Peter (not his real name) describes himself on his profile page as an
attractive 43-year-old, married with children and smack bang in the middle
of a midlife crisis. He hopes that sleeping with an interesting woman may
help. As this is a website called Forget Dinner rather than Facebook, the
accompanying picture is of him in his underpants.
Forget Dinner is one of three matterof-fact dating websites — the others are
called Marital Affair and Simply Adult — that describe themselves as
somewhere for broad-minded adults wanting “fun” to meet. Sign up to one and
you receive responses from all three.
Almost all members are married. A quick search offers me a choice of 11,000
mostly married men in London between the ages of 20 and 50, and a lot of
pictures of genitalia. Members say that there are probably ten men to each
woman.
Profiles are short and to the point, without the flowery “looking for a
soulmate” language of conventional dating sites, because most people are not
trying to hide that they are just looking for NSA (no-strings-attached) sex,
either as a one-off or as a continuing casual arrangement; most are adamant
that they want to maintain their current relationship but are looking for
something to spice up a life fallen flat. Common explanations include “life
is too short to take too seriously” and “I don’t want a relationship,
thanks, I’ve already got one of those”. Almost all say that they are not
getting enough excitement at home and feel that time is running out.
A foot fetishist and a tights fetishist pop up but, as profiles list level of
education and income, it is easy to find pleasant-sounding, high-earning
professionals. Peter swapped several messages with a barrister. A lot of the
photographs are obviously family holiday snaps.
Peter may be a cliché but he is also a decent bloke — self-critical, slightly
embarrassed — trying to best navigate his way through a 16-year-old marriage
in which he is determined to remain. He will not, he says, go down the
self-destructive route of a long-term affair that could wreck everything.
But “sex at home has left the building”, which makes him mildly but
continually unhappy with a life that otherwise should be perfect. So far he
has met two women on the site and slept with both of them, one several times.
“I know that casual sex is not the answer and I know it’s a dangerous game,”
he says. “I’m kidding myself that I’m bright enough and emotionally stable
enough to cope with it but now, of course, I feel guilty.” It must be fun at
the time, though — otherwise why do it? “Of course, but the pleasure is very
temporary. This morning I woke up in a Travelodge in Enfield and just
thought, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ ”
Kate, a lawyer in her forties, has been on the site for a month and describes
it as “like an erotic Facebook”. She has been married for 15 years and has
three children. “I try not to examine my motives too closely or beat myself
up,” she says. “Most of the time I tick along fine but I miss the energy of
being chatted up, the excitement of dating.”
She gets a big kick from receiving loads of messages from men wanting to chat
and to meet her. “There is a blurring of what constitutes intimacy when
you’re used to chatting on social networking sites. Sending and receiving
naughty texts just felt like one step further. I surprised myself with how
much I enjoyed it, but it’s worryingly addictive. I spend far too much time
online or on my phone late at night.”
A lot of people on the site are there only to chat and have no intention of
taking it any further. “One man I spoke to over several nights suddenly
disappeared,” says Kate. “He popped up a couple of weeks later to explain
that it had made him realise that he wasn’t cut out to be unfaithful and was
going to try harder at home.” Would her husband consider it cheating? “Yes,
probably. But I work hard at maintaining the status quo.”
Most of the people I interviewed were determined to do better at family
relationships than the generation before them had — a recognition of what
Peter describes as “the chaos that went with the illusion that one could
partner-swap without consequence. That doesn’t mean that it’s not a
struggle, though.”
In evolutionary terms, infidelity makes perfect sense in terms of achieving a
wide spread of genes, particularly when offspring are beyond the infant
mortality stage. And that is as true for women as it is for men, according
to Valerie Grant, an evolutionary psychologist from the University of
Auckland.
“Reproduction is what counts but sex is the driver,” she says. “Women will be
tempted by extra-pair couplings with a man with perceived higher status
because the woman is always after the best genes she can acquire for her
offspring. This can work well, provided she doesn’t get caught. And, of
course, men’s constant, lifetime striving for status is fundamental to the
whole reproduction thing.”
Grant is quick to concede that evolutionary psychology can sometimes be
unpopular: “We can appear to be saying that this is what ought
to happen, whereas most of us believe that understanding the nature of
evolutionary systems doesn’t necessarily mean approval, but helps us to
design more appropriate political systems — that is, ones that are fairer
and have a better chance of working.”
Susanna Abse is a clinical psychotherapist and director of the Tavistock
Centre for Couple Relationships who lobbies the Government on family policy.
Because she is a practitioner who works with couples on maintaining
relationships, she has a pragmatic approach: “If you go through your forties
without having an affair or even getting close, that’s extraordinary,” she
says. “Everyone gets bored in a long-term relationship but what you hope is
that you can make the shift from constant thrill-seeking to accepting the
pleasure of stability. That’s what maturing is all about.”
Abse accepts that the “forever young” celebrity outlook on life, in which
women with a high media profile appear to keep swapping partners to maintain
their youth and marketability, drips into the public consciousness. “We are
brought up in a consumer society that says ‘get more’ and there is a lot of
celebrity envy,” she says. “Of course, everyone wants to deny ageing because
it is linked to loss.”
Abse believes, though, that there is the beginning of a political and social
shift towards revaluing long-term relationships, driven by the generation
now in their twenties and part of their general commitment to
sustainability. “That doesn’t mean that fidelity gets any easier, though,”
she says. “Everyone has to find a way to manage. But if you play with
intimacy, you have to watch that the costs are not too high.”
Back on the site, so far Kate has been on four dates. She lasted ten minutes
on the first one. “He gave me the creeps — he kept reminding me that it was
a sex site we were on. I was expecting a bit of flirting, a bit of romance.
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.” The second and third men didn't do
much for her, either. “One of them was very self-congratulatory about not
feeling any guilt and, irrationally, I disliked him for that. I actually
felt sorry for his wife.
“I know that I’m trying to re-create myself in my thirties and it’s not really
happening. I dread the thought of getting to the age when men are not going
to find me attractive, but having the same conversations online over and
over again is becoming quite hard work. Each time I arrange to met someone
new, naively I’m expecting something special — but so far they have all
turned out to be rather dull men wearing too much aftershave.” She is still
hopeful of finding someone whom she likes enough “just to have the odd lunch
or dinner with, just to escape the everyday once in a while”.
Peter is trying to wean himself off the site. “I know I have got to stop
somewhere because the fantasy doesn’t add up,” he says. “I’m having sex with
a woman in her thirties and I never thought I’d hear myself say it, but it’s
not enough — or it’s not what I thought it would be.”
What will make him stop? “It’s not the sex per se, it’s my attitude to life.
Once I can embrace my luck in having a beautiful wife, family, nice house,
friends, etc, I won’t need the other. Trouble is, I’m not ready to quit yet
and it’s eating me up.”
Nicola Pearson is researching a documentary on modern morality for Channel 4
Infidelity in figures
115,200 divorces were granted in the UK in 2008. Adulterous behaviour
accounted for 29 per cent of all cases. (Grant Thornton UK Survey, 2009)
24 per cent of married men, asked if they would cheat on their partner if
there were no possibility of being found out, said yes — but only 9 per cent
of married women said that they would consider an affair.
One in five married men in the survey admitted to straying, while only
one woman in ten admitted to being unfaithful to her husband.
4 per cent is the rate year-on-year at which the UK’s online population
has risen — but the number of visitors to online personals has grown by 26
per cent.
Seven million unique visitors a month from the UK visit personals
websites.
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