Internet hook-up sites reviewed

Of the women I have hooked-up with for sex in the last several months, all but one I have met through Craigslist. D, I met through Lavalife - but Lavalife has produced what felt like near-misses, including S, who I have met and had lunch with, drinks with, etc but have not yet fucked. Ashley Madison, though it seems like it ought to be productive, has never really come through.

CL is crazy, freaky, and full of fakes and flakes. But A, who I think is about as perfect a hook-up as one could want (apart from the unmentionable distinguishing marks) is a clear example of a woman using CL to do exactly what I am doing, ie practice being a liar, cheat, and adulterer.

CL is free. As far as I can tell, a man would get nowhere on Lavalife or Ashley Madison without buying credits and using them to contact women. My profile on Lava has perhaps generated a couple of 'smiles' in several months; my profile on Ashley Madison has produced a couple of 'winks' and a couple of collect messages. Women, in other words, post their profiles and sit back and wait, while the men post profiles merely to give the women who they pay to mail something to look at to check them out.

D, my one clear Lavalife success, is an odd case, as she did not post her own profile anyway, but her friends did it for her. She did, however, vet the responses and pick me as a front-runner. And she has been a great mistress so far. But she would not post that sort of profile again, nor I think would she post in the 'Intimate Encounters' section of Lavalife again. So there is a sense in which she ought not to have been available to be found, as what she really wants is not casual sex but something a bit more romantic and emotionally charged.

Ashley Madison appears a bit raunchier than Lavalife, but it is very hard to tell what proportion of people are genuinely looking. The proportion of married/attached women is much higher than at Lavalife, but many of those are, I sense, merely flirting with the possibility of infidelity rather than actively pursuing it.

CL's high turnover makes it very addictive, and keeping up with the flood of posts can eat into your time significantly. The most frustrating thing is the very low response rate to e-mails sent to women who post. The lore that circulates is that many of the posts are fake - gay men, men collecting pictures, whatever. It is impossible to know how true that is. In my own case, I have perhaps been handicapped by using a picture that is unflattering - that at any rate is what A says, and I think D also said that I am much better looking in person than in that photograph. So I would perhaps have had a higher strike rate if I had a better picture. Perhaps I shall recruit A to take one for me - she seems willing to lend a hand.

I haven't done anything with men in a while, though I have toyed with the idea of having a blowjob every now and then, and CL is of course pretty good for that kind of hook-up. I used to think that men were almost always better at giving head than women, but D showed me that was not so, and I think A, with minimal instruction, could be almost D's equal.

But it is time to sleep now, as D will be here in the morning, for approaching six hours of sex, I would guess. As with J, I feel things with D ought to be winding down - but D does not think so, and the increasing mismatch between our moods and expectations is becoming a difficulty. I really would like to send her on to the next phase of her journey out of her miserable marriage and towards a more satisfying and happy life. But I suspect that all I can do in that regard, at the right time, is just to disappear from her life, at least for a while. And I don't think that is something that she will take as anything but a rejection.