If you’ve heard or read even a smidgen of news this week, you’re probably aware that Ashley Madison (AM), an online cheating website, was hacked. Hackers are threatening to release millions of AM customers’ personal information if the website isn’t shut down, and at this point, have started slowly leaking identities.
It came as no surprise when I started seeing and hearing comments from the self-righteous among us. One radio host was a bit too gleeful as he shared the news and said exposure would serve the cheaters right. Social media commenters have, more or less, shaken their heads in disgust and spewed words like sin and consequences and shameful and despicable.
But let’s be real for a second: who among us wasn’t aware of Ashley Madison? We’ve seen the advertisements. We knew what it was about. And unless you were a customer, you probably didn’t give the site a second thought. Suddenly, though, with the threat of names being exposed, people who’d been silent about the existence of such a site are expressing their self-righteous opinions. I have no doubt these are the same folks who’d hungrily check the list to view the names on it.
What seems to be of no importance in all this is the why. Now I won’t say there’s ever a reason to cheat, and I’m not condoning it here (let’s just go ahead and make that clear). But there’s almost always an answer to Why?, if only people will ask the question. Why would someone sign up on a site like AM? Why would someone cheat? The answers the cheater would give would probably closely resemble the same ones an addict would give. Or a thief. Or an overeater.
I know, I know: the harm caused by cheaters and thieves is far worse and further reaching than that of an addict or an overeater. But my guess is that the root of all those actions is the same, and it’s equally devastating. Let me see if I can dig just beneath the surface and give you a glimpse of the root. Try for one second to put yourself in their shoes . . .
When you’ve felt neglected and unloved and rejected most of your life, you’ll do anything to feel something that resembles love and acceptance. You have no idea what unconditional love and unconditional acceptance truly feels like, so you’ll search high and low for them and you’ll take what you can get.
When shame has been the root of your existence, you’ll act in ways that feel like freedom, but ultimately, add to your shame. You learn that the price for love is your self — your body and your heart and your soul.
You have no idea how to love yourself, and even if you did, you can’t imagine accepting your shadow side . . . the part of you that has overshadowed the whole for an eternity because your light was never allowed to shine. Instead, you remain in the shadows, looking for love in dark places.
My guess is that most AM customers weren’t simply looking for sex or for a good time or to fulfill a physical fantasy. My guess is that many AM customers were hoping to somehow fulfill a much deeper need. And I’d even guess that many of them discovered, instead, a deep pit of shame and regret. Add to that, now, fear.
To expose them, and worse, to delight in that exposure might make the self-righteous folks stand a little taller and prouder as they cast their stones, but I can assure you, it will be an embarrassing, horrifying experience for many whose names would be on that list.
If you’ve shaken your head in disgust . . .
if you’ve commented that the cheaters should’ve thought about the consequences before they acted . . .
if you think the customers deserve to be exposed . . .
carry on.
But before you do, I beg of you to take a few seconds and imagine if it were your name on that list. Imagine for a few seconds that you were capable of doing something so reprehensible. Because you are.
We all are. We are all one choice away from having our names on a list that could destroy our entire lives.
