I'm Claire Wasserman, the co-founder of Ladies Get Paid, an educational platform and global community focused on helping folks who identify as women level up in their lives, particularly in the realms of work and money. (I'm also the author of a book of the same name.) In the process of creating this company, I met my now wife, Ashley Louise, who is co-founder and CEO. But, when we met, I was married to a man and didn't identify as queer. I’m most worried for my two children. Kids can be cruel, and I don’t want anyone going up to them and saying, “Did you see what your mother did?” My older son found out about the affairs when he chanced upon an anonymous blog I kept on survivinginfidelity.com. He still speaks to his mother, but has a hard time dealing with what happened. Our younger son, thankfully, doesn’t know. He reminded me so much of one of my organic affairs, a New Zealand-born builder. He had me hooked instantly. I tried to stay with her and work it out for three more months, but she ultimately revealed herself to be someone I didn’t want to be with. We separated in the summer of 2014. We are still going through our divorce. I’m currently looking for a new job in the tech world, and you can bet that I’m going to look up any potential new boss to see if they were on Ashley Madison — anyone who would lie to his or her spouse would lie to me.

My wife was a cold fish in bed … so it was devastating to see her explicit fantasies laid out there. -Matthew on his wife’s online profile The second year he was promoted at work and became far less available and engaged with me. We stumbled through with few highs and many lows. I recently formally separated from my husband of about seven years. I have never been with anyone else. After a medium level of sexual activity for the first few years of our relationship—once a week to twice a week—he put a halt to all sex. His excuses ranged from depression to my weight gain. Eventually, I discovered a lot of gay and trans porn on his computer, along with some ads for casual meet-ups with men.At this point, no change in her marriage or sex life would prompt Nikki to delete her Ashley Madison account, she said. To her, continuing to see her secret lover is less selfish than breaking up her family.

CW: You worked at a company that I thought could be a good sponsor! I created Ladies Get Paid because I needed Ladies Get Paid! What I didn't know, was that I needed you. CW: To be clear—you're going to laugh—I did musical theater my whole life, so I definitely had exposure to gay culture, but specifically male gay culture. I did not know any out lesbians at all. And if you don't have exposure to something, then it really limits your world, and what you think is possible for you and what you think you're deserving of. Meeting you and getting to know other lesbians and people who identify as queer showed me that there are other ways to be in this world. I knew I was attracted to you, for sure. But I wouldn’t have labeled it that way at the time. I just had butterflies in my stomach. But maybe there’s an upside to the breach. Ashley Madison deserves everything that’s coming its way. The CEO is such a sociopath. Just think about all the misery he helps inflict. The fact that there are already two suicides linked to the breach is just so regrettable.

She says her affair reduces resentment when she's home

While she's away, Nikki will go to sex clubs with her lover, or they'll play with sex toys. She said the best part of their arrangement is that she doesn't fear sexual judgment or rejection, or worry her requests will make her husband feel hurt or unloved. For Nikki, a divorce would be more selfish than continuing the affair Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile.

AL: I was absolutely not down to be in an open relationship with you and your husband. It was tough for me. The number one rule of being a lesbian is to never fall in love with a straight girl. I was terrified to fall in love with you or be in relationship with you because I was like, Man, this girl could mess me up—professionally and personally. She refused to tell me the names of the other men, but agreed to delete her account. I assumed that meant we were on the path to repairing our marriage. They'll take that week-long trip to Italy, though. They'll accept the new car and the jewellery, no problem. See their kids put through private school at their husband's expense? You bet. No matter what the thing is, if it’s sexual, it’s almost certain someone in the world will be weirded out enough to get judgmental about it. CW: I did feel pressure to put a label on it. It was, are you gay? Are you straight? Are you bi? Queer? But if I say I'm queer, am I not a lesbian? And what are the implications of that—between me and myself, between me and you, and then society at large.It's just hard to say, 'Why don't you just be happy all of the time and get divorced?' Because you have family, and it's not that I don't love my husband," Nikki said. "I'm not in love with him, but I do love our family, and I love our kids and don't want to be selfish and disrupt that stability for them when what I'm doing right now is working for right now. And that's really all I know for sure." AL: I came out later in life. I didn't really realize until I was 21, which I'll chalk up to societal influences, but I was never in a relationship with a man. The things that I love about being in a relationship with a woman are that it's the kind of relationship I always want to be in.

It seemed many of the women using it were sophisticated and intelligent. Like me, they were looking for something that wasmissing from their marriage. I just love women, and that's it. I always have, I always will. I'm a hyper-emotional person. I cry all the time, am very in touch with my feelings, and not to stereotype genders. I just like vibe with women better and sharing closets is also really cool. Twice as many clothes.AL: Yeah, we were doing some kind of courtship dance of not knowing exactly what the endpoint was, but we were, I think, both aware that we were building a very important relationship between the two of us.