Just when I thought I would never find my true love — you
came along ...”
It is a greeting card, decorated with a depiction of purple
flowers. Inside:
“My soul has been searching for you since I came into this
world.
My life I have had this emptiness inside, like a part of me
was missing and I was incomplete ...
“And now I can’t imagine my life without you ... Even if I
have to share you.”
Even if I have to share you?
This, clearly, is not a card for the wife — not the sender’s
wife, at least.
Pssst: I love you. Don’t tell anyone
In fact, it is specifically for anyone but the
wife. Called “My Lover,” the card is one of 24 in the Secret
Lover Collection, published by a former advertising executive
in Bethesda, Md., named Cathy Gallagher. If you are having an
extramarital affair, Secret Lover cards can make it an affair
to remember.
Gallagher hit upon the idea a couple of years ago. Like most
couples, she and her husband had friends whose marriages had
been affected by extramarital affairs, with all their
attendant “conflict and emotional intensity,” she said in an
interview.
“I’m thinking, ‘So how do these people communicate? It’s a
secret love affair,’” Gallagher said. “So I thought, ‘Oh,
my gosh, what better can you do than give someone your
sentiments in a greeting card? How special is that?’”
After two years of market research revealed an unfilled need,
she said, the cards debuted to enormous curiosity this year at
the annual National Stationery Show in New York.
Barbara Miller, a spokeswoman for the Greeting Card
Association, a national trade group, confirmed that the
collection was, indeed, unique.
“Ms. Gallagher thought she saw a specific niche there, and
she’s going after that particular niche,” Miller said.
“Whether or not it proves successful I guess we’ll all have to
wait and see. ... It’s obviously a business decision on her
end.”
How big a market?
Secret Lover claims on its Web site that its
research shows that 60 percent of American men and 40 percent
of women “are involved in or have been involved in an affair.”
The most recent surveys, by the National Opinion Research
Center at Chicago University in 2002 and the Kinsey Institute
in 1994, indicate that slightly less than a quarter of men and
about 12 percent of women have strayed from their marriages.
But public opinion experts caution that respondents have a
strong incentive to lie, so Gallagher’s numbers could well be
close to the truth.
Either way, that’s millions of ring-doffing would-be customers
for Secret Lover. “It was unbelievable in terms of the numbers
of people,” Gallagher said.
But it remains an open question whether Secret Lover can
indeed profit from sin. While Gallagher is negotiating with
retailers and says prospects are bright, some retailers have
said they would avoid the line for fear of alienating their
customers, while others have said their customers probably
wouldn’t want to buy the cards in a public store.
The company’s e-commerce site did not open until this week, so
sales figures there aren’t yet available, but Gallagher said
that more than a million unique visitors had stopped by the
home page since May and that e-mail sales were strong.
“The question for me then becomes does the promotion of such a
Web site make adultery more acceptable,” said Dr. Trina E.
Read, a Canadian sexologist and columnist. “I would guess not
because even though a lot of people are doing it, there is
still a huge negative societal connotation.”
Celebrating adultery?
Gallagher
says she doesn’t talk about the social implications: “I’m
neither a crusader nor an advocate for this lifestyle. I’m a
businesswoman.” As for her critics, she says, “People are
entitled to their opinions.”
But specialists in family and marital relations have their
doubts, noting that the divorce rate has risen above 50
percent in recent years.
“It seems to me really crude to use a greeting card to
celebrate what, in the 16th century, was an offense by which
you would be publicly hanged in the town square,” said John
Mayoue (pronounced May-you), a divorce and family lawyer in
Atlanta.
Dr. Robert R. Butterworth, a psychologist in Los Angeles who
specializes in reactions to traumatic stress, could only laugh
when told about the Secret Lover Collection.
“I can see trouble ahead,” he said. “This will be a boon for
marriage therapists all across the nation, because [the cards]
are going to wind up in the wrong hands. They’re going to go
to the wrong address, and they’re not going to self-destruct.”
When is a secret not a secret?
For the Rev. Laurie Sue
Brockway, an interfaith minister in New York, the point of
sending your secret lover a Secret Lover card is hard to
grasp.
“It’s not cute. It’s sad,” said Brockway, author of “Wedding
Goddess: A Divine Guide to Transforming Wedding Stress Into
Wedding Bliss.” “I thought the idea of having a secret lover
was just that — it is secret. These cards negate the idea of
sneaking around. They leave a paper trail.”
And that, said Mayoue, the divorce lawyer, is not a smart
thing for an adulterer to do.
With cell-phone records, Mayoue said, he can “circumstantially
prove the adultery.” But with greeting cards, “I’m not just
going to prove it circumstantially; it’ll be graphic. I would
ask them which card this person chose and what the sentiments
were, and then I’ll have it in their own words.
“If I’m the company, I’m probably going to have a full-time
lawyer on staff just to respond to subpoenas,” he said.
(Gallagher said she’d already thought of that and did have
lawyers on call.)
Butterworth, meanwhile, said the unforeseen consequences of
sending a card to your lover could go much deeper than just an
expensive divorce settlement or public embarrassment,
especially because “the recipient may not welcome it.”
“What those cards are saying is: ‘Oh, my God, they’re getting
romantically involved. I’m getting really scared now,’”
Butterworth said. “... Women are sometimes afraid to break it
off because they are afraid of what [the other party] will
do.”
His solution? “I’d feel a little better if they also had a
division of ‘breaking it off’ cards. ... Maybe they should
have a couple [of cards] that say, ‘We had a great time, but I
realize that we need to move on.’”
Secret Lover has it covered: For $3.99, you can
tell your paramour: I can’t go on
like this ...
