Is this something to be proud of or what???
Married folks lurking around on dating sites and trying to snag the unexpected has been a concern for online dating singles. I haven’t heard so much aobut this being a problem lately, and maybe it’s because of sites like this one and AshleyMadison.com Yeesh. Talk about yucky—sites that enable extramarital affairs. Well, at least they may be doing a service and giving these folks a place to go rather that the mainline dating sites. We should be thankful.
Best, Kathryn
100,000th member looks for an extra marital affair….
IllicitEncounters.com, the world’s biggest extra marital dating website, has signed up its 100,000th UK member . A site spokesman told us “With membership soaring by a couple of thousand a week, IllicitEncounters.com is a clear indication that the 34% of married people having an affair - now choose to look for one online”. There are now more than 10,000 members in Scotland, 6,000 in Wales, 2,500 in Northern Ireland, 500 in Southern Ireland, 2,500 non-UK and the remaining 78,500 are in England.
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.”
