because the cheater WILL be found out sooner or later.

  6. as far as i am concerned – i sincerely and seriously hope and pray that ortons kids(and his church for that matter – if he even goes to one) knows or finds about it because this is dirty laundry that needs to be publically aired for all to know about. no better tool to keep married couples on the straight and narrow path than public embarassment and humiliation.

  7. OMG
    Please listen to the children,because I can tell you they are watching and listening and they know whats going on.

    I went through 20 years with a philandering husband who would verbally and emotionally abuse me in front of the children. when my eldest completed her uni degree. She stepped in and told me to dump her dad.

    She said many things that hurt all because I had thought my staying in the marriage would be better for the children, How wrong I was.

    Both children were so happy with the divorce. They knew about his affairs from young even though I never mentioned it when they were around.

    Today my girl refuses to speak to her dad, and my son calls him an asshole after he heard his father yelling at me in public.

    We reap what we sow. Lust or lack of responsibility , who knows –

    In our lords prayer we say ” lead us not into temptation”

  8. Kim.

    Thanks for your kind words. I believe this issue is a matter of honesty and courage. Courage to do things the right way, courage to work things out, and courage when the time comes to accept things have no other solution but an amicable dissolution.
    No amicable dissolution could take place if there is cheating involved, and the perpetrator is found in blatant connivance.
    So the cheater is not only disrespecting his loved ones, he/she is paving the road for a divorse war and the man, if he is the cheater, is walking strait to the cleaners, in which case I do not blame the party turning on the cleaners switch .
    We accepted and in the case of men, we got on our knees to promise the best of the world to that woman we chose. Women did same by accepting the offer, and the decision was made to live together and love each other.
    If for some reason the situation stops working, and all avenues for repair have been exhausted, then it is time for an amicable dissolution, if it comes to that point.
    Cheating, we already talked about it, that is the avenue for the coward to remain in posession of phisical belongings, while avoiding reality.

  9. james, I just love you! I love your thoughts on this subject and am happy that there is a wonderful voice of reason. Life is much happier if you just do the right thing, no matter how small the choice is to do so.

  10. Orton.

    You are a funny person.

    A guy with no morals wants to teach his kids openness.
    A guy with no morals wants to teach others what true love and marriage life is all about.
    A guy with no morals talks about disease and the dangers of it.

    The lesson you are giving your daughters is to accept a cheater and abusive spouse, to be submissive and to be attracted to that kind of abusive man. You are distroying her life by imprinting in her mind the seeds of destruction. She will ne ver know, or it might take her years to learn why she is attracted to lying cheating men that are abusing and demeaning.
    The lesson you are giving your sons is a lesson on how to cheat, how to be a lying womanizer, and how to disrespect a woman that you chose as wife.

    Your explanation about cheating in order to keep a home together is as stupid as a thief’s explanation of his robberies with stories about poverty and living in a poor area of town.

    All your bravado and your insults are nothing but the shield behind which a coward that is afraid of losing his phisical home, his confort, hides behind.

    Like a thief, you operate under secrecy, and you are not man enough to face your wife, your children, and rreality, so you profess bravado, and cheat on your wife, contaminate the young minds of your children, and deny yourself of the opportunity to become a real man, by portraying yourself as the victim, the poor guy that is misunderstood by his wife, the guy that is subjected to “celibacy” ( as you erroneously use as terminology ), a victim of his wife’s lack of interest in sex.

    That is not what you got married for Mr. Had that been the case, you should had warned your wife that upon a few years you would had or reserve the right to find sex outside the home.

    When you laugh about the word Diseases, let me remind you that catching herpes on your side can easily spread to your entire family by use of bathroom towels, eating utensiles, etc.

    In summary, you are the classical portrayal of a coward man, that boasts and conveys an image of manly man, a happy family, while in reality you are a sad individual, whom is subjecting his wife to humilliation, cajoling his friends and family into a false image of a happy family, disrespecting your children, and cowering behind ludicrous stories about european families that supposedly cheat by agreement, only to keep your false fazade in place.

    What a coward, smells funky in here.
    And like a real coward does, blames his wife for the situation, and while he indoctrinates and destroys the lives of his loved ones in the process ( he is to coward of a man to face reality ) he heralds a preposterous message about him being the home protector, the one that requires a medal for his great efforts into maintaining his home together.

    Your kids would be better off w/o you, you are the worse thing that can happen to them.

    Yes Mr macho man, I bet you could apply your theories of home maintenance with a role reversal. Why not allowing your wife to have men on the side? I bet your wife does not want any sex with you because you are in a slob of a state.
    Perhaps your wife should start meeting with other men so she can see what she is missing out, and you should accept it, because, if your wife goes out with other men and has fun getting what she can not and will never find in you, she would be doing so “out of Love” as you say, just to keep the home together.

    If you are so sure about your theories, you should allow your wife to go out and enjoy the company of other men. Or do you think that only men can cheat, is it that?

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