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Thursday, March 3. 2011

Do you want to have an affair?

Read all about Ashley Madison:



After spending several years as a sports agent at Chicago's Interperformances, Biderman founded Ashley Madison in 2002, naming the company after the two most popular names for baby girls that year. A large chunk of his work as an agent involved helping professional basketball players juggle their wives and mistresses, so when he read somewhere that 30 percent of users of Internet dating services were pretending to be single when they weren't, a light went on, pointing the way to an underserved online niche market. What would happen, Biderman thought, if cheaters had a website all their own?


Clever entrepreneurs, but I wonder how Biderman's Mom and Dad feel about his business.


The natural desire for novelty and excitement in romance and sex is always with us. It takes a while to realize that the new one is, well, just another deeply flawed person too. And for them to realize the same about you.


In my work, I tend to deal with the grim fallout of such adventures so I tend to be biased against acting on romantic temptations. Unlike the "sophisticated" Europeans and Asians, Americans tend to expect vows to be deadly serious. Especially church vows.


I say "tend to." Here are some US infidelity stats. Relatively few American marriages survive adultery, and those that do have some permanent damage.


Another data point, from this site:


Medical field(s) with the highest divorce rate: Psychiatrists and marriage counselors. Ouch.


 

Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss in Our Essays, Psychology, and Dr. Bliss, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 15:30 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

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Thanks for the thought-provoking insights, Dr. Bliss.

I would guess that I am fairly typical in that for as long as I can remember, I have had urges to hop under the covers with as many attractive women as I could talk into it. But when I met my Lovely Bride over 20 years ago, I quickly came to realize that if we were married and she cheated on me, I would be devastated. Not long after, I realized that the same would happen to her if I did.

About the time we got engaged 5 years later, I almost did cross that line. We managed to survive my immaturity and worked through our problems with the aid of some counseling. It took a long time to rebuild that trust that I had weakened.

I am so glad we stuck it out. We are about as close to perfect for each other as can be, agreeing on politics, kids, money and of course, the need to be faithful.

I am not exactly sure what I was trying to find when I almost put the need for a quick thrill above my relationship with her. But I am sure that I wouldn't have found anything remotely resembling my Lovely Bride's comination of character, committment, beauty and faith.

I still have innappropriate urges. I think I will for as long as I am alive (and reasonably healthy). But being a man means I do what I have to instead of what I WANT to. When the grass looks greener, I just remind myself that no relationship would ever be worth wrecking the one that I have.
#1 Dangerous Dean on 2011-03-03 16:02 (Reply)
It's worse ;-)

"What's the most suicidal occupation? I won't venture an opinion for the world of work overall, but among health-care types it may well be shrinks. In a study of 18,730 physician deaths from 1967 to 1972 (men and women), psychiatrists accounted for 7 percent of the total but 12 percent of the 593 suicides (source: Rich et al., cited above).

Even more alarming is the rate of suicide among female doctors. A recent study found that 3.6 percent of white female doctors' deaths were suicides--higher than the rate for male doctors and many times the average for U.S. women (0.5 percent for 1990; source: Frank et al., cited above; Vital Statistics of the United States--1990). Women have entered medicine in huge numbers in recent decades, but progress has come at a price."

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2301/do-dentists-have-the-highest-suicide-rate

Re: "I still have innappropriate urges."
You didn't say what that innapropriate urge was (covering other people in chocolate syrup?), but I don't consider being sexually aroused by nubile women innappropriate.
There is a saying: "It doesn't matter where you get your appetite, as long as you eat at home".
...but I certainly do agree with your conclusion.
#2 EarlW on 2011-03-03 16:40 (Reply)
Sorry I didn't clarify. I wasn't thinking kinky as much as just entertaining fantasies that I knew I should be rejecting.

I have never pursued another woman. But I am a college professor and I see several attractive young women who seem to have crushes on me every year. I have never acted on one and never will. But I have spent more time thiking about them than I should have.
#2.1 Dangerous Dean on 2011-03-04 00:13 (Reply)
Re: covering other people in chocolate syrup
That is now called "art" (or is it only when you cover oneself when on stage? It's so complicated)

Re: inappropriate urges
I think that is something we all have to deal with from time to time. If I ever succumb, I hope somebody shoots me because it will have happened because I was stark raving mad.

Re: Ashley Madison
It's been said that fortunes will be made on the building of civilizations as well as their destruction. Too many people sleep too well at night.
#3 mudbug on 2011-03-03 17:01 (Reply)
I'm more sympathetic and understanding to some affairs. Sometimes one marriage partner just decides that both partners are to be asexual and/or there are major health issues with one and not the other.

Pure thrill-seeking is hardly justification for an affair, of course, but people's lives can be very complicated.
#4 Whitehall on 2011-03-03 18:05 (Reply)
lives can be complicated
Yeah, so can pomises.
#4.1 mudbug on 2011-03-03 21:17 (Reply)
"Do you want to have an affair?"

Why Dr Bliss, I'm flattered that you would proposition me, but no, thank you.
#5 Wally on 2011-03-03 21:31 (Reply)
A tragic thing about life and affairs is that you take the test, then learn the lesson. After that, there's the pursuit of redemption.
#6 twolaneflash on 2011-03-03 22:53 (Reply)
When I was young I went through a relationship where a girlfriend cheated on me. That left such scars that I have always been totally faithful to my wife of 27 years. There's no way I would want to inflict that kind of pain on my wife or kids, and just thinking about it now still brings the pain of my prior relationship back instantly.

You never completely heal from something like that, if the person who cheated on you was someone you loved and were supposedly in a committed relationship with.

Despite everything the media, Madison Avenue, Hollywood and the adultery pushers say, God meant for you to be and remain faithful to one person.
#7 Jim on 2011-03-04 13:46 (Reply)

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