“Looking for Just One”

This is one of the most common themes I see on A-M: the ladies are just looking for one man to have an ongoing affair with, and they want their men to want the same. There are exceptions, usually from women who are experienced with affairs, but this is typically what I’m seeing stated in profiles. The intent is that this woman would find one, perfect man to have an affair with, they’d both delete their A-M profiles, and they’d walk hand-in-hand into the sunset, having a fulfilling, sexual relationship in which they meet all of each other’s needs, and have deep conversations where the men share their feelings, before sliding into bed for selfless, loving sex.

I have a few issues with this narrative:

1. There is no perfect man. Sorry ladies. (Well… there is, but it’s me, and I can’t date everyone. (Sorry ladies.)) This has follow-on consequences.
2. Much as we’d like to pretend otherwise, A-M is a numbers game, especially for men. This also has follow-on consequences.
3. Aside from all of that… is that “riding off into the sunset with one partner” really what you want? From an affair? Really? I mean, it’s adorable that you think so, but… really?

Let’s look at each of these points.

There is no perfect man

This is probably the most obvious, and simultaneously the least obvious, statement I’ve ever made with regards to A-M. But it’s very much worth stating (and backing up) as part of this post.

First of all, I know, I know, that when women come to a site like A-M, they’re coming in with the mindset that it’s not worth doing something like this unless they can find the perfect partner with whom to do it. If they have to settle, then what’s the point? They’ve already settled in their married life, they shouldn’t have to settle in their affairs, too!

Then they get to the site and the mentality gets even worse, because there are so many men there, all clamouring for their attention, that it seems like it should be easy to find the perfect one. All they have to do is weed out the ones who aren’t perfect, and whoever’s left over will be the perfect man. (If there are multiple perfect men, then maybe they can… I don’t know, sort them alphabetically or something.)

Unfortunately, as stated, there are no perfect men. So if a woman starts weeding out the men who aren’t perfect, she’ll end up with no men. “Well this guy’s not quite tall enough so he’s gone, and that guy’s an occasional smoker so he’s gone, and that other guy’s profile isn’t well written so he’s gone, which leaves… oh. Nobody.” So she has one of three choices:

1. Notice that nobody is falling into that “perfect man” category and give up on A-M
2. Keep going down this path, waiting for the perfect man, and never finding anyone (which will eventually lead back to choice 1)
3. Lower her standards

Choices 1 and 2 aren’t relevant for this discussion because I’ll never meet the women who make those choices, but choice 3 is. If she lowers her standards, then, by definition, the list of men she’ll end up with will be less than perfect – and will all likely be imperfect in different ways. So now what does she do? Do she take the better looking guy who’s no fun to talk to, or the short guy who’s very sweet, or the asshole who sent her a picture of his beautiful, beautiful cock¹?

In my experience, most women who get to this point simply flounder and never get past it. They’ve got a list of men who are almost but not quite perfect for what they’re looking for, and it’s too difficult to decide which of them to go with. That list could be as small as two dudes, or it could be a half dozen, but however many men are on the list she’s still dealing with the paradox of choice, and worrying that choosing one will mean losing out on the other(s).

It is at this point that some women change their minds on the “looking for just one” mentality. Regardless of her thinking when she first came to the site, there can be a temptation at this point to date a few men, getting the best traits from each. She is, after all, already cheating on her husband; is it really that big of a deal to now “cheat on” her adulterous “boyfriends” too? Do a lot of women do this? No, I don’t think so. But to be sure, I’ve known some who have. And they’re awesome.

It’s a numbers game

The desired scenario mentioned above is that two people meet on A-M, fall in lust², and delete their profiles as they move on to a fulfilling and hotel-sheet-ruining sexual relationship. The problem is that it rarely works out that way, especially on the men’s side. For us, it’s more like this:

• Log on every day and message as many women as possible (given the amount of time you have to spend on it), hopefully with a bit of filtering to ignore the women that you’re clearly not interested in
• For every 50 women that you message, 10 will respond positively (or at all)
• For every 10 women that respond, 1 will be interesting enough to continue with

So on any given day I’m sending a bunch of messages to new women, responding to women who messaged me yesterday, looking back at women who messaged me two days ago to figure out if they’re worth continuing on with or pinging again in case they’ve forgotten about me… there’s a lot going on.

And that’s just finding women in the first place. But the thing is, even once you’ve found someone, she can suddenly disappear without warning. At any point in the process – at any point in the process – a woman might just stop responding (or actively block you). There are a bajillion reasons why this might happen: maybe she’s been juggling a few men and finally decided that you didn’t make the cut; maybe she got caught by her husband and had to delete her profile; maybe she just decided that, you know what, cheating isn’t her thing. Whatever the reasoning, there is no point, anywhere along the process, where you can assume that you’ve found “the one,” because she could disappear.

So by the time that perfect scenario she was looking for has arrived – two people have found each other, and she’s ready to delete her profile and stick with him – he’s already messaging with one or two other women – some he met before her, some he met after – and if he’s smart he’s also aware of the fact that she could disappear at any moment.

A mistake that I have made over and over and over again on that site is that every time I meet someone and things progress beyond a certain point, I lose interest in A-M and stop doing all of that stuff I mentioned above. I don’t keep going back every day and looking for new women and messaging the ones who were soft “maybes,” I just focus on the woman I’m currently talking to and leave it at that. And then when she disappears, it means I don’t have any hooks in the water and I have to start all over again – and because I hate A-M so much, that’s a very unappealing prospect. Once I get out, I have to drag myself back in³.

All of which goes directly against the fantasy some women have built up in which this whole thing is romantic. It’s not. It’s a numbers game, or, more to the point, it’s a game. I have no interest in tricking anyone on that site, I want them to want me as much as I want them, but there is also a huge element of trying to be artificially clever so that I can capture their attention in the first place, before I ever have a chance to be myself and let them get to know me. I mean… I’m always myself, even on A-M, but when I’m sending out those initial emails, to all of those dozens and dozens of women, I’m being a slightly exaggerated version of myself.

And if you thought you’d already seen too much of how the sausage is made, let me hit you with something even worse: It is very, very hard to think of something clever to say right off the bat that a woman will like – a woman that I don’t even know, at this point, so I’m shooting in the dark – and there are only so many hours in a day. So I tend to create a new message every once in awhile, and then start reusing it over and over (with minor, profile-specific variations), in an attempt to get as many messages out as possible in a short period of time.

Did I just hear an audible gasp from all of the naive women who were planning to join A-M, but who are shocked – shocked! – that I’d reuse canned messages? The women who had assumed that a guy probably searches carefully for the perfect woman, messages her (and only her), and only if things don’t work out would he contemplate messaging a second woman? Who are assuming that every word of every message is explicitly written for that woman alone?

Get over it, lassy. Remember what I said earlier about this being a numbers game: if a guy wants A-M to work, he has to send a lot of messages, to a lot of women, before he’ll ever hear back from any of them, let alone form an actual connection. Very quickly, once messages start going back and forth, it’s time to start writing real messages – usually things stop being canned after the first one, for me – but at the beginning there just isn’t time to do that for every single woman who’s remotely interesting on that [damned] site.

You might have come looking for romance, and by god I hope you find it – I hope you find it from me! – but before that can ever happen, the guy(s) on the other side of the screen are just trying desperately to get noticed amidst all of the noise in your inboxes, so that they can get to the romantic part.

Riding into the sunset

But let’s get past all of that. Let’s assume that things go very smoothly.

1. He and she⁴ are both bored one Saturday, and create accounts on A-M
2. He happens to see hers, and she looks interesting – she’s so clever, and their interests are so similar! – so he crafts a witty message for her
3. She smiles when she reads it – he gets her! – and writes something back, with just enough of a sexual vibe to it that her nether regions tingle while she’s crafting it, because she can’t believe she’s really doing this
4. He responds, and then she does, and he does, and they eventually take it out of A-M into WhatsApp or B-B-M or whatever
5. Soon they’re exchanging pics
6. Soon after that they’re exchanging naughty pics
7. They meet for coffee, lose track of time because they have such a connection, and on the way out they kiss goodnight, and both feel the sparks and see the fireworks and hear the angels singing (or whatever happens when a kiss is magical⁵)
8. Another date, and it’s just as good
9. They decide to be bold, and get a room
10. A few toe-curling orgasms later, and they know this is something real
11. They both delete their A-M accounts, because who needs ‘em? In fact, hell, they might have deleted their accounts after date #2!

Perfect situation, right? Everything went so smoothly. So now let’s go back to the original question: When she went into this – and maybe even when he did – they were planning to have one lasting, ongoing affair. Something romantic. It can’t just be about sex, it has to be something more than that⁶.

What would happen if that was actually the case?

Well, for one thing, assuming that things continue to go well, that good connection and healthy dose of lust would soon evolve into love. It would have to. Either the relationship will fizzle out, or it will blossom into love – those are the only two choices. And I think this is the part that people who are new to A-M simply haven’t thought through: what then? What do you do if you actually fall in love with the person you’re having an affair with? And, again, that is guaranteed to happen – so what are you going to do when it does?

Do you think you’ll continue to have your loveless marriage, and adore your children, and simply have the one you really love “on the side”? Sneaking out of the house from time to time to fornicate in a hotel room and then come back home, all the while feeling that things are backwards – that the one you love is the one you see for a couple of hours between motel sheets, and the one you barely know anymore is the one you see all the damned time – even sleep in the same bed with?

The whole reason you came to A-M in the first place is that you want and/or need to stay married, but you also needed some excitement – you needed to feel alive again. But now that you’re in love with someone else, can you still stay married? And if you still have to – many people do, for one reason or another – what if your spouse finds out that you’ve been committing adultery, and it all ends up ending anyway? (With you branded with a scarlet A?)

And what if you decide that it’s time to get out of your marriage, and be with your new lover permanently? Is it really guaranteed that your lover is also, coincidentally, ready, willing, and able to end their marriage at the same time? Or are you going to end up ending your marriage only to end up in love with someone who’s still married? You’ll be the “other woman” or the “other man” – can you live with that? Being in love with someone you can never have, because they belong to someone else?

Wait… why am I writing this horrible, bitter post?

Does it seem like I’m being a jerk? I’m normally so full of humour – why this diatribe against love? What the hell is wrong with me, anyway?

My intention is not to come across as anti-love, or even anti-romance. I am, in fact, a pretty happy guy, overall. But I think some people who come to A-M are immediately in over their heads, because they haven’t thought things through, and the only way they ever will think about all of this is when it’s too late, because they’ve found themselves in a terrible situation. How many marriages have been ruined either directly or indirectly by A-M?

On the other hand, there are people – even women – who come to A-M knowing exactly what they want: fun, excitement, and orgasms. Who want to date someone for a while, get the kind of excitement that having a new lover brings – we all love the excitement of the “getting to know you” phase of a relationship – and eventually moving on and having it again with someone else. Who want to experience new things and new people. Some people might call those women sluts, but personally, I think they have their heads on straight, and I’d love to meet as many of them as I can.

So how do I handle it when I meet women who are “looking for just one”? Women who want someone to ride off into the sunset with, who believe they’ll be with that man for a long, long time? I lie.

I tell them I’m looking for that too – because it has to be more than just sex! – and continue with the process of getting to know them, and letting them get to know me, and, frankly, being incredibly open and honest with them about pretty much everything else, but never trying to dissuade them from the “looking for just one” mentality, because they’ll figure it out on their own eventually. In the meantime, we can have the thrill and excitement of going through the “getting to know you” phase, and have our first kiss and our first grope in the back of a car and our first hotel room fuck and all of the hotel room fucks that come after that, and eventually things will fizzle out and she’ll either give up on A-M, or she’ll look for the next man.

The only thing that’s different between me and the “riding off into the sunset” man she was envisioning is that when love starts to rear its ugly head, I’m smart enough to pull back a bit, and not let it take root. It’s for her own good, and mine.

Footnotes

• ¹ Anecdotally, I can say that very few women go with this choice. ↺
• ² Or, if the person is really stupid, she might even want to fall in love. ↺
• ³ I don’t actually have to. I could stop committing adultery. But I do drag myself back in. ↺
• ⁴ I’m being boring and assuming cys-gendered, hetero protagonists for this scenario, but the concepts wouldn’t change regardless of gender(s) ↺
• ⁵ She raises one foot? ↺
• ⁶ I can’t even begin to count how many women from A-M have used the phrase “it can’t just be about sex – if I wanted that I could just go to a bar!” I’m always tempted to respond honestly: of course it can, and it’s probably better that way. But I’m not stupid enough to actually say it. ↺