Married but looking for an affair? AshleyMadison.com has your match!

While researching the nanny rearing cheaters story I ran across another crazy story I wanted to share.

This story on Time.com mentions a Web site that is similar to Match.com except that it is for MARRIED people to find matches for AFFAIRS!

The site is called AshleyMadison.com and it guarantees that you too can find someone with whom to have an affair. Their tag line is “Life is short, have an affair.”

The Toronto-based site, which was launched in 2001, has had its membership double over the past year to 4 million.

Time.com reports that:

“Critics call AshleyMadison a cruel sex site that profits from marital pain. “This is a business built on the back of broken hearts, ruined marriages and damaged families,” says Trish McDermott, a dating-industry consultant who helped found Match.com and Engage.com. “It’s in the business of rebranding infidelity,” she says, “making it not only monetizable, but adding a modicum of normalcy to it. AshleyMadison is making bad choices, broken promises and faithlessness look like something that’s trendy and hip and fun to talk about at a cocktail party.”

“We’re just a platform,” responds CEO Noel Biderman. “No website or 30-second ad is going to convince anyone to cheat,” he says. “People cheat because their lives aren’t working for them.”

The site charges members $49 to contact up to 20 members. Members don’t pay to receive messages, just to make contact, so often women use the site for free.

“Dorothy, a 45-year-old Floridian whose screen name begins with SexyMom, says she’s been married for 20 years but started using the site four months ago because her husband constantly turned down sex and refused marriage counseling. “It’s like the seven-year itch, but 20 years later,” she says. “My husband never throws me a compliment. Now I meet guys who say, ‘You’re so hot,’ or ‘You have great eyes.’”

As of when Time wrote the story, Dorothy had met seven men though the site. She said her husband doesn’t know how to use the computer.

Other sites like this exist but the article says AshleyMadison is the most successful.

So I am just completely floored by this story and this Web site. I can’t believe something like this even exists (and now I’ve given it lots of publicity)!

So what do you think about this Web site? Would you ever use a service like this? Have you used a service like this? Do you think affairs are generally this arranged or people just fall into them by having chemistry with someone at work or with a friend?