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Non-monogamy in Pop Culture: The Ashley Madison Series
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For this episode of Fun with Sex, we dive into the world of non-monogamy in pop culture by exploring The Ashley Madison Series. We discuss how the infamous platform, known for facilitating extramarital affairs, has impacted the conversation around non-traditional relationships. Is it just a hub for cheaters, or does it open up important discussions about consensual non-monogamy, infidelity, and the complexities of desire? We break down the show, examining how it portrays the tension between secrecy and transparency, and what it tells us about the evolving norms around relationships today. Tune in as we explore the messy, thrilling, and sometimes controversial world of non-monogamy in the media!
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Transcript
Introduction and Ashley Madison Scandal Overview
00:00:01
funwithsexpodcast
Hey, this is the Fun with Sex podcast and I'm John. I'm Natalie. And today we're talking about the Ashley Madison scandal. And specifically, we just watched the Ashley Madison documentary on Netflix and we have some interesting takeaways from it. Yeah, just a lot of reflections about how non-monogamy and affairs and cheating and all of this stuff is viewed in the mainstream pop culture and just kind of our thoughts viewing the series that's all about cheating as non-monogamous people.
Impact of Ashley Madison Breach and Societal Reflections
00:00:35
funwithsexpodcast
So to catch you up on what happened, millions of people in a America and millions hundreds of millions of people around the world signed up for this website slash app, which is called Ashley Medicine. And basically, Ashley Medicine is
00:00:52
funwithsexpodcast
Tinder for married people who are not an open relationship. I think like the tagline is, life is short, have an affair. And basically the goal of the app is to connect married people together who want to have affairs. And you get a whole bunch of people in the mid 2000s through the mid 20 teens like 2005 to 2015 let's just say who signed up for this app to find other people who have sexual or emotional relationships well outside of the relationship. um And then in like the mid 2010s there was a huge data breach where people leaked the information of all the people who were on Ashley Madison and it was a huge scandal. Some people committed suicide.
Public Perception and Relationship Complexities
00:01:43
funwithsexpodcast
A lot of people lost their weddings, not weddings, lost their marriages. um And it kind of gave society this interesting reflection on cheating, monogamy, marriage, and even like the shaming and warning heads on the spike, the virtue of sickling of other people who spend hours on hours just looking up who was released.
00:02:08
funwithsexpodcast
on the Ashley Madison site, not because they were checking for their partners, but to find random people who they may know, random people on Twitter so they can shame that person for stepping outside of their marriage. Yeah. And I think the context of why the scandal kind of got so big in the press, um, just from a PR standpoint is Ashley Madison's whole marketing strategy was any press is good press.
00:02:34
funwithsexpodcast
So it was very routine that their CEO would go on talk shows. So Ashley Madison was kind of already in this really bad light in the public eye because, you know, the mainstream media sources and mainstream pop culture, especially back then, you know, non-monogamy wasn't a super popular thing. Not saying that cheating should be popular, but, um,
00:03:00
funwithsexpodcast
Yeah, people just absolutely hated Ashley Madison. They thought it was terrible. They thought it was um just completely immoral that this site existed.
Monogamy, Non-Monogamy, and Relationship Fulfillment
00:03:10
funwithsexpodcast
um But in that, there was kind of this whole second group of people who kind of were like, you know, cheating is going to happen um and kind of understood why people would go to the site. And I think going to the first group of people, I think it's important to note that For a lot of people who are in monogamous relationships, their behavior doesn't match their identity. What I mean by that is that they say they want to have monogamy. They say they want to be in a monogamous relationship. But then they step out for sexual or emotional connections. And the thing that was very interesting about the documentary is when they interviewed a lot of those people, they were like, hey, so
00:03:53
funwithsexpodcast
Do you hate your spouse or were you unhappy in your relationship? And most of those people said no, they weren't unhappy in the relationship. It was more, they wanted the relationship and something else outside of monogamy. And I think that's what like none of monogamous people try to tell monogamous people all the time is the idea that you can have your cake and eat it too. And like monogamy is not fulfilling for huge percentages of the population. yeah And when you look at it is because when you look at cheating or you're like,
00:04:23
funwithsexpodcast
emotional cheating and emotional relationships that people have outside of their monogamous relationship, you can tell that there's something that's unfulfilled there. And monogamy forces people into this false dichotomy where they say that like, hey, I don't feel fulfilled by this aspect of in this aspect of my relationship. So I either have to suppress that, or I need to do it in an unethical way. And non-monogamous people say, no, you can do both. Just find somebody who also wants a non-monogamous relationship. And I think that's where people who critique both E&M and cheating get it wrong. And I think that's where the Ashley Madison marketing team got it wrong, is they kind of have this idea of
00:05:13
funwithsexpodcast
Oh, you're in an unhappy marriage. So that's why you're cheating. Do you want to live your life in an unhappy marriage, even though you don't want to get divorced? And it's like, yeah, there are people where they cheat because they're super unhappy. But the thing that the documentary highlighted, which a lot of em and m people try to share is this idea that you can completely love your partner, love the life you have with them, love your relationship.
00:05:40
funwithsexpodcast
and feel super fulfilled in that and still have desires for other people. Because that's kind of, I feel like when people look at E&M who are monogamous, they're like,
00:05:51
funwithsexpodcast
Oh, you know, is it because your relationship just like wasn't like good? So now you need to find another. And it's the same thing with cheating. Like when Beyonce got cheated on, everybody's like, oh, well, you know, if she's not good enough for a man, how can any of us be good enough? And it's like, that's the issue. People, a lot of people aren't cheating because they're like, well, you know, my wife isn't as hot as I want her to be or as sexy or are sex isn't good. It's probably just kind of the thrill and the fun of having sex with someone new. I mean, that's what the research backs up was there was a study that Justin Lee Miller talks about in his podcast, the Sex and Psychology podcast, where they asked people who cheat like, hey, were you unhappy in your relationship? Is that why you cheated? Or, hey, did you cheat because you want a relationship to end? And most people were like, no,
00:06:49
funwithsexpodcast
I cheated because I wanted my, I love my my partner, but I wanted this plus one. I wanted this emotional validation from this person or I just formed a second connection with this person or I thought this person was very attractive and I want to sleep with them. And that's what like non-monogamous people tell you is that like, you don't have to always make this false dichotomy. And I think that the reality is that like,
00:07:12
funwithsexpodcast
Monogamy, like sexuality, I believe exists on a spectrum. I think that there are people who are existing on either pole where they're 100% completely monogamous or 100% completely relationship of anarchy. Just like I think there are people who are 100% strictly straight and 100% strictly gay. But I think that like most people probably exist somewhere in the binary where some people their relationship might look like hey I may have a primary emotional partner but then I also have like secondary sexual partners or secondary emotional partners or I'm dating multiple people but I still have someone who I view as like my anchor partner and I think that there's this idea in like the world of monogamy that there's not a non-monogamy that it's either you're in this exclusive mono monogamous relationship or you're not in a
00:08:07
funwithsexpodcast
or you're not in a relationship about ah at all. And if you're in this exclusive monogamous relationship, you can be involved with any other person in a sexual or emotional way without that violating the terms of your relationship.
Non-Monogamous Behaviors in Conservative Contexts
00:08:20
funwithsexpodcast
And it puts a lot of pressure on people to conform to what I would call unrealistic expectations. And I think that like cheating rates back it up, that complete exclusive monogamy is unrealistic for most people.
00:08:35
funwithsexpodcast
Yeah, and I think that's why you find a lot of people where they're just kind of living a bachelor or bachelorette lifestyle where they just have a bunch of casual partners and you know people who are in this very monogamous marriage mindset look at that and they think it's crazy, but you know it's really just these people are not aware of E and&M and they don't have the vocabulary to describe the fact that they are just terrified of the idea only being with one person for the rest of their life. Yeah, and I also like the really interesting thing I found in the Ashley Madison documentary was the amount of people who were either like very verbally said that they were Christian, or when you looked at them, you heard them talk, you look at their lifestyle, they're very coded as more conservative people. And I think that like, that could also tell that goes to show that no monogamy and
00:09:31
funwithsexpodcast
not being happy in a monogamous relationship doesn't just appeal to the stereotypical hippie that you think of when you think of non-monogamy, but the amount of people who are in the church who are socialized and conditioned to want monogamy, but then they step out of their relationship. And I think that when you talk about rates of infidelity that happens in the church,
00:09:55
funwithsexpodcast
Not to mention sexual abuse, but that's encouraging, but that's a whole different conversation. When we talk about this like infidelity that happens in the church, you have these groups of people who see each other at least on a weekly basis who form community with each other. And just like human nature, sexual and emotional desires happen. And instead of being honest about themselves, because like, honest with themselves, because anything that's outside of ah monogamous exclusive relationship threatens their identity and their religion they have to either suppress it or work in secrecy which means more people gets hurt when in reality as a show show also like on the show people killed themselves because they were having affairs who were inside and outside of the church and then when it was revealed that they were having these affairs that shame and guilt of being known as an adultress forced them to take their own lives
00:10:51
funwithsexpodcast
Yeah. And I think to dive a little deeper into that person's story, they were a pastor and basically the church they worked for had discovered they were on Ashley Madison. And the crazy thing is like the wife low key knew throughout the years that he was probably cheating and kind of, you know, she was hurt by it, but it wasn't going to end their marriage. Like she was willing to live with it and had accepted it.
00:11:19
funwithsexpodcast
I'm not saying that's the route they should take, like they could be poly and have a very much more fulfilling life. But yeah, the church found out and then he decided to take his own life. And, you know, I think we see examples like this all the time, like not just growing up in the church, but you'll see like lawmakers will find out about their mistresses, the same people who are trying to push the security culture on us. and You see it when you grow up in in the church too. It's like, if somebody gets caught for having an a affair, it's like the scarlet letter A, but like a lot of people are doing it. I mean, like Mark Robinson, the guy who was running for lieutenant governor of North Carolina at the time of recording this podcast, hopefully he doesn't win. I mean, he just got outed for enjoying trans porn and talking about how he cheated on his wife.
00:12:11
funwithsexpodcast
And him and his wife got an abortion while at the same time he talks about how much he hates trans people and like no one should have an abortion and he paints himself as this religious conservative. Or do you remember one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty?
00:12:25
funwithsexpodcast
we're in a court document. It turns out that her and her husband have threesomes with women while she's pushing a whole bunch of like anti LGBTQ content. She's also like having sex with other women as a woman. Uh, and we'll also allow her husband to sexually assault these women when they don't want to have sex with him. And that's why they were brought to court. But the greater point is that these religious conservative people aren't any less poor towards these desires of sexual and romantic freedom that is offered by non-monogamy. It's just the fact that it conflates with their identity so much and it conflicts with their community that they're less likely to be open about it. And I think that's why the idea of when people think of non-monogamy, they think of like the hippie because like the hippies are going to be honest with you about like, hey, me and my partner are in a ah
00:13:22
funwithsexpodcast
are in a non-monogamous relationship. Because even like me and Nat both have experiences of like going to sex clubs in the South. Yeah. And when you go down there, you don't see long hair braided, peace signed wearing ah hippies.
00:13:39
funwithsexpodcast
You see a lot of people who are cops and teachers and nurses and doctors, a whole lot of people from the medical industry. And they're the same people who go to the sex level on Saturday night and then they go to church Sunday morning. There was a lot of people who wore cross necklaces to like the sex level, which like, I very confused about, but hey, you know,
00:14:03
funwithsexpodcast
Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing when you're in swing or circles even going on field like there are a lot of people who are probably card-carrying Republicans, but you know it's just so different identifying as a swinger than someone who's E and&M, because like we're E&M, we're open about things, this is a really big part of our life, and in the more swinger circles, there's still that level of repression of like this is a hidden thing that we only do within these boundaries, and no one can know about it. I mean, like if you wanna do yourself a fun favor,
00:14:40
funwithsexpodcast
Look up where most of swinger clubs are. Most of them are in red states, specifically in the Bible Belt. I'm talking about Texas. Shit ton Atlanta, Atlanta area. The excuse me, Florida, even like random places like Indiana. Like, of course, you're going to have some in like New York City and Chicago because you have tens of millions of people who live there.
00:15:09
funwithsexpodcast
But then when you look at like proportionately to the amount of people who live in the area, and you have places like Indiana, Ohio, um Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and they have all these like sex clubs, especially when you have so many people who vote and identify as Republican and are voting for candidates that are anti-sex freedom,
00:15:35
funwithsexpodcast
going to these spaces, it just shows how intrinsically repressed a lot of people on the right is and that like non-monogamy doesn't blur political lenses. Um, again, not to go back to Justin Lee Miller, but he had another study that he talked about in his podcast where they like, you know, Serbia on like, who has an open relationship. And when it came to like non-monogamy,
00:16:00
funwithsexpodcast
and really didn't matter what you put which your political identity was. It did when it came to like identifying as polyamorous versus a swinger. Polyamorous people tend to be liberal slash leftist. And s swingers tended to be more right wing. And even people who are just identified as non-monogamous tended to be a little bit more liberal. But it just shows that we're all in this together, but some of us are more honest about it. Yeah, definitely.
00:16:28
funwithsexpodcast
And I think that goes into like the idea that there was a study that came up with this that Gen Z is more open to non-monogamous relationships than older generations. And like I don't know if I agree with that either. I think that Gen Z is more open to identifying as non-monogamous and are more open to being honest about the relationships. But the people who kept the Swinger Club's business wasn't Gen Z.
00:16:57
funwithsexpodcast
These were boomers and Generation X and older millennials. And I think yeah the issue is that those people didn't identify as monogamous. Also, there was this really interesting thing where a lot of people in the South who were just swingers still conceptually identified the relationship as monogamous as long as they were doing it together, which like, it blew my mind. But if it floats your boat, it floats your boat.
00:17:23
funwithsexpodcast
But I think that the difference is that a younger people, the same way that like younger people are more honest about their bisexuality, I think that younger people are more honest about like not having ex exclusive relationships. Yeah, and I think a lot of it comes down to having the vocabulary and education to be able to like come to terms and then identify as something. um Because just in general, with older generations, sex is very secretive. You don't talk about it, that sort of thing.
00:17:52
funwithsexpodcast
whereas Gen Z were more open in general to talk about those things. And there's kind of like the familiar area of it, like, oh, you know, I'm not non-monogamous, but I know someone who is. So when my friend brings it up, I know what they're talking about versus if you go in a circle of boomers, if someone was like, yeah, I'm polyamorous, they'd be like, what?
Generational Shifts and Economic Factors in Non-Monogamy
00:18:14
funwithsexpodcast
Polygamy? Like they have no reference of what ethical non-monogamy is. They only know what they've seen in pop culture, what they've seen in porn. So I think these people, they're just so, you know, and I can say like having sex with older men, like these people are so stunted sexually, like they just genuinely are not aware of all the things you can do with your relationships and dynamics. It's just totally new to them. And I think what you're saying, it's like very fair to the point that like, I think that
00:18:48
funwithsexpodcast
older generations don't have the vocabulary to describe their relationships in the same way that we do. So I think that like, from what I've heard, it's like older generations know the word swinger. They don't know like polyamorous, relationship anarchy, ethically known monogamous, so on and so on. In the same way that like our generation, also big thanks to the app field, has given us the vocabulary to describe what we're doing in our relationships.
00:19:16
funwithsexpodcast
I also think that like a thing for monogamy, the reason why that's increasing is that before when someone in the relationship wanted to step out, the only person who could do it in public was the man because he had like economic and physical control of the house where he could be honest about having an adult, me having an affair, which is for most of history is how that worked. I mean, the idea that like people didn't talk about their affairs is pretty,
00:19:46
funwithsexpodcast
knew before everybody knew that like a man was able to like step out of his relationship because he helped he helped the purse he helped how was he had the money he had all the societal power so his wife couldn't do anything well also traditionally like marriage was not for love back today your affair was for love your mistress was this like you know, either like a very sexual thing or romantic or that's, you know, you were seen as childish if you were like, I want to marry for love. It was like, okay, slow your role. You marry the person you're supposed to. Then you have the affairs with the mistresses where you can do that. Yeah. The book, how love conquered marriage is a really interesting reading. It talks about how like this concept of like marrying for love is like only a little bit over a hundred years old or a little bit over like 150 years old.
00:20:41
funwithsexpodcast
But going back to what I was saying, now as we're reaching more economic purity in the household, and more women are the bread owners, breadwinners, more women are like, hey, you're not going to step out of my relationship with me, or I'm going to have an affair. Because we're actually seeing the rates of women having affairs catch up to men as we see economic progress, women catch up to men. And I think that as we're starting to see this,
00:21:08
funwithsexpodcast
historical power structure get blurred a little bit. More and more people are opting for open relationships because like, now a man can't say, I'm going to go have an affair and you have to stay here or you have to do yours in secret. Both parties are like, hey, we want to have sex with other people. We both hold nearly equals my power into the relationship. So the only way that we can do this is if we both agree to identify as a monogamous and we know about it.
00:21:37
funwithsexpodcast
Yeah. And that was what was so interesting about one of the couples they followed is they were this couple, they like interviewed them separately. They were both serial cheaters. Like every relationship they were in didn't matter how they felt about the person. Like the one guy was saying, you know, he really loved his wife. He had no issues with her, but they just couldn't help themselves. It was, you know, it was like, they couldn't stop it. They would just cheat.
00:22:05
funwithsexpodcast
which I totally got because that's being a poly person. I've never cheated, but that's how I've always felt about having attraction and attachments to multiple people. Like I was, you know, I felt like I was the only one. Like, what do you mean? I'm not supposed to like feel things towards other people just because I'm dating this person. But anyways, this couple, they both make Ashley Madison accounts.
00:22:33
funwithsexpodcast
And they actually end up meeting each other. um Spoiler alert, they are an ENM couple. They just don't know to call it that. They are like, married and they love each other and they're like, yeah, you know, he has his affairs. I have mine. And then we come back together every night in the same bed. It's great. And yeah, it's like one thing is like if both parties know about it, agree to it and are both doing it. That's not affairs anymore. You're just in an open, like you said, you're just in an open relationship because he's like, yeah,
00:23:06
funwithsexpodcast
I have my affairs. She's really into being a pro Dom for man. And we just like talk about it over breakfast the next day. And it's like, yeah, you guys you guys don't need Ashley Madison anymore. Just go on field in open relationship.
Future Topics and Closing Remarks
00:23:20
funwithsexpodcast
And I think that's like one thing that like to end our conversation. Actually, we should save that for next time about how We need to acknowledge the role of cheating happens for like a lot of people in their discovery of non-monogamy, because I think that's an entire 20-minute episode to do that give that justice. Yeah, definitely. Well, this has been the Fund of Sex podcast. Thank you so much for listening.