CNW -- Feb 7 -- AshleyMadison.com, the infidelity dating site names Sarah Symonds as their new spokesperson and relationship expert. "I'm thrilled to be joining the Ashley Madison team and my Valentine's gift to Canada is to help break the shell of hypocrisy that surrounds the whole topic of adultery," said Symonds. "People need to wake up and realize that adultery has been going on for as long as the institution of marriage has been around, and that services like Ashley Madison did not create the behavior of infidelity. Instead, AshleyMadison.com provides a safe and successful platform for those individuals who have decided to proceed down this path."
The full article was originally published at CNW, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Yeah, yeah, just so you can sleep at night. Adultery happens every day, but it happens more because of Ashley Madison. However, if you want to get rid of the adulterers and marrieds on your pure-as-driven-snow dating site, you can send them to AM and they'll pay you a nice CPA fee.
Oh please Sarah, give us all a break.
Yes, perhaps you're right when you argue that "adultery has been going on for as long as the institution of marriage has been around, and that services like Ashley Madison did not create the behavior of infidelity."
There is a big difference however between informing us of this and trying to PROFIT from it! So don't for one minute try and legitimse this, or try to Take the moral high ground. Don't equate frequency of occurrence with legitimacy: just because something happens 100 times DOES NOT necessarily make it RIGHT.
Internet dating per se has achieved mainstream acceptability and should be continuing to position itself as a respectable method of meeting new people. Instead we have sites like Ashley Madison arguably doing the industry a DIS-service, threatening to derail the positive PR already created.
On a personal level, I consider myself far more open minded than the average guy, but this still manages to repulse me.
On a final note, what would be the official response from the website if they start getting explicitly mentioned in the divorce courts? Hardly maintaining a positive corporate reputation, is it?
Posted by: Brian Gray | Feb 10, 2008 at 05:53 PM
Mark, I don't think that adultery happens more because of Ashley Madison. Who wants to cheat is going to cheat anyway. AshleyMadison might make it a little easier. When people go to this website, there is already something wrong in their relationship. I am not a fan of this website but I do agree with Sarah.
Posted by: Sarah Brown | Feb 11, 2008 at 12:09 PM
The mere existence of such a site is going to slightly increase the propensity of a large number of marrieds who would be tempted to cheat.
Many dating sites have a 'discrete relationship' section. But at least they're encouraging people to be truthful about their marriage status. That's a plus.
Sites that don't want marrieds can offer a 'discrete relationships' option and then channel the traffic right on over to Ashley Madison and still make money from the traffic. So in some ways, AM's existence is useful, at least for the companies that want to clean the married lurkers from their sites.
btw, I have a problem with people lying about being married on dating sites, and lying to their spouses. If people want to have open relationships, power to them. But, the real damage and danger occurs when people lie and cheat, with people with whom they may have had children with, and trusted, and shared a lifetime with. People shouldn't do things that they're not prepared to be completely honest about.
Posted by: Mark Brooks | Feb 11, 2008 at 12:34 PM
It appalls me that Sarah Symonds or anyone at Ashley Madison can sleep at night. Yes, the people who cheat are probably going to cheat anyway, with or without AW. But if one uses that rationalization, then you might as well sell drugs to school kids, because after all, somebody is going to sell to them. In fact, that rationalization works very well with a whole list of immoral behaviors. I prefer the argument that says, just because it's going on doesn't mean I have to be a part of it.
And if Sarah et al, haven't seen the damage that cheating does, they should. It's not the sex. It's the breaking of the ultimate trust. It's the damaging of spouses who have extreme difficulty trusting in their next relationship. It's the damaging of children who become committment phobic.
I can only hope there is Karma when it comes to the folks at Ashley Madison.
Posted by: Glenn Millar | Feb 12, 2008 at 06:39 PM