Why the identities of Ashley Madison’s clients are YOUR business

The Ashley Madison data hack has brought infidelity discussions into the limelight. As a counselor who deals

with affairs, the identities of Ashley Madison’s clients are YOUR business. I know that this is in stark contrast to editorial writers like Emily Hauser, who claim that they are not your business.

If your spouse has cheated, you need to know. You want to know if your marriage is a sham. You want to know if your spouse is actively seeking someone else. You need to know if they are committed to your marriage. You need to know if they are someone who keeps their promises.

In a similar manner, you need to know if your minister, and leaders in your community are people of character. You need to know if they are committed to their marriage. If they are not committed to their marriage, they will not be committed to their other obligations, whether it be a church, denomination, school, committee, political office, etc.

It is also a concern for your neighborhood. When the marriages in your neighborhood are ‘on the rocks’ it impacts the coherence of the community. You can not build a strong community with weak marriages. The values of the other families will influence your children and your community as a whole. It is true that strong marriages and strong families make for strong communities. It is also true that weak marriages and their dysfunctional families make for a weak, dysfunctional community. When a majority of the families in a community are on the rocks, it impacts the community in a major way.Weak marriages and dysfunctional families are two sides of the same coin.

One of the other ways communities are impacted is that of values. In communities where infidelity prevails, values are compromised as a way of survival. Right and wrong become something that changes on a daily basis, depending on who they are trying not to offend. When the values of your community become driven by situational ethics, your community is not stable.

When infidelity becomes ‘acceptable’ in a community, it changes the roles of men and women.  The roles of husbands and wives change. As these roles change, it puts community peer pressure on the other families as well. When the prominent and influential marriages are changed by infidelity as promoted by Ashley Madison, these couples do not automatically loose their influence, it continues. It continues exerting a force on others around them. Other couples will feel the pressure to either conform to the new views of infidelity  or change their social circles. This is basic group psychology often referred to as ‘groupthink’.

When the roles of husband and wife become interchangeable, the whole concept of marriage changes. It weakens. It has to. Infidelity weakens marriages, it weakens the role of husband and wife and also leads to the lowering of moral standards, by necessity, the moral standards are pushed down. You have to lower the bar in order to ‘accommodate’ those who can not or will not control their sexual impulses.

What kind of message does it send when your church tells the world it has the answers and the ministers or leaders are looking for answers at Ashley Madison? It sends a twisted double-message. When the places you go for strength are polluted, how can they help you and your marriage when it is in crisis? …They can’t. They can not produce clean and polluted at the same time, neither can they produce hot and cold at the same time either.

Let me put it this way. If I constructed an infidelity virus that infects marriages with a disease that weakens the bonding between husbands and wives, increases sex drives, lowers inhibitions, and spreads other sexually transmitted diseases would you want me to release it in your neighborhood? Would you want to know if such a virus was unleashed in nearby neighborhoods? I mean, since your kids and theirs go to the same school, your child would be exposed to it. You would be exposed to it in stores and neighborhood gather places, etc.

You can see the danger of the infidelity threat when portrayed as a virus. This viral threat will not go away by putting on blinders. There may be writers who say “it is none of your business” and even distribute blinders as a public service, all in the name of ‘privacy’, but it does not remove the threat. Blinders do not stop the spread of infidelity thinking or infidelity values. It will not stop others from their efforts at seducing your spouse or making passes at them. Turning a blind eye to infidelity will not improve the situation. It only keeps you in the dark about the threat and dangers.

When you are in the dark, you will assume all is well and you will not take any action to stop its spread. Blindness keeps you inert and numbed out. It does not improve your marriage or reduce the risk of infidelity. The cure consist in taking stands against infidelity, in speaking out against it, in making it your business to strengthen the marriages in your community.

I also have problems when writers are illogical in their positions. When writers say that the identities of Ashley Madison clients is none of your business, yet the identities of politicians and their policies regarding women are a major concern. The logic of how cheaters and their attitude toward women and relationships is not a concern, yet when someone is a political role, it suddenly becomes a major concern what their attitude toward women and relationships is a concern does not make sense to me.

The attitude people have toward women and relationships is a concern, no matter what vocation they are in. To suddenly say that you should put on blinders if they use Ashley Madison, yet it is a public matter if their are a politician is a prime example of situational ethics. This is a perversion of values, saying it matters if its politics or church issues, but not if they are non-political or non-influential. If it is wrong for politicians to denigrate women or made snide remarks about them, then it must also be wrong to view women as a commodity through Ashley Madison. Right is right and wrong is wrong.

It is a common misconception that what you do in your own bedroom is nobody else’s business. It is private, but what happens there DOES effect everyone around you. It effects the marriages and relationships of those around you. What you do in your bedroom will either strengthen those around you or weaken them. It will either encourage other healthy marriages or encourage unhealthy/dysfunctional marriages.

What actions are taken that either elevate or lower a communities standards are a concern to the whole community. The morals of the families do as a whole impact the community. The peer pressure to either condone or condemn immorality impacts the community.

I was reminded of this when I visited Amsterdam. The presence of the red light district impacts the whole neighborhood. The prostitution business casts its shadow on every business, professional and church in the community. Every business is touched and impacted by what happens in the ‘red light district’. You can put on the blinders and say ‘what they do behind closed doors is none of my business’, but in Amsterdam, that business effects the reputation of everyone in the area.

You can also consider whether or not the presence of a sexual offender in your neighborhood is a concern or not. If the logic of what they do behind closed doors applies, then you do not need to know about where they live or who they are. If on the other hand, the sexual behavior of some people does impact your community, you will want to know not only where they live, but also how close they are to your child’s school, whether or not they work in nurseries, etc. Somehow the standards change when someone becomes a registered sex offender in the government’s database. So what some people do behind closed doors does impact your community.

What is happening in your neighborhood? Is the identity of Ashley Madison clients any of your business?

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrah