Noel Biderman doesn’t cheat on his spouse; he just encourages everybody else to.
The founder of Ashley Madison, the online dating service for marrieds who want to stray, markets his business with the simple slogan: “Life is short. Have an affair.”
The login page shows an anonymous, but beautiful, woman with a wedding ring. She has a finger up to her lips, as if welcoming us to her secret sexual paradise.
Ashley Madison is controversial. So is Biderman. Every time he opens his mouth, provocative talk spews forth about adultery, which is almost as old as marriage.
“Infidelity is part of the landscape,” he says, cranking up a typical rant against the puritanical media. “If we removed every unfaithful man from public office, from CEO positions, from the basketball courts, we’d have a very dull society. You wouldn’t be able to fill a football team, run a government or have a corporation that can function. … So let’s stop trying to paint these people as villains.”
This laissez-faire attitude toward adultery is not just Biderman’s business plan, but the theme of his new book, “Adultropology,” which provides a statistical understanding of who is “cheating” and why.
Ashley Madison has 25 million members in 35 countries, so Biderman, who lives in Toronto, has access to reams of data. In fact, he claims to see more information on adultery in a single day than a professional sociologist would in an entire career.
But who is this Noel Biderman, who wants you to betray your spouse (if you’re unhappy, that is)? Turns out he’s a pretty nice guy and an interesting drinking buddy. After 12 years in the infidelity business, Biderman rattles off statistics like a scientist, but one with a bemused attitude about the human heart. But at center he is a driven entrepreneur, aiming to make an international, and illicit, version of match.com.
“Infidelity is global,” he explained. “I have opportunity to build the first truly global dating site.”
Ironically, Biderman is a married father of two young children who says his marriage is a happy one and that he’s not had an affair “yet.”
Those three letters form an awfully big qualifier.
“If I wanted to have an affair,” he quickly adds, “I would have one.” (For her part, Biderman’s wife has said in interviews that she would be “devastated” if she ever found out her husband was having sex outside of their marriage.)
In actually, the stats show it’s more likely that Biderman’s wife will cheat on him first; not only is infidelity among women is on the rise, but the “peak age” for a woman to cheat is 39.
“My wife is 39, so I’m walking on eggshells.”
Of course, he’s joking. Biderman not only believes that “cheating” is not wrong, but that it can actually save a marriage.
Not his, of course. In fact, during a two-hour interview, the only time Biderman got squeamish about polyamory was when discussing it in the context of his wife. The only thing that holds him back, he said as his body language switched into obvious discomfort, is how badly it would hurt her if he strayed. As much as he envisions — and profits from — guilt-free sex, for now, at least, it’s not for him.
Einstein did it. Caesar did it. Presidents have done it. And today, a double-digit percentage of married people do it. But Biderman has not. Yet his website makes him a punching bag for self-styled proponents of family values.
Sean Hannity called Biderman a “lowlife” who is “so full of crap it’s unbelievable.” Celebrity docs like Dr. Phil and Dr. Drew have likewise scorned Ashley Madison on air, saying it encourages deep ills in society. Bloomberg Businessweek couched its criticism of Biderman in admiration for his financial success, calling him “possibly evil and certainly entrepreneurial.”
“I am printing money, I don’t deny it,” Biderman says. “That’s what happens when you build a taboo-focused business. No one else is doing this. So I’m a monopoly.”
The book is an answer to all the criticism, though the stats can be read both as an anthem of adultery and as an ad for Ashley Madison. But even self-promotion has a larger societal goal, Biderman says.
“Everything we do is a way to let our members know they are not alone, and that their actions are not abnormal,” he says.
Yes, he has some reservations about his life’s work. Years from now, he knows, his young daughter will be all grown up and will likely be cheated on by someone.
And that person, no doubt, will be living out a lifestyle championed by her dear old dad.
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Modern love
Noel Biderman’s work as founder of Ashley Madison has given him access to reams of data about infidelity, which he has compiled into a book:
75% of male cheaters are fathers.
75% of female cheaters feel neglected by their husbands.
49 – Average age for male cheaters
39 — Average age for woman cheaters
Idaho has the most new signups per day on Ashley Madison. New York has the second most.
36 hours – amount of time some users need from signing up on Ashley Madison to actually having an affair.
30% of Ashley Madison users are women.
Gemini women are the most likely to cheat — and be cheated on.
Source: “Adultropology” (ADL Printing Press)
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First person: From a ‘cheater’
Lauren is a 34-year-old married mother of three who signed up for Ashley Madison after seeing a TV commercial. Here is her story:
I’ve been on Ashley Madison for four years. I’ve had three affairs with men I met on the site. I never had an affair before, and it wasn’t until I signed up with site that I decided to go through with it. I like the privacy and anonymity and the chance to be yourself. Everyone is on the site to do the same things, so there is less playing around and guessing if we want to sleep together or not.
My husband and I have been married for 10 years and together for 15. For us the intimacy kind of stopped. We both work a lot and we’re on different schedules and it turned into more of a friendship than a relationship. Women have needs, and when they are not fulfilled you start to look elsewhere.
So when I stumbled upon Ashley Madison, it was a godsend for me. I was finally able to talk to people who were having the same problems as me. It was a place where no one knew me, and I could talk openly and honestly about what I was going through.
There are tons of studies that show we are not meant to be monogamous.
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Adultery: A timeline
2000 B.C. – Sarah gives her servant Hagar to her husband Abraham so that he can get her pregnant.
41 B.C. – Cleopatra, an Egyptian queen, seduces Mark Antony, a married Roman general. Later they both commit suicide rather than be captured.
1533 – After Henry VIII is denied permission by the Pope to divorce Catherine of Aragon, he breaks with the church altogether and marries Anne Boleyn, the sister of someone with whom he was already having an affair.
1857 – Emma Bovary, the heroine of “Madame Bovary,” finds escape from the routines of rural life in the arms of lovers before finally killing herself with arsenic.
1920 – Albert Einstein had about six girlfriends during his marriage to his cousin Elsa.
1949 – Swedish film star Ingrid Bergman cuckolds her husband with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Later, she is denounced in the U.S. Senate as a “powerful influence for evil.”
1962 – John F. Kennedy allegedly sleeps with Marilyn Monroe, beginning one of the most storied affairs in history.
1998 – Bill Clinton. Monica Lewinsky. Oval Office. Cigar. Nuff said.
2008 – New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigns after his affair with a call girl comes to light.
2009 – Tiger Woods’ wife Elin Nordegren chases him out of the house with a golf club after learning of his affair.
