Of Course, He Has an Ashley Madison Account

I sat in the chair at the far end of the table near the window. From there, I could see anyone in the kitchen to my left, anyone in the sun room straight ahead, and anyone on the porch to my right. The large sliding glass door was open, a light breeze coming through the screen. It must not have been too hot that summer morning.

It had been almost a year since the famous hack on the Ashley Madison website (a platform for finding someone to have an affair with), exposing millions of subscribers for the cheaters (or wannabes) they were. A story on social media was circulating reminding everyone of the anniversary this particular August. For some reason, it sparked a realization.

At the time of the hack, I wasn’t personally invested in what was happening. I certainly felt sorry for the countless people betrayed across the world, but it never dawned on me that my husband might have also been one of the subscribers.

In hindsight, that feels naive and foolish, but back then, it felt normal. Although I had once suspected him of being unfaithful with a coworker (ok, wait, make that twice), he had always convinced me that cheating was the one way he would never hurt me.

I believed him.

You see, after 18 years of marriage, his simple definition of what it meant to be a good husband and father had become clear: come home every night, provide food and shelter, and don’t cheat.

Those seemed to be his only rules. And as long as he was doing those things, anything else he did (or didn’t do) didn’t matter. Neither did the manner in which he decided to provide. I wasn’t entitled to know, or ever going to know, exactly what any of those were.

In his mind, this made him a perfectly adequate spouse.

So while he would lie, and give me the silent treatment, and tell my secrets, and sabotage me, and humiliate me, and endanger me, and countless other things without a thought, no, he would not cheat. Cheating went against his code.

I was so convinced of this, in fact, that for almost two decades when people would ask me if I trusted him, I would always say, “yes”. Trusting someone was exclusive to sex in my mind. It took me a long time to understand that you have to trust someone in all areas of your life to answer that properly, but that’s a post for another day.

In spite of a house full of people, it was only the two of us in the kitchen when it hit me like a bolt of lightning. I had never asked him if he’d had an Ashley Madison account.

We had separated 4 times by that moment, the first in 2011, the second in 2013, the third in 2014, and the most recent and serious time in 2015. He had his own apartment for almost 7 months that year. It was only 9 months prior to this moment in 2016.

I knew for a fact he had dated while he was on his own, but he had always insisted he never slept with anyone. I never wanted to know the details, and I never asked for them. I took him at his word and believed that in spite of our splits, we were always true to one another physically. I knew I had always been. I had never even gone on a date.

But that day, sitting there, something just clicked. Of course, he had an Ashley Madison account. That’s exactly the place he would go to find sex and companionship while we were apart. An affair would be the perfect solution. No possibility of any strings attached.

I looked up from my phone and bluntly asked him as he poured more coffee in the kitchen.

“Did you have an Ashley Madison account?”

I wasn’t mad, wasn’t nervous, wasn’t anything. I just needed him to admit it.

He stopped pouring and stood frozen for a second, clearly not prepared for this moment. I watched him carefully to see his body language and knew from the way his shoulders dropped what the answer was. He always dropped his shoulders when he admitted doing something bad.

“Yes,” he replied matter of factly right back at me, almost as if he was trying to see who could out-shock the other. Everything with him was always a contest.

“I did, but I don’t have it anymore.”

The air became still and heavy. He looked at me, and I looked at him. I thought I would have been angrier, but instead, I felt satisfied that my instinct was right. By then, trusting myself had become nearly impossible. This felt like a victory in that regard.

“I got rid of it when we got back together,” he continued. “And I never met anyone there anyway. It’s all guys and fake women bots.”

I didn’t know what to ask after that. I hadn’t planned on this conversation, and I certainly didn’t think it through. Everything I needed to know had been answered with the word, “yes”. That’s all I had been looking for.

I couldn’t tell you if I asked any details, or made him feel ashamed, or if it just remained silent between us. I just know that from that moment forward, I had no doubt about who he was any longer.

For it wasn’t just that he could do that to me that horrified me, I realized. It was that he could just as easily do it to someone else. He could participate in the destruction of another person’s marriage and not think twice.

That’s who he was.

That summer, however, I had to put it out of my mind. When we reconciled in early 2016, I promised myself that I would no longer collect reasons to end our marriage. I promised him that I would stop bringing up the past. I promised both of us that we would make a new path forward. I couldn’t do that by constantly reliving old pain.

So I shoved it down for another year, until finally, ironically, in that same kitchen, I knew I had nowhere left for any of it to fit. It wasn’t the worst thing he did a year later that finally ended our marriage; it was simply the last.

I didn’t think about the Ashley Madison incident the day it ended. I didn’t think about it during the divorce, and I haven’t thought about it in the almost 5 years since. It wasn’t until an advertisement for an upcoming documentary about the hack popped up today that I remembered that awkward, horrible, and satisfying moment in the lake house kitchen.

And that’s when it dawned on me…

I never asked him any other questions.

I never asked him when he created the account. I had assumed it was only after we had separated, but he never confirmed that.

I never checked if he actually took it down. Since he had his own credit card and checking account for years, which had seemed fine since he had his own business, I had no way of ever knowing.

I never really knew the whole story, which makes perfect sense. I never did.

I know it doesn’t matter at this point, and like last time, after this post, I will forget about this moment and Ashley Madison, hopefully for good. But it does make me realize I had been asking the wrong question all along.

Of course, he had an Ashley Madison account. I would bet you anything he still has it.