Analysis Reveals Almost No Real Women On Ashley Madison

gurps_npc writes: Ashley Madison claimed to have about 31 million men and 5.5 million woman enrolled. Those odds are not good for the men, 6:1. But unfortunately, most of those 'women' were fake. This researcher analyzed the data and found only 12,000 actual, real women using Ashley Madison. That means for every 7750 men, there were 3 women. There are reports that Ashley Madison paid people to create fake female profiles. Their website admits that 'some of the users may be there for "entertainment purposes."' The article itself is well written, including a description of the analysis. A charitable person would say that Ashley Madison was selling a fantasy, not reality. But a realist would say Ashley Madison is just a thief stealing money from lonely, unhappy men.

Comments

Fixed it for you.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

But a realist would say Ashley Madison is just a thief stealing money from lonely, unhappy men.

But a realist would say Ashley Madison is just cheating men cheating on their wives.

Re:Fixed it for you.

[DNS-and-BIND]

But a realist would have to ask uncomfortable questions like why such men were lonely and unhappy in the first place.

When a woman gets married and has children, her whole life changes. Her husband is no longer the focus of her life, her children are. She loses interest in sex, and doesn't see why she should have to do it any more. If she wants another child, sure, but otherwise not. To her, it's just one more person who wants something from her at the end of a long day at work, and this one she can actually say "no" to. So, she does.

Meanwhile, the husband, cut completely off from one source of sex he is allowed to have, grows increasingly desperate and unhappy. I don't condone cheating at all - but damn, marriage doesn't mean celibacy. Or, it shouldn't. This is the point at which feminists burst into the conversation shouting "RAPE!" (but they always do that) and that's not my argument at all. A wife *should* love her husband and *want* to have sex with him of her own free will. This isn't happening.

Nobody supports cheating men, but let's be honest here, men need to have sex in order to keep healthy and sane. A website that promises it to them for only $19.95 per month is going to get customers, plain and simple. Remember: desperate and unhappy. Human beings are capable of some pretty fucked-up actions when they become desperate enough. The fact that this website didn't even have any women to match the men to just makes them even more scumbags than we already knew.

Re:Fixed it for you.

[swb]

I don't know that I agree with the specific phrasing of the parent poster -- mostly for rhetorical reasons -- but I think he's right, despite the ridiculous criticism of the followup posters.

I'm 48 years old and 100% of the married men in my peer group (middle class, mostly white males married to mostly white females, all with white collar jobs) complain about their wives lack of interest in sex. ALL of them. I don't think any of the conventional explanations make sense.

As far as I know from my experience with them in domestic situations, all are good contributors to their kids parenting -- two have wives with more demanding jobs and their husbands probably do MORE parenting than their wives. None have any kind of financial problems. All but one are in excellent physical shape, and the former, while "chunky" looks like he did when he was 25, so he's no more out of shape than he was when he was married.

Two of them have both told me stories that when they were trying to have children -- even their second -- their wives were extremely interested in sex, and once the second baby came along -- BAM! -- no interest. Like a switch had flipped, and neither has related any significant life change that happened concurrently (major change in job responsibilities, etc).

My explanation for this is that this is mostly evolutionary biology in action. When women who have given birth hit their 40s, they lose their sex drive. The biology is probably buried in hormonal changes, especially considering that women hit menopause and go infertile.

In terms of evolution, it makes sense that biologically women would lose interest in sex as their bodies become less able to bear children. Women over 40 have increased risk of pregnancy problems, children with chromosomal problems, etc, all things that could be a threat to her or her other offspring if she were to die in childbirth. Childbearing and childrearing is demanding physically, and the older people get the less physical stamina they have.

I think as a well-known phenomenon its probably even gotten "worse" because women are less dependent on men and have greater legal recognition. In times past, older, married women probably didn't want sex any more than they do now, but either went along with it because they felt they had to or their husbands just took it because they could (yes, this is gross, and no I would never support the idea of a husband raping his wife).

Re:At least a call girl is honest

[Dixie_Flatline]

Let me tell you a true story of a guy I know.

He and his wife had a child, and afterwards, she lost interest in sex. Her desire never came back, and that was it. He still loved her and she still loved him, but he wanted to have sex. So he did the 'right thing' and divorced her. Now, their story isn't so bad. He divorced her and it was amicable enough, he still visits almost every day (they live down the street from one another) but they live in different homes.

My first advice to that guy would've been to have a consensual open relationship, but absent that possibility, I think that maybe having 'an affair' would've been a better solution than divorce. The result would've been nearly exactly the same (he doesn't even want a relationship with the women he sleeps with), but they wouldn't have had to live in different locations.

Your view of infidelity and relationships isn't wrong, but it's somewhat incomplete. I can easily come up with a slightly worse case for this--they could've been living in the USA, for instance (they're in the UK). That would've meant that she would've lost any health coverage that he brought to the family through his employment. You can modify this scenario subtly in a lot of ways to make it worse, and sometimes the least bad option is going to be cheating on your partner so you can stay married and in the same house and sane so you can raise your kids properly.

As someone that's consensually non-monogamous, this is all just abstract philosophy to me--I think there's too much emphasis put on sexual fidelity in the first place, and not enough on emotional support and availability. You can be monogamous with someone and still be a wholly shitty partner to them.

So don't be too quick to judge the people that were paying for memberships on the site. Some portion of them are CPOS (cheating pieces of shit, in Savage Love parlance), but some of them are almost certainly people (and, according to the analysis, almost certainly men) that want to stay married but can't live in a sexless marriage anymore, or want to explore other parts of their sexuality that their partner can't provide. You don't know the story.