Here in Toronto, we came this close to having a number of streetcars wrapped in a lurid shade of purple and bearing the statement, in four-foot white letters: “Life is short. Have an affair.” That’s the corporate slogan of AshleyMadison.com, a Toronto-based website that not only facilitates but guarantees extramarital affairs to its members.

The deal looked like it was going through too, for a while there. Artwork was drawn up and mock-ups approved by the ad agency. But then higher-ups at the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) caught wind of the campaign, balked, and kiboshed the deal, with one TTC commissioner voting against the ads because they “violate a basic community standard.”

Stateside, well, there was l’affaire Letterman. Viewers (including me) tuning in to the Late Show with David Letterman one night last October expecting to see the usual mélange of stupid pet tricks, top 10 lists, and an interview with Woody Harrelson, were blindsided instead by a bizarre opening monologue from David Letterman that included a confession of sexual relations with female staffers, several lead-balloon jokes, numerous uses of the word creepy to refer to his own behaviour, and dark allusions to blackmail.

And then there was Tiger Woods’s Icarus-like flameout and meltdown. I’m going to go ahead and assume the reader is familiar enough with the details of that episode that I don’t need to recap them. All I want to say for now is that, as a self-styled damage-control guru, I was more interested in how Woods and Letterman spun their actions afterwards, to the world and to their wives, than anything they did before, or during, their extramarital affairs.

My wife, Pam, has informed me that if I am ever foolish enough to cheat on her, there will be very little point in attempting to perform any sort of damage control on the situation. I will be served my bachelor papers on the spot, and find myself in one of those hotels with a neon sign with a letter missing — HOT-zzt!-L, HOT-zzt!-L, sipping cheap bourbon and staring at a picture of our children with hot tears streaming down my cheeks, before I can say “Pam, I am so, so…”

And I’m lucky, in the sense that I don’t spend one minute of time or one kilojoule of energy imagining I might get away with it, that I might be able to slip an adulterous affair past her uncanny witch radar. Pam’s like Sherlock Holmes’s smarter sister. If I’ve been home and she’s been out, she can come home, take a look around and tell me what I’ve been up to all day: “Hmm, you made yourself a tuna melt for lunch; then you took the dog for a walk, but you forgot to bring a plastic bag, so you had to double back,” etc., etc.

It’s freaky! There’s no way I’d try to slip something as deceitful, duplicitous, and, above all, detail-oriented as adultery past Pam.

There is one interesting codicil in her policy, though: as long as certain conditions were met, she says she would be able to get over it if I had a one-night stand. “What?” one of my (married, male) friends, awash in incredulity and, I think, envy, said when I dropped this little information-grenade on him, once. “You have a pass for a one-night stand?”

“Dude, it’s not a pass. But she has said that as long as I completely cut ties with the person in question; do not repeat the offense; and am really, really sorry afterwards, she would be able to forgive if not forget. It
wouldn’t be a deal-breaker.” He looked at me with a puzzled expression. “Yeah, like I said: a pass.”

But what might further amaze people in my orbit, and outside, especially the men, is even if there were such a thing as a “pass,” I wouldn’t use it. For one thing, I wouldn’t want Pam to think she had a tit-for-tat pass of a similar nature. I mean, at this point, after 13 years of marriage preceded by four years of cohabitation, the thought of Pam shagging some random dude — well, it’s gross, apart from everything else.

And also, the way it is now, when I talk to Pam, I say whatever pops into my head. Talking to her is like talking to myself, like thinking aloud. If I were to do anything I weren’t even proud of, I’d have to run everything past my internal editor before blurting it out. And I don’t think I’d like that, very much.

But back to celebrities’ infidelity and their subsequent apologies. Though he got off to a shaky start with his Thursday-night confession, David Letterman, quick study that he has always been, came back on
the Monday — having consulted, perhaps, with several members of his inner circle, including his fuming wife, who no doubt read him the riot act — and delivered a second, on-air apology, that was altogether smoother and exactly what the situation called for.

He was quite funny this time, joking with the audience about how his weekend went (“I’ll be honest with you folks. Right now, I would give anything to be hiking on the Appalachian Trail” — a reference to South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford whose staff claimed he was on the Trail when he was actually in Argentina with his mistress) and women’s reaction to his infidelities (“I got into the car this morning and the navigation lady wasn’t speaking to me”). He apologized to his staff and thanked them for “once again, putting up with something stupid I’ve done.” He apologized with appropriate abjectness to his wife and promised her (with millions of viewers as her witness) these affairs were unconditionally in the past.

In fact, pardon the plug, but he did everything my co-writer Pat Lynch and I advise you to do in any high-profile potential or actual personal- or career-combustion situation of your own, in our new book, Damage Control: How to Tiptoe Away from the Smoking Wreckage of your Latest Screw-Up with a Minimum of Harm to Your Reputation (McClelland & Stewart). He was humble,
human and humourous; he came completely clean, without prevarication; he used his apology to frame the terms of debate, which suddenly wasn’t about his creepy workplace harassment anymore but rather his attempt to repair his relationship with his wife; and then set about isolating and running to ground such enemies and critics as remained — in this case, the dude blackmailing him, who quickly found himself charged with attempted larceny and facing a possible 15 years in prison.

Brilliant! His ratings went through the roof, and his career has never been in better shape. Let the healing begin!

Mr. Woods, on the other hand — well, for a while there he seemed to be putting on a clinic in what not to do if the paparazzi catch you getting your ticket punched to the cheatin’ side of town. First, he violated what is, in my view, the cardinal rule, the prime directive, of damage control: People can forgive you for just about anything — as long as you don’t insult their intelligence. People hate having their intelligence insulted. When you insult their intelligence, that’s when they reach for the bags of feathers and start heating up the buckets of tar.

The first salvo from the Woods camp was an egregious lie that, in retrospect, was a little weak. It made me mad, a little, believing, along with everyone else, that his wife, Elin Nordegren, was trying to free an
injured Tiger Woods from his car by bashing at it with a golf club. Then, when the truth was revealed that he’d cheated and was fleeing a furious spouse allegedly attempting to belabour him about the head and shoulders with said club, he issued a terse press release vaguely alluding to some sort of wrong-doing, then went all silent.

Now, as anyone who has ever screwed up big-time — and that includes everyone — knows, this is a completely normal first impulse: to dig yourself a hole, jump in, cover yourself with sticks and leaves, and wait for the whole fiasco to blow over.

It’s natural. It’s human. But it’s a terrible mea culpa — especially if you are a global celebrity; a source of ultra-fascination for the public; married to a beautiful former model; and a living breathing brand making
something like a million dollars a day endorsing products based on your squeaky-clean, almost nerdy image.

Issuing a terse press release admitting vaguely to wrongdoing, then going all silent and disappearing — well, it’s like trying to put out a fire with gasoline, trying to scare off sharks by throwing chum at them. The media feeding-frenzy kicked up several notches. Women claiming to have slept with
Woods started popping up like Whac-a-Moles. Several companies paying Woods to endorse their products dropped him like a bag of dirt. Ms. Nordegren reportedly hired a team of forensic accountants and private investigators to track down his assets and holdings, the better to thoroughly rinse him down, financially, when or if she divorces him. And Woods, whom some believe to be the greatest athlete to play any sport, ever, dropped out of golf, and out of sight.

Total disaster! An unmitigated fiasco! But Tiger Woods isn’t Tiger Woods for nothing. With a single masterstroke, he chipped his way out of the rough and onto the green: he checked into a clinic for sex addicts.

Without even speaking a word, Tiger Woods has re-framed the debate surrounding his debacle. It’s not that he’s an adulterer who can’t keep it in his pants; he’s an unfortunate fellow with a disease, and he’s seeking treatment. And if it’s an affliction (perhaps a hereditary one, since his father was reportedly similarly afflicted), and he’s seeking treatment — well, then, he’s doing all he can, isn’t he? He is absolved of all moral agency in the matter. He’ll be a new Tiger Woods, see? And will immediately go about the business of distancing himself from the old Tiger Woods and his sexaholic, non-product-endorsement-friendly ways.

But can a Tiger really change his stripes, just like that? And is it true that infidelity is a symptom of a disease, as those treating actor David Duchovny and others would have us believe? According to some experts, monogamy is out of sync with biology. Books with titles like The Myth of Monogamy (Holt) crowd the bookshelves. Experts, scientists and anthropologists all vie with one another to point out fidelity is rarely practiced in the animal kingdom — even swans, traditionally the symbol of mate-for-life fidelity, turn out to be far naughtier than previously imagined — saying it’s unnatural, doomed and even — perhaps the most savage indictment of all — unscientific.

“Monogamists,” The Myth of Monogamy (written, incidentally, by a husband-wife team) says, “are going against some of the deepest-seated evolutionary inclinations with which biology has endowed most creatures, Homo sapiens included.”

It goes against evolution; it goes against inclination. Our lives are too long; life’s too short. In his book, Cheaters Prosper: How Infidelity Will Save the Modern Marriage (Personal Lifestyle Printing Press), Noel Biderman (who also happens to be the CEO of AshleyMadison.com) unilaterally and unceremoniously declares the social experiment of monogamy is a failed one. Infidelity and divorce rates are climbing, he says, as more and more women are cheating on their husbands than ever before; and “leaps in life expectancy will make it nearly impossible to live our entire existence with just one person.” The four-year-itch has replaced the seven-year-itch, claims Biderman (who is married, incidentally, with two small children, and says he’s faithful to his wife — though I confess if I were her I’d be nervous).

Now, I admit that, when it comes to men especially, it’s hard to argue against this notion that the urge towards seed spreading is indelibly stamped in the DNA. Men are dogs: we probably don’t need someone in a lab coat to tell us this. What I can’t believe is how many people these days seem to subscribe to the notion that it makes infidelity inevitable — and how many of those people are women. And how much (some) women are willing to forgive men, especially talented and/or successful ones, their indiscretions (think Bill Clinton, John Edwards, etc.).

So what does that make the rest of us? Sigh: fidelity nerds, I guess, untalented and unsuccessful also-rans in the genetics sweepstakes. But see, I don’t buy it. Infidelity is not an affliction nor a condition, or even, in my view, an unstoppable overflow of alpha-male energy. It’s a moral decision — or rather, a cascading series of domino-like moral decisions. Because here’s how it happens: you tell yourself you’re just going out for a drink with the sexy new intern with everyone else around, but never wind up in a tête-à-tête with her. Then you tell yourself, okay. You’ll go for a one-on-one with the intern, but not dinner. Then, okay, you’ll go to dinner with her, but not up to her apartment. Then: you’ll go up to her apartment, but you won’t have sex with her.

But by the time you get up to her apartment, it’s too late! You made the decision sometime much earlier; now all that remains is to play it out. Don’t enter the apartment! Get back in the elevator and hit the down button, before it’s too late!

You have to know yourself. Me, I’m a dog, I know it. I look deep in my soul and see a yapping, baying mongrel, thumping its tail against the floor, hoping for a treat. Something I have in common with Tiger Woods: my sire was a real hound — one of the most audacious and unrepentant philanderers I’ve ever even heard of; and sometimes, when the moon is full, I can feel his canine blood running hot through my veins.

I love my wife. I’m lucky a goddess like her even gave a mutt like me a second glance, let alone married me. And with the passage of time I only find her more beautiful, sexy and loveable. (I know some readers are
throwing up in their mouths here, but please bear with me, I’m trying to make a point). I also love my children, I love seeing them every day and enjoy the fact I can do just about anything I want with them, including going on trips and crossing the border without having to get my legal team to run it past Pam’s legal team.

And yet, if Pam were away with the kids at, say, her mother’s place, and Christina Hendricks (the buxom, red-haired actress who plays Joan Holloway Harris on Mad Men) were to materialize as a silhouette in my bedroom door one night, unbuttoning her blouse as she explained she was in town filming a movie, that she’d always admired my writing and, having gotten my address from a friend of hers, wanted to come by and tell me in person, but, finding a light on and the door open — well, the whole fantasy gets pretty detailed,
but the point is: would I be able to account for my actions from that point forward?

Could I look you in the eye, dear reader, and claim I would sit up, pull the sheets around my neck, and say, in stern, stentorian tones: “Ms. Hendricks, this is completely inappropriate! Yes, I admit you are a fine actress and a beautiful woman, with a splendid (gulp), shapely figure — but you and I are both married! This is wrong and would be hurtful to both our spouses! Please leave, or I shall be forced to call the authorities!”

“Why are you shouting?” she asks, nude now, slipping between the sheets, gently prying the cordless phone from my fingers. “Use your inside voice. After all, it’s just the two of us here, this can be our little secret.”

The short answer is: no. The long answer is: um…no. And this is the reason I give anyone I find attractive such a wide berth and avoid têtè-a-têtes with them. So: if you’re an attractive woman and I act all squirrelly around you, and beat a hasty exit, well now you know why. It’s nothing personal. I just like my life the way it is.

David Eddie’s book, Damage Control, hits bookshelves in March. While he got inked to write about tattooed dads for CF’s Summer 2009 issue, he did not have an affair in order to write this story.