"My husband isn't on the leaked Ashley Madison user list. But I am."

Anyone who has been married for ten years plus knows that marriages go through their ups and downs. Today I can say that my husband and I are more in love than ever before. We have truly grown into one of those couples that others envy.

Several years ago, that wasn’t the case.

It was a dark time in our marriage. We’d endured too many challenges, the kind no couple should have to face, the least of which was severe financial issues which just exacerbated all the other problems we had been experiencing. We were angry with each other. There was no communication. I felt so lonely and so sad. At that time, I thought I hated him. It was just resentment at all the broken promises and all the lost dreams.

Welcome to married life, right?

Ashley Madison CEO Noel Biderman defends the site to Dr. Phil. Post continues after video…

Except it was worse than that for me. I worried that I’d made a huge mistake marrying my husband. He made me feel so stupid, so small, so worthless – for being upset at losing so much money and for losing faith in his ability to recover – that we stopped talking all together. There was no point.

That’s when I made a huge mistake by subscribing to the website Ashley Madison.

For those who don’t know, Ashley Madison is a website that helps married people cheat on their partners. It launched in Canada in 2001 and then opened for business in Australia in 2010.

It was an instant hit.

These days the site has 124 million visitors each and every month, world wide. Except now, every one of those subscribers is living in fear of exposure thanks to a group of hackers who have stolen the massive loser list and is threatening to sell it to the highest bidder unless the site is taken offline. The hackers who call themselves “The Impact Team” have so far released 2,500 customer records, and thanks to the site’s policy of not deleting user’s personal information, there are millions more to come.

I’m not stupid. I signed up to the site under a false name. However the site requires verification using a real email address. I was feeling so sad and desperate that I verified it and started talking to three men over the course of two nights.

That's how long my illicit activity lasted. Two nights. That first night it was excited. I felt empowered and attractive and wanted. However on the second night, after viewing a lewd photo from one of the men, I felt sick.

The bottom line was that I wanted to feel attractive to my husband. I wanted to be wanted by my husband. I wanted to be loved by my husband.

My small step into the illicit world of serial cheaters filled me with determination to focus all my energies on my marriage, during the good times and the bad times.

When news first broke that Ashley Madison had been hacked, my husband joked that there were a lot of husbands around the world who were sweating right now, but luckily he wasn't one of them. At first I forgot what I'd done all those years ago.

Then I remembered, and my stomach dropped.

I am desperately reading all the news about the hackers and hoping they are stopped before they expose every single person who has signed up to their site, including those who never took it further than online flirtation. Surely the site is finished now. This may be the wake up call all those cheaters need.

The beauty of Ashley Madison was that it allowed people to cheat without risking their marriages. Now, that has been undone forever.

Should I confess to my husband, or is it better to wait out and hope the whole thing goes away?