You Make Me Sick. You Make Me Reel. Sick

Today, an emotion I hadn’t met before. Violent Rage.

I went to a kickboxing class at my gym, looking for a place to unload this. punched and kicked and thrashed alongside women doing it to a beat, counting calories burned. While I Imagined contact and blood and humiliation for a man I once handed my heart.

My husband, who has been caught cheating on a spouse not once but twice, penned this piece in today’s paper. These are excerpts and I’ve added my own commentary throughout.

The liars club
December 12, 2005

Jeff Irwin says he is in the business of helping families -- though in an unusual and, some would argue, immoral way. He provides alibis for cheating spouses. As founder of the Alibi Network (www.alibinetwork.com), Irwin provides back stories and excuses for spouses who want to stray from home. For some, it could be a quick dinner with a special friend, while for others it could mean a weekend tryst in an exotic locale.

"With the statistics that we have, there is more cheating going on now than ever," says Irwin, who runs the Buffalo Grove company. "We didn't create the market, it's already there. We are just providing a service."

And boy, what a service: everything from sending phony e-mails to receiving calls to buying airline tickets for that romantic -- but illicit -- getaway. Sounds like something actor Jude Law, who earlier this year admitted to cheating on fiancee Sienna Miller with his children's nanny, could have used.

Yeah, boy. what a service. Too bad Jude Law doesn’t live in Buffalo Grove. Too bad you’re referencing tabloid clichés when you could have used yourself as an example. Wouldn’t you have been a better example of a typical client? Really.

Irwin is right about one thing: The market is already out there. About half of married couples have had a partner who has committed some extramarital hanky-panky, he says. More scientific studies, however, show the number might be lower. The Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California conducted a study that found about 24 percent of men and 14 percent of women have had sex outside of their marriages.

Yep. He’s right. The market is there. I’m in that “hanky-panky” half. My husband was part of the 24%, the “more scientific study”

Most clients come in with an alibi already in mind, but if they don't have one, Irwin's staff will help concoct one.

For example, a police officer client might want to spend the weekend with his special friend. Irwin's company can help set up a phony seminar at an out-of-state location.

Hmm. Good example. Not unlike the time my husband crafted a similar story for his father. Told his stepmother they were at a seminar in Georgia, together, for the weekend. Lied so his dad could spend the weekend in Miami with his girlfriend. Told me to stay out of it, it was none of our business.

Not everyone thinks having a business dedicated to helping cheaters cheat is a good idea.

How about a stronger statement: “Only cheaters think having a business dedicated to helping cheaters cheat is a good idea”

Penny Tupy, director of the Wisconsin-based Save Your Marriage Central and a marriage coach, says there are already plenty of other factors stripping away the sanctity of marriage.

"When marital infidelity among celebrities is portrayed as a love story, it demonstrates total disdain for the sanctity of marriage. We forget that real people, including innocent children, suffer very real and lasting hurt from these affairs," says Tupy, who developed national Marriage Fidelity Day.

Like his girlfriend’s children. Her three-year-old, her one-year-old. Her total disdain.

Though some might rationalize the need for a business such as Alibi Network, it doesn't make it right, she says.

Irwin said business is booming. The company has been around only since April, but through word of mouth has about 1,500 clients -- about half of them women. And so far, he says, no one has been caught.

The services can get pricey depending on the alibi. A phony e-mail, for example, can cost as little as $10, while providing cover for a weekend away overseas could go for hundreds of dollars. There is also a $35 membership fee.

Aha. No wonder I caught him. He’s hardly the type to shell out for a $35 membership fee. His online porn site was $9.99. But only one time. He was only looking at that to try and understand the appeal. What kind of men would actually do that.

He says he's neither condemning nor condoning the practice of cheating on a spouse. He argues that sometimes the infidelity is a one-time thing that isn't worth destroying a family over.

"On these mini-alibis, it could be someone that just wants to go out to dinner with someone or spend the night with someone," Irwin says. "It's like a seven-year-itch type of thing, they scratch their itch and then go on with their life. Their family and home life remain untouched."

Untouched. Scratch the sevon-month itch and then tell your wife to be careful driving in the snow. That she’s getting “hung up” on things that happened months ago

After all, it's not the cheating that breaks a couple up, he argues. It's the finding out.

It’s that last line that got me punching. The ethics of letting a man in the midst of a divorce, who maybe even got some help from his girlfriend on some of the more “clever” lines, sign his name to this.

I haven’t finished processing this just yet but I think it’s time for a response. A very public one.