Married And Looking

What better petri dish than Craigslist's Casual Encounters for a little social experiment - the results are fascinating but not wholly unexpected. I had always wondered about ads posted by married men who said they looking for a "discreet intimate relationship". How many bored suburban housewives and nymphomaniacs are out there to fill such a huge demand for their goods and services ?

As luck would have it, I ran into one such man online. When he first contacted me, I did my preliminary due diligence - included but not limited to Google, Zabasearch, Yahoo Groups - to ID who I was dealing with. There were inconsistencies. He was out there "as unhappily married and looking" in the adult oriented mailing lists and groups but as single on the more mainstream dating sites. Being that I was curious about his type, I went ahead and accepted his contact and started to chat online.

He was posing single, 6'2" tall, athletic with dark hair and brown eyes. I asked to see a picture and he looked like he had described himself - not hard on the eyes at all. The red flags came on thick and fast. Upon seeing my picture he said that I looked more Spanish or Italian than desi. That coming from a desi dude would have set off a hundred warning alarms even if I had not known his real identity. Within ten minutes, he was saying how he could not progress in a relationship without physical intimacy - that lack of compatibility in bed was a deal breaker.

I figured it was about time to ask the $64,000 question - i.e "Are the married and looking ads you put out there not work out so well ?". He was taken aback at this but did not try to deny the charge. In the course of the next three evenings that we chatted, I found out a lot of about his marriage, his wife, their sex life (or the lack of it). He desperately needed to talk through his feelings or guilt and shame about what he was doing and I think he had found just the kind of listener he needed in me.

As for my original question, he said that he had got very limited response overall and almost none of them were from desi women. Maybe the male fantasy of sexually dissatisfied wives looking for extra curricular activities was just that - a fantasy. He said "I tried to be honest about who I was and what I was looking for but was not getting any so I had to lie". That translated in my head to "I am a good looking man looking to give and receive sexual favors but the women out there so repressed and backward that they refuse to have a good time without the whole relationship crap".

I asked him how had fared since he started lying. "A whole lot better of course. But with demanding job , the part-time MBA program and a wife that constantly keeps tabs on me, I haven't been able to go much further than meet women up during lunch hour". I sympathized with that and asked what his long term plan was. "I am looking for a job that is at least 80% travel. As long as I made more than what I am making now, my wife will be ok. Once I am out of town, anything is possible." I had to admit that his plan was highly likely to work out. I was by then ready to puke in disgust.

Maybe the Craigslist experiment will be the deterrent for people like him.