So began the pitch I gave my wife to let me join the marrieds-looking-for-affairs website, AshleyMadison. It would be part of my research into women who cheat, why infidelity is increasing, and what can be done to possibly affair-proof a marriage. She looked at me straight-faced, unflinching.
This is a past she knows about but never experienced personally. No, I was far more despicable than that. Was I looking to get women into bed? Of course, but it was more than that.
I worked hard to become the embodiment of seduction. To quickly read the spoken and unspoken clues of what a woman was looking for in a man and then give her the perception I was that guy—in effect, to become so alluring that she would willingly give herself over, thinking that having sex was her idea.
It was quite a rush, and as the wake of emotional destruction would later exemplify, seducing women became my drug of choice. And you know that I love you. According to the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy , nearly 50 percent of married women and 60 percent of married men will have an extramarital affair at some point in their marriage.
When you consider that these statistics are nearly double what they were a short 10 years ago, clearly this is beyond an issue; it is now commonplace. Marriage is not the issue.
