I Talked To My Cheating Ex After Finding His Email In The Ashley Madison Hack

Conversations like mine will begin happening all around the world starting today.

I couldn't help myself. When I heard, last night, that the data dump from the Ashley Madison hack was online and searchable, I navigated toward it almost automatically. On a crowded subway platform coming home from a baseball game, three beers and a hot dog into my evening, on my tiny little phone, I started tapping every email address I could remember by heart into that empty white box, almost without thinking.

The first email address I entered was my father's (no dice, mercifully). The second was my ex's, and I searched it half by virtue of the fact that three years together has a way of searing an email address into your brain and half because I felt almost gleefully certain that I knew what I would find. Two summers ago, I'd found out he'd cheated on me with a woman he'd met online. It seemed like if anyone I knew was among the millions of people whose email addresses were exposed by the hack, he'd be it. Anyway, muscle memory and morbid curiosity make for quite the cocktail.

Of course, I was right:

I remember the moment I found out he cheated on me in a way that's so vivid it's almost physical: the scratchiness in my throat, the paper-doll crumple of my knees, the ringing in my ears. Vertigo. I felt disoriented for days after. It's a feeling a lot of people — maybe thousands — will be having this week.

We stayed together for months afterward — my choice. There are a lot of different kinds of infidelity, was my argument, and a lot of different ways to be in a relationship. There are a million different ways to be cruel to the people you love, and only a fraction of them involve pulling your browser up to a page you shouldn't and clicking "sign in." I'm still really happy I made that decision.

During that time, I was asked by probably two dozen people whether I would have preferred not to know, if such a choice were possible. I always said yes.

Ultimately, we did break up, partly because of the cheating but also, in some ways — more ways than you might imagine — not at all because of the cheating. We ended it sitting in his parked car outside a 24 Hour Fitness, and it was awful. But we have, perhaps somewhat improbably, retained a very tender, if sometimes strained, friendship. So I texted him to ask about the hack.

---

View Entire List ›

Source