Kathryn's Blog: For Not-so-Serious Daters

Old Ashley M is conservative?

Erg.  Ashley Madison.  But here’s an article that focuses on an interesting slant, that Ashley exploits what is an essentially conservative market: those who see themselves as conservative and married, but want a little spice without upsetting the apple cart.  Makes me think of our old buddies Ted Haggard and Jim Bakker.  The Shakespeare quote “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” is apt, except the lady in these cases tends to be men.  Did you know that Ashley M is trying to recruit Tiger to be a spokesman?  It fits their demographic.

Ashley Madison’s Conservative Values

Posted by Amanda Hess

AshleyMadison.com, an online dating site that facilitates extramarital affairs, has never been too popular among moral conservatives. Earlier this year, Deroy Murdock argued on Human Events that Ashley Madison has edged out gay marriage as the number one threat to traditional matrimony. Now, cluck-clucking conservatives won’t have to choose between the cheaters and the gays: Ashley Madison has begun marketing itself as a place where the married can pursue their same-sex attractions, too.

Ashley Madison’s gay (and bi-curious) population is modest, but growing. Worldwide, the agency hosts 4.7 million members seeking extramarital affairs. Of those, only 143,427 are seeking some same-sex action. About two-thirds of Ashley Madison’s same-sex seekers are women looking for women; one-third are men seeking men. Noel Biderman, Ashley Madison’s CEO (married, two kids), says that his service provides a necessary sexual outlet for gay men and women who are trapped within the confines of traditional marriage. “There are men and women who, for whatever reason, might have been motivated to pursue a traditional marriage because they did want to build a family,” Biderman says. “Unfortunately, in our culture, their sexuality is still at odds with that arrangement.”

In an age when marriage equality is gaining serious steam, helping closeted gays escape their repressive straight marriages seems downright altruistic. But Ashley Madison isn’t so progressive as to encourage gay men to marry each other. “They’re not looking to leave their families,” Biderman says of the same-sex contingent. “They’re looking to have this on the side.” Ashley Madison is not here to release gays from the closet—it’s here to offer them a peek outside before returning them safely to nuclear family life. Meanwhile, it invests in the repression. “I don’t want to call it ironic, because people who find this ironic assume that we’re a home-wrecking service,” Biderman says. “We’re not. We are a marriage preservation service.”

Nobody relies on the preservation of traditional marriage like Ashley Madison. Ashley Madison’s motto, “when divorce isn’t an option,” seems strange in a country where no-fault divorce makes it easy to reset one’s relationship status to single. But Ashley Madison is not designed for folks willing to ruin their home lives so transparently. The service relies entirely on secrecy and discretion—what skeptics might call “lying” and “self-delusion.” “This is not a service for people in open marriages,” says Biderman. “There are sites out there for the courageous ones—the swinger couples who have found the courage to say, ‘I love you, but I need to do something different in the bedroom,’” he says. Ashley Madison, on the other hand, is for people who “can’t voice their sexual concerns to their spouses, because they are terrified of the repercussions,” he says. “There’s this notion that people who engage in infidelity are lying and deceitful,” he says. “But people wouldn’t have to lie if these more realistic sexual options were socially acceptable.”

As soon as those “realistic sexual options” are accepted, though, Ashley Madison goes kaput. The service wouldn’t be making any money if people weren’t terrified of communicating with their spouses. Besides, secrets are hot. Ashley Madison’s branding centers around the service as a sexy, hush-hush taboo. Ashley Madison may have built an empire out of facilitating transgressions, but its continued success lies in reinforcing the traditional. Biderman’s business will only remain viable so long as its members continue to invest in conservative, heterosexual marriages which reinforce monogamy. “People have told me, ‘Oh, you should open Ashley Madison in France,’” says Biderman. “I tell them, ‘You know, I don’t think they need me.’”

To date, Ashley Madison has only identified a need in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. In order for the service to expand, Biderman has got to locate other cultures that are currently struggling between the repressive and the progressive. “Places like Brazil offer an interesting dynamic, where infidelity among men is extremely high and among women it’s much lower,” he says. “There’s no reason to believe you can’t be wildly successful there. There is an incredible opportunity for a global phenomenon.”

Biderman’s latest campaign to make this an Ashley Madison world has, so far, failed to reach its full potential. “We always thought there would be a marketplace for same-sex affairs, but it’s been difficult to cultivate it,” says Biderman. “We could probably stretch those legs further, but there are so many obstacles to advertising our brand. We have enough difficulty advertising infidelity—think about the problems we’d have marketing to same-sex infidelity. I cant even tell you one avenue where I could effectively market that.”

Ashley Madison’s target demographic —people who lead conservative lifestyles but secretly yearn for a transgressive kick—is difficult to target. Social conservatives, remember, are obligated to respond to businesses like Ashley Madison with concern, outrage, and calls for banning. Ashley Madison claims to support the institution of marriage. Other American institutions have proven less than supportive of Ashley Madison. Recently, police kicked a tanker truck advertising Ashley Madison affairs out of the city of Philadelphia. Earlier this year, an Ashley Madison commercial was deemed too hot for the Superbowl. “We’ve got the Parent Television Council saying these ads are reprehensible,” says Biderman of the Web site’s conservative backlash. “There’s this huge fear to have any sort of conversation about sex.”

As a result, Ashley Madison’s marketing strategy has attempted to awkwardly straddle the divide between the conservative and the progressive. In one television spot, targeted toward women, Ashley Madison is offered as an alternative to a life married to a sexist pig. This husband arrives to an anniversary dinner late, leaves early, and in the meantime, ogles other women and implies that his wife is fat. Cheating on this guy practically constitutes a feminist act. The ad targeted at men contains no such progressive bent. In this version, the poor man’s wife isn’t a jerk—but she’s fat, and she snores, too! This man is encouraged to cheat on his wife for more, shall we say, traditional reasons: he just wants to fuck someone else behind her back. And there’s nothing progressive about dudes doing that.

Ashley Madison’s new PR push advertising same-sex affairs may further alienate the conservative base it requires to stay relevant. Then again, perhaps the gay element is just what Ashley Madison needs to keep conservatives abreast of its services—and curious about exploring its taboos. Every time a religious conservative declares a sexual practice an affront to human decency, a new conservative kink is born.

posted by Kathryn Lord on 12.23.09 at 10.24 am
permalink | Categories: • News About Dating Sites and Types • Beware! Bad Stories, Bad Advice • For Not-so-Serious Daters • 0 Comments

The story behind Sugar Babies and their Dads

If you have wondered about the Sugar Baby/Sugar Daddy websites, here’s an article from the NYT that spells out what happens in more detail than you probably will ever want to know…

Keeping Up With Being Kept

AT FIRST GLANCE, the Web site SeekingArrangement.com seems like any other dating site. Most of the men are looking for fit, sexy women, and most of the women want nice guys who can make them smile and laugh. But if eHarmony or Match.com is a chatty social mixer, Seeking Arrangement is a down-and-dirty marketplace where older moneyed men and cute young women engage in brutally frank transactions. They’re not searching for longtime soul mates; they want no-strings-attached “arrangements” that trade in society’s most valued currencies: wealth, youth and beauty. In the cheesy lexicon of the site, they are “sugar daddies” and “sugar babies.”

There’s the 18-year-old from France asking for $5,000 to $10,000 a month from “a mentor who can provide me with the finer things in life and keep me happy!” And the 49-year-old investor from upstate New York willing to pay $5,000 a month for a “daytime playmate” for “intense connection without commitment.” Critics say the site is at best a convenience store for adulterers and at worst a virtual brothel, but Brandon Wade, Seeking Arrangement’s 38-year-old founder and chief executive, is unperturbed by the criticism. “We stress relationships that are mutually beneficial,” he says. “We ask people to really think about what they want in a relationship and what they have to offer. That kind of upfront honesty is a good basis for any relationship.”

The site now claims more than 300,000 registered members, far fewer than mainstream dating sites like Match.com, which has 1.5 million paying subscribers, but still a remarkable number. Sugar babies outnumber daddies 10 to 1, Wade says, providing what one sugar daddy called “the best fishing hole I ever fished in.”

This abundance of possibility is part of what the site is selling, along with fantasy. Some of these men — especially those shopping for women half their age — are digging deep into their pockets to pay for an illusion: that despite their receding hairlines and wattled skin, they’re still enchanting enough to charm pretty young women. One image on the site features a dazed, graying man doted on by two barely clad attendants — a caricature of an already caricatured relationship. But this marketing spin doesn’t capture the nuances of the relationships that often develop between the “daddies” and the “babies” who meet on the site — relationships that can turn out to be more complicated than even the members themselves expect. Men may use money as a way to buy themselves out of the normal obligations of romance, like accommodating a woman’s emotional needs as much as their own. But despite the power and security that the money buys, it can also undercut the very ego it’s intended to boost.

Consider B. K., a fit finance executive in his early 40s, who, last October, began “dating” a 20-year-old engineering major at a college 90 minutes from his house. Like nearly half the sugar daddies on Seeking Arrangement, B. K. is married. (Neither B. K. nor any other user of the site would allow full names to be published — certain the revelation would infuriate wives or boyfriends, shock colleagues and repel friends or family — and agreed to use only their first names, nicknames or initials.) B. K. and his wife opted against separation, for the sake of the kids, and for now, they have a policy — at least in his mind — of don’t ask, don’t tell. Between pangs of guilt about cheating, B. K. views his secret dallying as a safety valve, letting him feel desired so he can return home and appreciate the many things he loves about his wife, even if they don’t include giving him the attention he wants.

And so, nearly each week, B. K. gets together with Lola, the young woman he met on the site, for a meal or a gym workout and a few hours at a hotel outside the Western city where he lives. Their visits are generally no longer than four or five hours because Lola, a senior, has a full course load and also works 40 hours a week at two low-wage jobs. With no money from her parents, she was frank in her Seeking Arrangement profile, saying she needed “immediate financial assistance.” In B. K., she gets that in the form of $100 or $150 stuffed in her bag each time they meet. He feels good about helping her with her tuition, encouraging her studies and romancing her, albeit in hotel rooms. Most of all, he’s grateful that she doesn’t want a commitment. At least he was at first.

“It’s very clear with this site that she’s getting something out of this, hopefully emotional support and mentoring advice and fun in bed, but also something financial, so don’t come back to me and say that you were used or that I left you high and dry,” he said. “I like that aspect of it, but on the other hand, it would be nice not to have the money involved, because you always wonder: would she still want to be with me even without the money? Does the money make me more attractive than I really am?”

ABOUT 30 PERCENT OF ARRANGEMENTS on the site involve the daddy paying an “allowance,” usually a thousand or two a month, though the site claims some reach $10,000. The rest provide the baby with incidental cash, shopping sprees, gifts, travel or the fleeting illusion that theirs is a high-end, easy life. “I get flown to whatever city I want,” wrote a North Carolina college student, who goes by the name gurlnextdoor on the site’s blog, a mix between an online support group and a kaffeeklatsch. “He pays for it, takes me shopping, we talk, laugh, go out to eat and do whatever we want to do for our days together. . . . I don’t bring up mundane problems about my home life, and he does the same. . . . If I wanted someone to talk to about my life problems, I’d get a boyfriend or a therapist.”

Like B. K.’s companion, Lola, many women on the site are in their 20s, though plenty of others are in their 30s, 40s and 50s. Some are looking for attention, some have financial problems and some are seeking refuge from romantic pain. On the blog and in conversations with me, still others said benefactors provide a way to get the extras they want — the Fendi bags, the to-die-for shoe collection or the breast enhancement. A surprising number of babies say on the blog that they don’t need the money at all, either because they have decent-paying jobs or bottomless credit cards from their parents. What appeals to them about the arrangements are the expensive gifts — “I just LOVE being spoiled,” gushed one 19-year-old woman on the blog — because those gifts make them feel valued, as if the money spent measures just how desirable they are.

Other women on the site would happily forfeit conspicuous prizes and go for the cash instead, especially for tuition. One woman’s profile says, “That you can help me get through school and achieve financial stability through support and mentoring is more important than wowing me with diamonds and Prada.” In fact, Seeking Arrangement pays to have its ads pop up on search engines whenever someone types in “student loan,” “tuition help,” “college support” or “help with rent.” Lola was one of many to stumble on the site that way, when — behind on her rent and tuition and down to one meal a day — she Googled “student loan.” What popped up was hardly what she expected, but she was willing to try almost anything to stay in school.

Her first sugar daddy, a man in his early 50s, turned out to be a terrible kisser and too dominating in bed. “I had to grit my teeth every time we met,” she told me. In four visits, she earned $550, enough to cover the rent, and then dropped him. A month later, she connected with another sugar daddy, a man in his late 50s who lived in Louisiana. The only thing he wanted, he told her, was that she do well in school. He insisted she send her transcript, and once satisfied, he sent her nearly $500 a month. Though they never met, never even talked on the phone, he wrote her long letters by hand encouraging her studies and advising her on finances and sent her novels, newspaper clippings and a J. K. Rowling commencement address for inspiration. He never once mentioned sex.

Six months later, the man in Louisiana had to cut back on expenses, so Lola began looking for a new source of income to supplement the $8 an hour she earned working in a lab and the cash she picked up cleaning houses and selling her plasma. Last October, Lola and B. K. had their first date.

Though petite, Lola seems older than she is, maybe because she is so matter-of-fact in her manner. On the day I met her, on her way to meet B. K., she was wearing jeans, a striped T-shirt and no makeup. Her hair was pulled back, no-nonsense style, making her look more as if she were about to go camping than rendezvous with her sugar daddy. She brought along a textbook and her GRE vocabulary flashcards, in case B. K. was late.

“At first, it was a job, then it became a pleasant job and then it was getting together with a friend,” she said, describing her relationship with B. K. “With him, I don’t feel like a prostitute, though maybe I am. It’s not just the sex with us. We care about each other, we talk, there’s a connection, not just business.”

Whether sugar relationships amount to prostitution is hotly debated among the site’s members. “Let’s get real here,” wrote GoldenGate on the blog. “I’m with a guy who’s old enough to be my dad, short and balding. Not to mention his other shortcomings, ahem. But he gives me a great big fat allowance every month. If that wasn’t there, we wouldn’t be together.”

Others on the blog were shocked, saying they could never be with a man, even a rich one, if they weren’t somehow attracted to him. Indeed, most go to considerable effort to distinguish between “sugar” and prostitution. (Legally, at least, they are right; since the 1970s, courts have ruled that as long as the woman is paid for some service besides sex — housecleaning, companionship — the arrangement is not the equivalent of prostitution.) They say being a sugar baby is no more an occupation than dating is, especially when the goal of dating is to find a rich boyfriend or a wealthy husband. They routinely turn down creeps interested in nothing but sex.

Some sugar babies also insist that wives who stay in miserable marriages for an American Express black card, mansion or country-club membership are more like prostitutes than they are. And yet the blatant financial transactions leave many uneasy. Even Seeking Arrangement’s chief executive uses a fake name — his legal one is Brandon Wey — partly because he’s afraid his association with the site might dampen his chances of raising capital for a more mainstream enterprise in the future and partly because he thought the name Brandon Wade sounded more Hugh Hefneresque.

In interviews and on the blog, the site’s members parse the nuances of the sex and money transactions. “I read on a post about asking 10k if you’re model material . . . so because I ask for so little, am I ‘on sale’?” wrote one woman. “I don’t think I can accept more than 1k a month plus gifts, because then I will start feeling compelled to do ANYTHING for him.”

E. C., a 23-year-old sales-and-marketing coordinator in Toronto, says she already earns $40,000 a year as well as commission and the use of a company car. But having grown up in a wealthy family, her current salary doesn’t allow her to live in the manner to which she’s accustomed. So E. C. dined with a banker from the site who was charming and attractive. His breath, however, was so bad she decided he wasn’t sugar-daddy material.

Then she met a charming 43-year-old businessman from the site with nice breath. She tried to steer their conversations to the question of an allowance, unsuccessfully. On their third date, they slept together. Afterward, she was glad no money had changed hands. “If he’d given me money after that, I would have felt he was paying me for the sex,” she said. “And if he’d paid me beforehand, I would have felt I owed him something, and the whole thing would have gone from charming to being bought.” Instead of paying her, he takes her to swank restaurants and penthouse suites in Niagara Falls. “He shows me off to the whole place, and it makes me feel good.”

Her parents, she added, would be appalled if they knew she was on such a site — except if they thought it increased her chance of meeting an eligible and rich young doctor.

MOST PEOPLE WOULD LIKELY BE appalled to learn that a daughter — or father — was using SeekingArrangement.com. Beth Bailey, a Temple University historian of courtship, said that her first reaction to the site was “revulsion.” But when she reconsidered it within the historical context of dating, she had a somewhat different response.

Heterosexual relationships, including marriage, have long involved economic transactions, but Bailey points out that when men provided financial security, they traditionally did so in exchange for a woman’s sexual virtue (and potential to bear and rear children), not for sexual thrills. For that, they often turned to prostitutes and mistresses, involving a more frank money-for-sex exchange. It’s only in the last century that money has been traded — albeit indirectly — for sexual attention from “respectable” unmarried women. In the early 1900s, courtship shifted from girls’ porches or parlors to a commercial venture: a date. Etiquette manuals of the time were explicit — boys were to pay for meals, entertainment and transportation, and in return, girls were to provide well-groomed company, rapt attention and at least a certain amount of physical affection. His money bought not only companionship but also her indebtedness.

“It made a lot of people uneasy, because if men’s money was central to the dating relationship, what distinguished it from prostitution?” Bailey says. Seen in this context, Bailey argues, Seeking Arrangement “is a piece of contemporary society. It’s simply more explicit and transparent about the bargains struck in the traditional model of dating.”

Though one-quarter of the site’s sugar daddies (including married ones) are looking for male “babies” and 1 percent of the site’s members are “sugar mommies,” they still tend to fall into traditional roles, where the one who is paid supplies sex, admiration, comfort and the kind of status conferred by any other expensive consumer good. The “baby” is the one who regulates her appearance, schedule, behavior and emotions to make the payer feel special.

Still, a 22-year-old named Mercedes told me, “I don’t see how people can view this as exploitation.” Mercedes is a junior who pays her own tuition at a Georgia university. She has had six sugar daddies in the past year to supplement her wages busing tables and washing dishes at a bar. “I could go out and work three jobs and still go to school and probably make decent grades, but is that really what I want to do? I make more money this way, and I have a lot more fun because I get to go out to concerts, go shopping, see movies and make money off of it. If instead of this I was just dating a rich guy, it’d be almost the same thing, and society wouldn’t look down on that. You know with a sugar daddy that they’re spending a lot of money on you and they clearly want something in return, but is that really any different than how it is with a boyfriend?”

BRANDON WEY GOT THE IDEA for the site from his own dissatisfying love life as an M.I.T. student and then as a well-off but awkward tech executive. Traditional dating Web sites were no help. “It was difficult to advertise the assets I had compared to hundreds of thousands of guys who had better looks or better pickup lines,” says Wey, now married to a woman 13 years younger than he is, whom he met before the site went live. “I needed to find a way to put myself at the front of the line.”

Wey unveiled SeekingArrangement.com in 2006 and aimed to keep the site well stocked for his wealthy customers. Babies can join free, while daddies pay $44.95 a month — and an optional $5 to ensure the site’s name doesn’t show up on credit-card statements. For another $1,200 a year, a sugar daddy can become a Diamond Club member, with his income and net worth verified and his profile featured at the top of the home page.

B. K. joined the site about a year ago, swapping flirtatious e-mail messages with potential sugar babies, taking a few out to dinner and romancing one for a few months before he found Lola. He was drawn, he said, to her independence and intellect, her humility, her academic determination and, of course, her looks. He loved their time together — dancing, snuggling, the whole bit — and, at times, feared he was falling in love.

From the start, Lola was clear that her heart lay elsewhere. Her boyfriend of four years lives 1,000 miles away, and though they see each other only a few times a year, Lola maintains that she is deeply in love with him. When B. K. asked Lola what gift she wanted for Christmas, she demurred, but when pressed, she asked if he would pay for plane fare to visit her boyfriend. B. K. said yes — and felt great about it. “Isn’t that what love is?” he told me later. “It’s not about trying to own someone.”

While Lola was gone, B. K. sent her e-mail and text messages virtually every day but heard nothing back. Pining, he began trolling the site, window shopping, and noticed Lola had logged on. He feared that she was looking to replace him. “I was like, What the hell is this?” He e-mailed her, asking why she was on the site, but got no answer. “Maybe I’m the needy one,” he mused. He wondered if Lola was trying to end their relationship or if her boyfriend had found out. “The no-strings-attached assumption is hard on my heart sometimes, but I don’t think she will just disappear.”

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN RICH men and kept women have been around for a very long time, of course, but the Internet makes hunting for such arrangements easier. Quickly and privately, a well-off man can find a young woman wherever in the world he wants. And he can find someone who fits his needs, however unconventional they may be.

One sugar daddy whose screen name is Sam has tried long-term girlfriends, mistresses, prostitutes and a brief marriage. Now single, the 39-year-old entrepreneur has found the arrangement that suits him best: a monogamous business-associate-with-benefits deal in which he pursues an entrepreneurial project with a young, beautiful, intelligent woman. He provides financial backing, mentoring and networking; she provides sex, fun and, inevitably, a bit of worshiping, all of which make him feel virile and influential. In between vacations using his private jet, both work hard on the project. They don’t tend to see each other much, as he travels frequently for his work.

Sam’s profile on Seeking Arrangement is audacious. He advertises for a woman who is “drop-dead beautiful, sexy, fun and elegantly mannered in a fancy setting. She must turn heads . . . and make me the envy of the crowd.” He wants no tattoos, no cosmetic implants, no vegetarians and no Gen Yers who begin their e-mail-message sentences with lowercase letters.

When I asked to chat in person, Sam suggested meeting at CORE, a private Manhattan club where membership is by invitation only and costs $65,000 the first year and where Sam’s assent was required before I could be admitted. Sitting alone at a long conference table in a room set aside for him, he looked utterly unremarkable, a man of average height with a buzz cut and an aloof air. But once Sam got talking, he became affable and witty, especially as he described his unorthodox history with women. He started college when most kids his age were still in middle school. “When you go to college at that age, you’re pretty undatable,” he said. “I was somewhere between a curiosity, a mascot and a friend. I tutored freshman physics and calculus so I could at least be near women. Of course, all they’d do is talk about their boyfriends.”

He has an almost mathematical approach to assessing relationships, and once even computed the costs for a girlfriend, mistress, prostitute and wife — mistresses turn out to be most expensive by the hour; wives, by the year; girlfriends are cheapest all around. But he’s not as calculating as he seems. In fact, he concluded there’s little correlation between cost and quality. Still, he is relentlessly searching for an algorithm that will predict relationships’ success.

Sam is also more determined than most to try separating a sugar baby’s affection and the money she’s paid to provide it. In his arrangements, he says, he establishes a trust in the woman’s name that pays a monthly stipend of at least $5,000 for the length of their contract. If the woman decides to quit sleeping with him at any point, he may quit serving as adviser and pamperer, but the stipend continues regardless. “If I didn’t do that, then it’s like a leash I’m putting on somebody, and that seems really unfair,” he said. “Besides, then I’d never know what the relationship was really about.”

Sam runs these relationships with an explicit business plan, a set budget, measurable goals and quarterly reviews. From the outset, the contract has an end date. It’s a brilliant, if contrived, way to protect his pride. The contract specifies that the romance and sex are to end by the preset date, so there’s no break up, no rejection, no bruised ego. She’s not dumping him; the gig’s just over.

He was involved in three relationships this way, helping the women establish a school overseas, start a tech company and help run a nonprofit, he told me. He declined to put me in touch with the women but said each had been successful. He is like Pygmalion, smitten with his own creations.

He found those three women through word of mouth, long before he discovered Seeking Arrangement and its rush of possibilities. Between November and shortly after I met him in mid-January, he had winnowed down 140 candidates to four finalists. “It feels so good to have so many people paying attention to me,” he said. He met all four, interviewed them extensively, coached them on their business plans and took two of them on multiday outings. In each case, he told them he preferred to put off sex until he’d settled on a candidate, though he did end up sleeping with one of them — but only, he says, because she so aggressively pursued him.

NOR ARE MEN THE ONLY ONES seeking relationships within particular parameters. A. B. was 18 when she first went on the site, in 2006, looking for extra money. She had started college at 15 but quit when her money ran out. She was soon contacted by a well-to-do, married filmmaker whom she liked immediately. He encouraged her ambition to become a professor of art or philosophy. For a few months, they saw each other frequently, visiting museums, discussing Camus and Nietzsche, taking in films, sharing their poetry and artwork and sometimes romping in bed. He gave her $500 each time they met, whether or not they had sex. In between visits, he sent her money for art supplies. He said if she got a part-time job, he’d pay the tuition and living expenses she couldn’t cover.

Ecstatic, A. B. re-enrolled at her Southern college. Her sugar daddy flew her up to Pennsylvania to meet him a few times. But he became increasingly peeved that she also had a boyfriend at school. And though her boyfriend understood why she was in a relationship with a sugar daddy, A. B. felt compromised, as if she were leading two lives. She ended that Seeking Arrangement relationship.

About two years later, A. B. met another sugar daddy from the site, a single father who seemed pleasant enough but unlikely to entangle her emotions. Still, after a few visits, he wanted nothing but sex, so she stopped seeing him.

“When these sugar-daddy relationships go the way I think they should go, the lines are pretty blurry between that and a typical boyfriend-girlfriend relationship,” she said. “And when they go the way I don’t think they should go, the lines are blurry between that and sex work.”

In February, A. B. met a third benefactor. This one was a pleasant and clever psychologist in his 40s. He flew her to San Francisco. They went to jazz clubs and a tony restaurant, talked about philosophy and shared a bed but stayed on their own sides all night. But the next night, after they’d both been drinking, he pressured her into forgoing a condom during sex. “I yielded because I thought that if he came away from the weekend having enjoyed himself, he would be more likely to want to see me again and want to support me,” she said. The experience soured her on flagrantly transactional relationships, because she realized the power dynamic would always be lopsided. She is done being a sugar baby, A. B. said, even if it means delaying her education even longer.

AT TIMES, B. K. DEBATED WHETHER to turn off his Seeking Arrangement profile to honor his relationship with Lola. But whenever communication from her would go dark for a few days, he was glad that his profile was still active. The e-mail messages he got from women were an ego balm. After all, it’s not often a man in his 40s is wooed by a former surfer in her 20s or a 26-year-old model looking for the “finer things in life.”

During the two weeks over Christmas that Lola was incommunicado and B. K. worried that he’d just been dumped, he received a suggestive note from a woman close to his age from another state. She sent him long enticing messages, which boosted his morale. Unlike Lola, she was mercurial and dramatic, and he was drawn by her damsel-in-distress air. He loved feeling like her savior. Neither Lola nor his wife seemed to need saving, just help with tuition (in Lola’s case) or with kids and chores (in his wife’s case).

Everything about the woman seemed enticingly dangerous, and B. K. became obsessed with her and told me their interactions were like the “thrill” of running through a burning building and making it out alive. And then it imploded: a combination of hotheadedness, different politics and her resentment that he wouldn’t pony up a regular allowance.

By then, Lola was back at school. She said she’d been out of touch during her visit with her boyfriend because her cellphone battery died. She told B. K. she hadn’t bought a charger because she was out of money, even using Target gift cards she received at Christmas to pay for groceries. She reassured him that she wanted to keep seeing him but also reminded him that she had several looming deadlines at school and at the lab where she worked. Delighted that she was still in his life, B. K. turned off his Seeking Arrangement profile. But with Lola’s packed schedule, their visits dwindled to every other week. It took days for her to respond to his e-mail messages. Even a text message he sent asking “Are you O.K.?” went unanswered for days.

Eventually, she e-mailed him in her typically even-tempered way: “I am all right. When I don’t respond it means I don’t have time at the moment and then I forget because I’m running from one place to the next.”

Restless, B. K. switched his profile on. He got a Seeking Arrangement message from a graduate student in her mid-20s who lived just 10 miles from his office. They met for a quick coffee, long enough for the woman to grab B. K.’s hand and put it on her ripped abs, just to show him what she was made of. He was thrilled by her aggressiveness. Afterward, when he suggested by e-mail that he could pay her $1,500 a month, she objected that she was worth much more. He decided to play it cool and wait for her to come begging.

And then in the midst of all that, he got a message from Lola that she could meet him the following Sunday afternoon, after a study session. Upon getting her note, his message to me was effusive: “YAY!!! I’m almost giddy like a schoolboy!!”

When they finally met in late February, B. K. asked Lola more about her boyfriend than he ever had before. Lola told him she loved her boyfriend and that she hoped he would propose after she graduates later this year. Once engaged, she added, she would stop being a sugar baby. B. K. felt devastated.

Lola seemed particularly tender in that meeting, he told me. Moved by his deep affection for her, B. K. offered her an extra $200 to see her boyfriend over spring break. Afterward, he was scared he would soon lose her and also scared at how much his feelings for her had intensified. If she asked him to leave his wife, he told me, he would seriously consider it.

In the days after their meeting, B. K.’s moods shifted rapidly; he was dreamy one minute, testy or melancholy the next. Then, after weeks of silence, the graduate student with the taut abs e-mailed him, and they agreed to meet at a local bar. “I may be a fool for love, but I’m also practical,” he said before going to meet her, adding that, then again, “maybe I am just a big wallet, and I’m getting played on all sides.”

On a weekday evening, B. K. sat in a back booth, waiting for his new potential sugar baby. She showed up in a tight, low-cut blouse and scooted up next to him, he told me, purring that it had all been a misunderstanding and that $1,500 a month would be just fine. To his delight, she said none of the other men on Seeking Arrangement had impressed her the way he had. B. K. explained that his current sugar baby might soon get engaged and disappear from the scene. At that point, he assured her, he would want to pursue things. She snuggled in closer and told him that she would wait. And then she started kissing and nibbling on his ear.

Ruth Padawer is an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. This is her first feature article for the magazine.

posted by Kathryn Lord on 08.08.09 at 8.38 am
permalink | Categories: • News About Dating Sites and Types • For Not-so-Serious Daters • The Yick Meter • 0 Comments

Twitting for love

Well, it’s a bit creative, I guess, to propose on Twitter, but stranger things have happened:

Twitter Marriage Proposal: Bloggers In Love

Grant Robertson from Download Squad has proposed to his girlfriend Christina Warren (TUAW and Download Squad) on TWITTER. That’s right. On Twitter. Social networking has come a long way.

Things Better Left Off Twitter: Bridezilla Edition
Eric Krangel | January 9, 2009 5:15 PM

Can Internet oversharing get any worse than self-described “new media douchebag” @grobertson getting down on one knee (in front of his computer) to ask his girlfriend to marry him.. on Twitter?

Oh yes, we’re afraid it can. Because @film_girl countered his four aces of fame-trolling with a royal flush of oversharing. After happily tweeting “yes! Yes! Yes!”, @film_girl went on to beg her 4.526 followers to promote her Twitter-proposal.. on Digg.

She’s got 702 Diggs so far. Sounds like this couple was made for each other, good luck.

posted by Kathryn Lord on 03.06.09 at 8.15 am
permalink | Categories: • We Love Love Stories • For Not-so-Serious Daters • 1 Comments

Me in a Men’s Magazine? NOT the centerfold…

I got a request a few weeks back for comments about AshleyMadison.com and similar sites which are set up to help married folks who want to have extramarital affairs.  One would wonder: Do these folks really need help?  Well, yes, I think so, but not the kind of help these sites try to give.  That said, I do have comments and wrote them back to the article’s author.  Don’t know if or when my words will be in print (this has got to be a first for me, being quoted in a man’s mag), but I will let you know when and if the time comes.

Here are the writer’s questions (in red) and my response:

You’ve been critical of Ashley Madison and similar sites in the past. No sane person would “condone” infidelity, so beyond that, what’s your criticism? Do you not like how they do business? Do you find them dishonest? Do you think it allows people in unhappy relationships a too-easy way out?

I’m a Romance Coach now, working with singles to help them find a Sweetheart using online dating sites.  So married people who use sites set up for singles to find love are a real problem.  But also, I’ve been a psychotherapist for over 30 years, and my specialty as a therapist was helping married couples when one partner had had an affair.  So I have seen the devastation that occurs with infidelity, way too many times. 

Those prejudices aside, I am actually glad that these sites—like AshleyMadison, IllicitEncounters.com, AdultFriendFinder (not strictly promoting affairs, but certainly providing a venue for all sorts of fringe sexual behaviors), Philanderers.com (not a dating site but full of suggestions on how to successfully have an extramarital affair) – exist. 

Married folks looking for sex outside their marriage (mostly men) have been a problem on the mainstream dating sites like Match.com and Yahoo! Personals.  Speculation has been that as many as 30% of men listing were married (Jupiter Research reported 12% in 2005), though of course they stated otherwise.  Sites springing up like AshleyMadison.com give these people a place to go and act out their fantasies without contaminating the pool of singles who are honestly and straightforwardly looking for a legitimate, above-board monogamous relationship.  In the last couple of years, I have not heard as many complaints about married men on mainstream sites.  I suspect that they have migrated to AshleyMadison and the like, either because the sites exist, or because of the fear of being found out, a real likelihood when profiles without pictures don’t get looked at.  Good riddance.

That said, joining one of these sites is does not signify one of life’s high points.  While the titillation of sex and “romance” are strong, just the premise of an affair – lying to and betraying one’s spouse – is the nadir of sleaze.  And everyone there is of similar character quality.  Yick. 

If you find yourself tempted to patronize sites set up to allow you to misbehave, you need to look back at yourself and question how you got here in the first place.  What does participating in lying and deceit say about you?  Is that what you want, to be a liar and a cheat?  Would you like to have people say, after you die, he was an enthusiastic player on infidelity websites?  He (she) really screwed over his (her) wife (or husband)?  That you were so self-absorbed and self-centered that you could justify all kinds of bad behavior to get what you wanted?  Don’t delude yourself: People can and do find out.  If this is what you have to do to get sex and a parody of romance, you need to do some character work, pronto. 

P. S.  Guys, your fantasy of finding a willing woman on one of these websites to have an affair with is probably destined for failure.  Men FAR outnumber women on these sites. 

posted by Kathryn Lord on 06.15.08 at 5.07 am
permalink | Categories: • For and About Men • News About Dating Sites and Types • Niche Dating Sites • For Not-so-Serious Daters • 2 Comments

When is a date not a date?

Is Starbucks for coffee a date or a pre-date?  Does the guy have to pay?  From the following article, it seems like the man’s intentions are what makes a date a date: Whether he signals seriousness by the invitation, by intending to and paying, or by keeping intents purposely vague.  Do women have anything to say about it at all?  Other than yes or no?

First date dilemma
By Mark de la Viña
Mercury News

Gone are the days when a man and a woman meeting over a drink knew the outing was undoubtedly a first date. With lines blurring between the platonic and the romantic, defining what constitutes a first date has become a guessing game, as maddening as catching a gnat with chopsticks.

The various intentions behind a first date, from finding a mate to bedding a casual-sex partner, has forced many singles to define exactly what it is.

The way people in their 20s often socialize - by forming social cliques that can lead to a couple pairing off - makes what constitutes a first date even more unclear, says Tiffany Dang, 23, a student studying finance at San Jose State University.

“Now, it’s just so common that a guy and a girl will hang out without calling it a date,” she says. “But it is.”

Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of “Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love” (Henry Holt, 2004), says that nearly every social engagement between men and women, whether it is called a date or is painted as a romance-free outing, becomes a date as soon as “they start looking you over.” Men and women are biologically wired to behave toward one another in specific ways.

“I was introduced to somebody at a dinner party, and we barely spoke to each other,” says Fisher, a Rutgers University professor who lives in New York City. “But then he said, `I’m going to the Eastside. Would you like a ride in the
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cab?’ Already, a date has begun.”

Something as innocent as sharing a cab can be viewed as more significant than carpooling because the human animal is built to flirt, Fisher says. “Even old friends who are men and women often have some sort of subterranean flirting. We might never make a move, but there is subterranean flirting going on.”

Dating coach Evan Marc Katz, co-author of “Why You’re Still Single” (Plume, 2006), attributes part of the confusion to men and women not expressing their intentions. He says dating should be a simple matter: a social meeting between a man and woman, paid for by the man. If this evening goes well, there is an understanding that it can lead to a second date and is possibly a prelude to a long-term relationship, he says.

Marie, 36, a saleswoman in Santa Cruz who asked that her last name not be used, recently endured such dating confusion when a man invited her to go ocean kayaking.

“The context of the conversation was friendly,” she says. “It wasn’t `Are you dating anybody?’ We get out there on the water, and the next thing I know, he busts out this giant picnic lunch with a bottle of wine.”

Marie, who suddenly realized the plotting paddler had more in mind, told the suitor she was not romantically interested.

Men with amorous intentions have repeatedly approached her by suggesting they “hang out,” Marie says. They rely on vague language so that if she is unresponsive to their advances, they can save face by claiming their intentions weren’t romantic, she says.

“You shouldn’t put yourself in an ambiguous position,” Katz says. “If people are getting stuck, it’s because they have not considered whether this can be read any differently. `Me, you, dinner, alone, Saturday night’ can’t be read any other way. `Me, you, happy hour, friends after work’ can be read a million ways and is probably not a date.”

A slew of ingredients have been tossed into today’s dating stew pot, complicating what for previous generations was a clear-cut proposal, says Dan Baritchi, who with “life partner” Jennifer Hunt operates the Dallas-based dating and relationship advice column http://www.AskDanAndJennifer.com. The couple’s site, which spawned their self-published tips book “Online Dating,” attracted about 100,000 page loads in May, according to StatCounter.com.

Baritchi says people are attempting to maintain some level of courting formality in an atmosphere in which men and women are increasingly disconnected from each other. Hunt adds that the mingling of different cultural traditions, the acceptance of platonic relationships and the redefining of romantic unions have made it even murkier.

“We think that society and the nature of relationships are evolving and changing,” she says. “Up to this point, relationships and marriage and all of these constructs have been driven mostly by religion. With all the diversity and globalization, everybody is saying, `Wait, this is not the only way it has to be.’ They have more choices, and they’re expanding their viewpoints.”

What was once a general rule - that a date was that first baby step toward finding a husband or wife - no longer applies to the way men and women socialize today, Baritchi and Hunt say. In fact, they aren’t fans of even calling a date a date.

By putting a label on the social outing, pressure is unnecessarily turned up, they say. Suddenly, both parties have to prematurely weigh whether they want to have a romantic relationship before they know one another. Singles end up spending more time focused on reaching some imagined first date or the second date marker rather than thinking about whether the relationship is worth cultivating, they say.

Mike Murdoch, 39, a single engineer who lives in San Jose, says that all that anxiety over defining a first date is not new. Nor is the way he met his current girlfriend; she asked him out for drinks eight months ago. He attributes some of the uneasiness about dating to the cultural upheaval of the sexual revolution in the ‘60s and ‘70s: that it made men and women change their expectations about how they wanted to live - and date.

“But it probably always was confusing,” he says. “Go read the Bronte sisters’ books. They’re all about people being screwed up and baffled and trying to be with somebody. I think romance has always been complicated.”

posted by Kathryn Lord on 08.11.07 at 4.51 am
permalink | Categories: • For and About Men • Dating Tips • Proactive Dating • For Not-so-Serious Daters • 2 Comments

OnlineBootyCall does it again

Somebody over at OnlineBootyCall has such a sense of humor.  We here at Find-a-Sweetheart are very grateful for laughs, and OnlineBootyCall has provided a few: See my earlier blog entries August 11, 2006 and October 13, 2006.  We are also glad that sites like OnlineBootyCall exisit to siphon off online folks who are looking for “just sex” and therefore leave “serious daters” to the sites like Match.com and Yahoo! Personals.

Here’s what the guys at OnlineBootyCall have come up with most recently:

Onlinebootycall.com Presents: Moses’ 10 Commandments of Dating

SAN DIEGO, Jan. 23 /PRNewswire/—Some online dating services promise
a meaningful relationship within 6 months or “your money back.” Others may
suggest a higher statistical probability of marriage. Moses Brown, founder
of onlinebootycall.com and one of its more than 1 million members
nationwide, believes in a slightly different reality for his members. “In
my opinion, all online dating encounters should be considered ‘casual’
until proven otherwise. So I offer onlinebootycall.com members this
relaxing, easy-to-follow guidance.”
Moses’ Booty Call Commandments

I.  Thou shalt get out before the sun rises

II.  Thou shouldest never ask “can we see each other from now on?”

III.  Thou shalt refrain from referring to our activities as “love
making.”

IV.  Thou shalt not request advanced plans.

V.  Thou shalt kiss anywhere except my mouth.

VI.  Thou shalt scream my name often

VII.  If someone cometh over whilst thou art here, thou art my cousin
from out of town.

VIII.  Thou shalt not ask me to walk thee to thy car.  Don’t thou knoweth
what that looketh like?

IX.  There shall be no “pillow talk.”

X.  There shall be no cuddling—ever!

“Amen,” said Moses.

posted by Kathryn Lord on 02.17.07 at 8.55 am
permalink | Categories: • News About Dating Sites and Types • Niche Dating Sites • Just for Fun • For Not-so-Serious Daters • 0 Comments

Where To Go Online For “Just Sex”

Interested in just sex rather than a real relationship?  Skip the big sites like Match.com and Yahoo! Personals and go right to the booty:  AdultFriendFinder is the most flagrant, largest, and just plain dirty match up service that I know about.  And OnlineBootyCall is coming up fast (excuse the sexy reference). 

One of the funniest articles I have seen in a long time popped out this week on The Inquirer.  In the piece, Moses Brown, OnlineBootyCall’s CEO, announces that the site has produced only one marriage out of its million members.  “If we were less superficial, we would probably have more marriages and we certainly don’t want that,” Brown said.  OnlineBootyCall is not quite as dirty as AdultFriendFinder, where members regularly post photos of themselves and multiple others having sex, as well as pic after pic of sexual parts, but BootyCall’s photos make clear what is being offered. 

Is anyone still reading this, or have you all clicked over to AdultFriendFinder and OnlineBootyCall to look around?

While I virtually never suggest such sites to my clients (who are virtually always looking for long term relationships), these sites provide a real service that I wish more people knew about.  One of the biggest complaints and fears is married men (to a far less of an extent, married women) posing as single on sites like Match and Yahoo!  OnlineBootyCall is where those folks need to go.  Or AdultFriendFinder.  Leave the cleaner sites for people with cleaner motives.

From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord

posted by Kathryn Lord on 08.11.06 at 5.19 am
permalink | Categories: • For and About Men • News About Dating Sites and Types • For Not-so-Serious Daters • 9 Comments

Internet Dating Sites Increasingly Specialize

When I was single and looking for a mate online, way back in 1998, the sites had not evolved like they have now. Match.com designed the site to appeal to women, figuring the men would come if the women were there, and they were right. But back then, site administrators did not police the sites as rigorously as they do now, and I stumbled occasionally on real crud. Like the guy who’s picture showed him nude on a bed with just a pillow over vital parts. He was no male model and it was not a pretty picture.

More and more, dating sites are popping up that cater to guys like that one, gals, and more. Read this interesting quote from Andrew Conru, the founder of FriendFinder.com:

“When we started FriendFinder early in 1996, we found a lot of guys were posting profiles that were more risque than we wanted on the site. We started out deleting them, but then we recognized the opportunity and started AdultFriendFinder.”

Now AdultFriendFinder far out draws its parent FriendFinder. This blatantly sexy site is a gold mine.

Thank goodness. If you want whips and chains, you are much more likely to find a willing partner on a site that specializes in such. Leave the mainline sites to mainstream folks. Keep ‘em clean.

BTW, if you are looking for some kind of site that caters to the “naughty niches,” a good way to find them is to do a good old Google search, using your interest, “whips and chains” for example, and “dating sites” for your search.

From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord

posted by Kathryn Lord on 11.10.05 at 11.45 am
permalink | Categories: • For Not-so-Serious Daters • Niche Dating Sites • 1 Comments

Resources Just for Married Folks Fooling Around

According to an article in ABC news by Buck Wolf, Jupiter Research reports that 12% of people registering with online dating sites are married.  That’s a much lower percentage than I had heard rumored, so I am actually relieved.

Married folks thinking about trying online dating: Please do us all a favor and seek out the sites that are now springing up to cater to your needs: AshleyMadison.com’s slogan is “When Monogamy Meets Monotony.” And Philanderers.com will teach you how to hide what you are doing from your spouse.

Singles: It might pay for you to educate yourself on how such philanderers might hide what they are doing from YOU.  Take a look at Philanderers.com’s collection of articles and see some of the techniques they suggest for keeping everyone in the figurative dark.

From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord

posted by Kathryn Lord on 07.20.05 at 8.14 am
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • For Not-so-Serious Daters • 0 Comments