Sex, Lies, & Scandal Sided with the Wrong People

Netflix’s latest docuseries, Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal, isn’t the first to explore the dating site that made it seemingly easy for people to seek adulterous affairs. Hulu’s The Ashley Madison Affair, released in 2023, also dug into the phenomenon, including the hack that exposed millions of users’ intimate data to the public. It’s a fascinating tale that is perfect for binging consumption via a streaming service, but what both takes on this issue have in common is a remarkable amount of sympathy for the cheaters rather than the spouses they betrayed.

Any given person will have their reasons for seeking an affair but presenting this, once again, from an angle where the voice of the adulterer is heard more than the significant other who had to deal with the fallout of a relationship because of cheating feels like the wrong approach. It might be perceived to be more captivating for viewers to hear these stories, but the “feel sorry for me” approach that comes from this perspective will likely feel disrespectful to those watching, especially if they have had to deal with adultery themselves.

The History of Ashley Madison

Launched in 2002, Ashley Madison is a Canadian online dating service that is marketed to people who are married or in long-term relationships who are seeking affairs. The website’s slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair,” and it was basically a siren call to those who wanted to indulge in extracurricular activities. The big selling point of the site was its notion of privacy and that individuals could seek these relationships under complete anonymity.

It’s believed that membership on the site hit 60 million people across 53 countries, which is why it was a huge news story when, in 2015, the site was subject to a data breach and the personal information of its users was released to the public. Essentially, the anonymity that users were promised when they signed up proved to be false, and many cheaters were outed to the public because of it.

The Netflix docuseries dives into Ashley Madison through a series of stories told by people who worked for the company and users who used the website’s services. The data breach is also addressed, but the more personal stories told by users of the site come from the angle of the people who cheated and, in one circumstance, one Christian couple that the docuseries wants the viewer to see as a beacon of forgiveness following an affair, but even their story is disingenuous.

Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal Spends Too Much Time on the Wrong Couple

Sam and Nia are introduced in the docuseries as a young Christian couple that seemed destined for each other. Sam uses a quote from Tim Burton’s Big Fish to declare that all he wanted after seeing that film was to find his true love. He finds that in Nia and their young love soon turns to marriage. They’re the picture-perfect version of what society thinks an all-American couple should be. Good Christian values and living the dream.

This, however, isn’t enough for Sam. He decides to go on Ashley Madison, although he’s consistently vague about his reasons for joining. He mentions wanting excitement but also utters in the same breath that his wife was giving him everything he needed. He even declares that he “wasn’t especially horny” at the time because his wife was also performing in that area, so during his one on one interviews, he seems confused as to why he joined, but it could also be that he’s not being purposefully forthcoming.

Sam goes on to say, “I was a new dad and couldn’t handle the responsibilities and I wanted to have fun again” and even talks about the mounting bills that come with raising a family. He had no issues paying the $250/month membership for Ashley Madison, so this adds to the list of reasons why the audience can’t seem to cry a river for Sam.

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After messaging consistently on the site, he and his wife found viral success by posting themselves on YouTube lip-syncing to the song “Love Is An Open Door” from the movie Frozen in the car with their kids. The video garners millions of views, even getting Disney’s attention and giving Sam the attention and excitement he claims he seeks. This moment of “internet fame” makes him delete the Ashley Madison app from his phone because now he seemingly has everything he wants. This becomes another misstep from the docuseries, which focuses primarily on Sam and Nia’s story. It’s clear by this point that Sam is a narcissist, which only makes it more confusing when he’s attempting to cry on camera that anyone behind this project would think viewers would garner any sympathy for him.

Sam and Nia become so huge online as a happily married couple, even attempting to have another baby, that they are invited to go to a Vlogger conference, but before this trip, the news has begun to spread like wildfire that Ashley Madison has been hacked, and millions of users’ data has been released to the public. Sam describes frantically scrolling through Twitter, seeing if his name is a part of the hack, and at first sees nothing. He indicates that his thinking was he could take his secrets to his grave, not tell his wife, and continue to sell their Christian marital bliss to their millions of followers.

Eventually, Sam’s name comes up in the hack, and it’s mentioned on Twitter. He then tells his wife, at an airport Chili’s of all places, that he was on Ashley Madison and that it was a stupid decision, but it was two years ago, and he deleted the app long ago. He lets her know that he never met up with anyone in person. But his name is part of a hack of the website, and it has come up online, which explains why he’s finally coming clean.

Why Audiences Are Frustrated With Nia and Sam

Had another couple been chosen to profile, Nia’s take on this betrayal could’ve been an act of female empowerment. She thought they had a foundation of love, and instead, he was seeking excitement that she couldn’t provide. She should be reading him for filth, but while Nia explains being angry and upset, she seems more frustrated that his stupidity could destroy everything they built. Not in love, but more so in the business they have created online of being a happily married couple. It’s at that moment that the viewer loses sympathy for Nia, and it becomes even more head-scratching that this is the couple we’re primarily on a journey with throughout the three episodes of the docuseries.

All of this transpires ahead of this Vlogger conference, and, in one of the docuseries’ more baffling moments, Nia is interviewed and describes being a good wife and partner. She expresses taking ownership of the situation by declaring she’s still going to stay with him, despite his betrayal, and even declares that she will still be intimate with him, despite his lies. She seems to think he looks more silly because he got on a “gross site” looking for something tawdry, but she stands tall by standing by him. Forgiveness can come from acts of betrayal, and there are no doubt examples of it, but Nia’s words seem like a slap in the face to women who have had to deal with infidelity.

Many people, men or women, who have been cheated on have found it hard to be intimate with their partners after an affair comes out. Nia expresses that she will continue to be intimate with her husband, in light of his poor decisions, but it is not the act of strength she thinks it is. In fact, it only shows where her priorities lie. Maybe it’s to serve her husband as a “good Christian woman,” but in the way their story is framed, it seems like her decisions were motivated more by keeping up appearances rather than showing a true act of forgiveness.

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Trying to garner sympathy for Sam becomes more of a senseless notion when the audience learns that he wasn’t entirely truthful about not stepping on his wife. His cheating is actually much worse than simply using Ashley Madison. He eventually reveals to Nia that he was sleeping with her friends/acquaintances and going to strip clubs, and viewers soon learn that he destroyed his wife’s relationship with her best friend by trying to sleep with her.

So, not only does the docuseries want the audience to sympathize with Sam as a man who just needed a little excitement and didn’t know how to express it, but it also wants them to find sympathy for a total sociopath who could’ve cheated with a total stranger but instead decided to do it with people that would hurt his wife the most. By this revelation, there is no relating to Sam. The audience is pretty disgusted by him, especially when he asks his pastor to tell him it is okay to keep lying.

That’s not to say that Nia fares much better. The docuseries tries to frame a “happy ending” for this couple because she forgives her husband and is still with him today. According to her, through this series of revelations, “He showed me who he really is, now I know the real Sam.” If the real Sam is a narcissistic sociopath, by all means, she knows who he really is now, but if she’s declaring this because he purged himself of all his secrets (something he stated he wouldn’t have done had this big hack not happened), then that rings entirely false.

The real Sam is revealed to be someone who lied to her for most of their marriage. How is this ending happy for the audience? It’s supposed to convey the power of forgiveness, but it only displays that Sam could do all of this again, and Nia would forgive him, no matter how damaging and embarrassing it is for her. Maybe switching up their brand as a couple that made it through this madness is what’s funding their lives now. If that’s the case, they were the wrong couple to showcase to the world.

The Netflix Docuseries Tries to Sympathize With the Cheaters

The docuseries does drive home the notion that “Ashley Madison taught me that the cheater is not the only one to blame.” This is made abundantly clear during the tragic story of New Orleans pastor John Gibson. Gibson was a 56-year-old professor of communications at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary’s Leavell College, as well as the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Pearlington, Mississippi. In addition to this, his name also came up in the big data breach hack of Ashley Madison. There is hope that this story, told through the lens of his wife Christi, could be a bit more profound and more of an interesting angle for the docuseries to take, but even Christi’s story becomes muddled.

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Sadly, Christi finds her husband dead in their garage six days after the data leak. Since his name was on the list of married users on the website, it became very apparent that the supervisors at his church would soon push him to resign. Gibson’s suicide is one of the touchier subjects of the doc, and Gibson is even framed as a sympathetic figure, especially compared to Sam, but he was also a man with secrets. The point of his story seems to allude to the internet vultures that seemed to get pleasure from revealing the names of the list, an angle that should be explored, but as presented through Christi’s story, things get muddled.

During her confessional, she admits that her husband had secrets and there is some blame on his part, but the majority of her sadness and anger seemed aimed at the hackers who chose to expose this data and the subsequent individuals who spread it. Christi no doubt grieves her husband’s loss, and that is something that can’t be taken away from her, but Christi could’ve been a point of view of the spouses that were hurt significantly by this website coming into their lives. Instead, the issue seemed to have shifted away from her husband, who decided to use it in the first place and put it on just about everyone else.

A docuseries about the women affected by the website could be the focus of a better documentary that dives into their pain from the betrayal they suffered from the men they believed loved them. Some might be upset that a woman’s perspective should be the primary angle since women are not immune to having affairs as well. Still, it has been heavily reported that there were many more men on Ashley Madison compared to women.

For the site to hook in users, it needed both men and women to join, but it was clear early on that men outmatched the number of women on the platform. To remedy this, the site created several fake profiles of women, and used bots to inflate its numbers. The bots were used to entice men on the site to pay for subscriptions since, unlike the real women who did decide to join, men had to pay to get the full benefit of the site. Those truly hurt by Ashley Madison should have their stories told, not what’s on display throughout the duration of this docuseries three episodes.

Through the angle that Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies, & Scandal wants to present its subject, it could make people get the wrong idea when it comes to betrayal and infidelity. Men might see that if they have a “good Christian wife” she will forgive their man’s indiscretions and that there is always some other third party to blame when really all the blame lies with that person who decides to cheat. The docuseries paints the adulterers as victims, especially when their info was leaked to the public. That invasion of privacy is wrong, but the fault hangs all on the person who wanted to be unfaithful and thought they found an outlet to do it privately without the fear of being caught. Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal is streaming on Netflix.