I first heard about this on a Tyra episode. What made it even weirder was that "Ashley" and "Madison" were the top 2 names for baby girls in the year that the site was founded. That's how the site creator chose the name for the site. Just a little twisted.

There were several people there who have used the site and I don't remember all their stories, but one was a man who discovered his wife had used the site to cheat on him. The guy was totally in pieces and Tyra asked the site creator something like, "Do you ever think about the spouses that get cheated on? It's not all swingers and people with open marriages looking for harmless fun using the site. People get hurt every day because their spouse used your services and you're profiting off of that." The site creator (dunno his name) said something about how people would cheat anyway, he's trying to give "the people" what they want, etc. The guy whose wife cheated started yelling at him at that point so whatever he said after that was lost.

I'm leaning towards Tyra's statement on this one. Sure, people are gonna cheat if they want to and some people don't think of it as "cheating" because their relationships/marriages are open like that. But the site's slogan was "Life is short. Have an affair." I don't think the site is catering to harmless fun (for the most part). While it is definitely the user who destroyed his or her relationship/family and not the site itself, I take issue with someone who actually encourages that. There are just so many other ways to make money.

I wonder if people get on the site and lie about being married to make the "affair" more exciting.

Telling someone you're married and willing to have an affair just to make yourself more interesting? Sparking the thrill of a fake affair...that would be a whole new level of pathetic.

And now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it happens plenty on that site and elsewhere. :rolleyes:

Considering there have been internet stories of people lying about being moms, to the point of making up ages, names, activities for their faux kids...and I don't mean people who've miscarried or lost a child and are out of it with grief either, I mean people who are quite aware of what they're doing...I think lying about being married is perhaps slightly less twisted.

^^^Was it someone on here who had a pregnant friend with a blog and some random username stole all her belly pics and pretended they were hers? Now THAT was twisted.

Depends on what they're doing, but it's not a lot different than any sexual roleplay really.

Ummmm, yes it is. Roleplay is at the consent of both partners (or it should be). "Hey honey, tonight let's go to that dive bar and you can pretend to be a hooker and I can pretend to pay you." I don't think that's what CG meant.

No, this is a bit more like going to the bar and saying you're a doctor so you can get laid. In the range of 'things to lie about' I don't see that being a big one. Particularly not when the website is for cheaters in the first place. ;)

Ideally yeah, people wouldn't lie at all, but I have a hard time garnering sympathy for the innocent victim of someone lying about being married. It might be because it's midnight though. NGL

Yeah, I read that write up in Savage Love.

To be fair, the whole concept of "marrying for love" is not necessarily universal. A lot of marriages happen for political or economic alliances. Look at all of the royal marriages from way back. You "marry" for what it can do for political or economic advancement and then you have your piece(s) on the side.... (thinking back to that movie, "The Other Boleyn Girl").