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Before Biderman's interview, Jennifer had already been getting restless. She was feeling sexual in a way that she hadn't since college. She was in the best shape of her life, and she'd been playing around with cyber-sex, exchanging pictures with a few lucky friends. But in the annals of horny housewives fooling around on their spouses, Ashley Madison was a different order of magnitude. "It was more exciting to do it with people I don't know," she says. "It's not something I'm proud of, just something I was interested in." Within a few days, one of the guys she had been chatting with asked her out for coffee. She thought his pictures were cute. Their chats had been hot. How would it hurt her to say yes? The chemistry was even better in person. Conversation turned into gentle caressing. Gentle caressing turned into playful fondling. Playful fondling turned into oral sex in the back of her minivan. Jennifer was now having an affair, and it was easier than she had ever imagined. "I never thought I'd cheat on my husband," she says "But there I was." With more than 4 million members, and tens of millions spent on advertising, the 7-year-old Ashley Madison is the first, biggest, and most profitable infidelity site on the internet. Noel Biderman, the site's 37-year-old founder, describes himself as a businessman and nothing more. A former sports agent, Biderman, didn't start Ashley Madison to subvert the institution of marriage (he's happily married with two children). In 2001, he read an article that said Internet dating sites were the only content sector thriving after the dot-com bust. "The article went on to suggest that as many as 30% of the people on these dating services were attached," he says. "They were using the anonymity of the Internet to cloak their true intentions. I thought, 'I'm going offer up a service to these folks.' " On February 14, 2002, AshleyMadison.com was officially born — taking its moniker from the previous year's two most popular girl's names. "The reality was that people who were going to cheat were going to cheat anyway, and people who weren't going to cheat were going to ignore Ashley Madison, just like they would any service," says Biderman. "But since people will cheat, it's a recession-proof business." As word got out, membership grew "exponentially," according to Biderman, and by the start of 2008, Ashley Madison had more than 2 million members and Biderman had made tens of millions in profits. To the general public, Ashley Madison's meteoric rise was a shock, but Biderman wasn't surprised. "20 million Americans are in sexless marriages," he says, citing a recent report from ABC News. "Some can accept this fact and live the rest of their lives celibate, but most of us can't." His detractors offer up divorce as the solution, but as Biderman explains, "That would mean that marriage is only about sex when, in fact, that's only one component. There are many reasons why divorce simply isn't an option: family, finances, religion, even love. Most of our members deeply love their spouse but they didn't sign up to be celibate for the rest of their adult lives. So they turn to AshleyMadison.com, where Biderman adds, "It seems like every week we hear of another celebrity, athlete, or politician caught in an affair, and although the media is quick to judge, more often than not their partner stands by them." That being said, Biderman is quick to point out that the best way not to get caught is to use a discreet service like his. z 30 MIAMI LIVING COVER STORY