By TOM MITCHELSON

Last updated at 10:15 11 October 2007

The email is short and to the point. "I want a man with a personality and looks to take my breath away."







These are the requirements of the dark-haired, dark-eyed, 37-year-old Asian beauty who has sent me her romantic wish list.

Reading it on my laptop in the aptly named Cafe Affaire in central London, I consider what she really wants: a no-strings-attached sexual relationship.

What I don't know is how her husband will feel about it.

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Aside from the little matter of her marital status, she also believes I have a wife, but she doesn't care. She wants instant gratification even though we've exchanged only a few words online.

But in the modern world, in which the internet has become a vehicle for all manner of impropriety, she regards this kind of behaviour as perfectly acceptable.

We have encountered one another via an internet dating service established for the sole purpose of enabling married people to commit adultery.

It may sound like an unpleasant niche website for a handful of amoral people to whom wedding vows never meant very much. But it claims to have more than 100,000 members in the UK.

Many of them are middle-class, many have young children. And all of them are looking for an opportunity to betray their spouses.

As a single man, I don't qualify. But I wanted to find out what sort of woman uses such a site. So I paid £119 for a month's membership, giving me an entre to thousands of faithless females. They are allowed to sign up for free as a way of ensuring the numbers are balanced between the sexes.

I register, and enter the murky world of two-timing technology, taking note of the warning on the site: "Not all affairs have a positive effect on a marriage." What a masterpiece of understatement. I wonder if anyone has ever read this, seen the wisdom of it and decided not to join.

I create my online "profile". "I'm witty, charming, handsome and modest, and I'm kind to animals," I write, hoping this description will have a fairly broad appeal, and also include a recent photograph.

Your picture can be viewed only if you give a password to the person with whom you are conversing. The idea is presumably to safeguard people from searching for their own spouses on the site - though how a husband would explain to his errant wife how he came to stumble across her picture on a website for adulterers, I don't know.

In order to fit in with the general ethos of the website I have invented a wife. Our relationship, I note, has suffered because we don't spend enough time together (not surprising really, since she doesn't exist).

After a quick search, I get the measure of the women on the site. "My preference is for a man who is much younger than me with rugged features," says one.

Postings such as: "I want a man who can look after me and knows how to treat a woman. Must be solvent," are also commonplace.

It's not long before I receive a "virtual kiss". This is a way of paying someone a compliment without typing out the words. It's the cyber equivalent of a wolf whistle.

And over the course of a week I get almost 100 replies, messages and propositions.

I'm surprised and unsettled by the forward tone of some of the material. One woman sends me a message heavily laden with sexual innuendo and I come to regard her as the mistress of the single entendre.

"What are you into?" she asks, archly. Determined to avoid the connotations, I reply: "The Beatles." I never hear from her again.

Another woman's first contact with me included a plan for a day out together, including visits to art galleries, a stroll round a park and then "a few hours under the duvet". I didn't even know her name.

I'm later propositioned by someone who tells me she has an hourglass figure. Her photograph reveals that the hour has stretched to 90 minutes.

I'm already starting to feel like I've had enough of this experiment. But if I'm going to find out what really makes these women tick, I need to leave the safety of the virtual world and see them for myself.

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I arrange to meet a 41-year-old mother of two who misses "romance and flirting", in a cafe in two days' time.

She has declined to tell me her name, so I have to think of her as her web sobriquet. This is how I find myself waiting for "Sophia Loren".

She seems rather on edge and sends me a text message at the time we're due to meet asking why I'm using the website. I reply, telling her to come over and ask me face to face.

She turns up, a blonde with lipstick on her teeth. She looks furtively around and asks me if I'm nervous. I say that if she stops twitching, I'll calm down. There is tension in the air like North and South Korea coming together to hammer out a treaty.

Suddenly the realisation of how odd it is to meet a stranger with the express intention of having an affair dawns on me. Romeo and Juliet it is not. It's more like Alan Sugar interviewing an apprentice.

But she is an old hand at this type of encounter and tells me she's met many men through the site, and that I was probably the only one who hadn't lied about my age.

"Sophia" tells me she thinks relationships have a shelf life of about ten years before boredom sets in, but that she stays married to ensure her children have a stable home.

After discussing how mundane marriages become and avoiding questions about my personal life, it's clear we're past our sell-by date after ten minutes, never mind ten years.

There is zero chemistry. She doesn't want to discuss her husband, and I feel uneasy talking to her. Despite this, she still seems keen to flirt with me.

In the end, we agree to part and she wishes me luck and assures me I'll find the perfect paramour. So much for raging passion. This was like having a meeting with a new accountant with a helping of self-disgust thrown in.

Later on I'm perplexed when she sends me two flirty text messages. Reading between the lines, I suspect she wants to meet again.

Sadly, I feel I have got all I want out of our brief relationship - two cups of coffee and a short conversation - and it's time to move on and find someone new. I feel sorry for her husband, presumably unaware that the mother of his children is pursuing cheap thrills with strangers.

By now, I have been contacted by scores of women, so I arrange dates with the ones who are prepared to meet me in the next few days.

Jane is far more easy-going. Blonde, slim and relaxed, she has already told me by email that she's been married for ten years, has young children, time on her hands and wants to add a frisson of excitement to her life.

We meet at a restaurant in central London, and I am waiting at the table when she arrives. I stand up and we kiss on the cheek. She tells me without blinking that she has had one affair with a family friend and, although it didn't end badly, her appetite for adultery remains undimmed.

We spend an afternoon over lunch with a bottle of wine, and it's clear she is a relatively sophisticated woman. Though she declines to tell me what she does, she is evidently well informed and intelligent.

It's easy to forget she's married, and the ring on her finger is the only reminder.

Jane tells me she was attracted to me because she had been put off by the

directness of the other men who've contacted her - she gets hundreds of messages a week.

At the end of our lunch, she tells me she'd like to see me again. I say I have to go, and she tells me she's sorry we have to leave it there. She then fixes me with a gaze and says she wishes we could go elsewhere.

I find myself thinking that if we did go to a hotel, if we undressed and went to bed, she would still return to her husband and children and the life she seems to find so unsatisfactory. How bleak and depressing.

That night I'm back in front of the computer looking for my next date. And it's easy. So many women are eager to tell me they're "stuck in a rut" or "want someone to make them feel alive again".

I find it amazing how many of them are willing to meet me after exchanging only a few messages. I could be a serial killer and they would be none the wiser.

Five married women send their mobile phone numbers to me without me even asking, disregarding the dangers. All I would have to do is ring at the wrong time to cause marital pandemonium.

"Clarissa44" tells me she wants someone to show her romance. Another warns: "I prefer Asian men as they respect older women", but not wanting to miss out on a fling, she adds: "But I'm not ruling out any nationality."

It all seems so desperate, and desperately sad.

A few offer little by way of enticement: a "cuddly" 48-year-old tells me "I can't promise to blow you away with wit and fine talk", while another makes it clear that "I don't want to be your counsellor".

It is striking that most of these woman have no interest in my domestic situation. They ignore the existence of my (fictitious) wife. They don't care that they are helping me cheat on her. In fact, they're encouraging it. So much for the sisterhood.

Only one profile I came across shows any concern. In it she cautions: "You must have a determination not to hurt your kids or partner." What she means is that she wants someone who is good at covering their tracks, and therefore protecting hers.

It is a stab at morality, but it rings hollow, given that the whole point of what she's doing is deciding whether to meet a married man and cheat on her husband with him.

A few of my potential dalliances are cut short. "Whispering Breeze" lets me down gently, informing me that she can "sense" I should try again with my wife, while Margarita provides the one note of demureness, telling me I'm cheeky, but that she is too scared to be "tempted by flesh".

Some days later, I've arranged to have another secret assignation, this time in a pub. Sue is keen to meet, and one early evening, this dark-haired, buxom 38-year-old takes the opportunity to go behind her husband's back and meet a strange man.

Sue, whose internet photograph was probably taken a decade ago, sits simpering across the table. She gulps her wine down within minutes of me buying it, and looks up expectantly.

She talks about her career as a scientist in a hospital and then tells me she loves her husband of nine years, doesn't want to leave him, but wants me to add some sparkle to her life.

Like the other dates I've had, she is reluctant to discuss her personal circumstances. We do not dwell on the fact she is married.

At one point, we're approached by a couple who ask politely whether they can sit on the two vacant seats at our table.

I consider this for a moment, and realise it will close down the already faltering meeting. "No, I'd rather you didn't," I say. They go off miffed and Sue looks at me as though I'm some sort of monster.

I don't care - I'm already fed up with this dull conversation.

For all the glossy, sexy chat and out-of-date pictures posted online, this is the rather tawdry, mundane reality of these adulterous assignations. A pub on a wet afternoon and two people who have little to talk about except whether or not they are going to have a meaningless fling.

I look at Sue and decide to go for broke. "If you love your husband so much, why are you here?"

She looks as if she might burst into tears but then surprisingly she bites back: "Well, you're betraying your wife, aren't you? Why are you doing that?"

Stumped for a moment, I desperately search for a reason why I would cheat on my (fictional) sweet young wife before suggesting that we have grown apart and no longer communicate properly or sleep together.

This seems to satisfy her, and we chat for another 20 minutes. It's general chit-chat and all fairly inconsequential, which I find rather surreal given the reason we have agreed to meet.

Then I tell her I've arranged to see a friend and had better go. We walk out together and I go to peck her chastely on the cheek. She turns her head and I have to dodge a sloppy wet kiss aimed at my mouth.

Sue has been fairly typical of the women I have encountered on this website. She seemed lonely, bored and dissatisfied with her life. All she could see ahead of her was an endless round of cooking, cleaning, career and children.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with wanting to interrupt a destructive, depressing cycle to your life.

But what is shocking is the cold and calculating approach of these women, and the assumption that secret meetings with a married man can cure all the ills they see in their own families.

The women who use this website want romance, but these three meetings seemed utterly unromantic to me.

When we met, most of them acted as if they were prepared to go to bed with me on the first meeting, and for that they were willing to risk wrecking their own home life and mine.

Men are brought up to believe that it is we who relentlessly seek sex, that we are the ones who can separate the emotional from the physical.

But judging from the women I encountered, they have learned how to cast off their marriage vows and their love for their children, and risk it all for the sake of a liaison with a man they may never see again. What a triumph for our times.