Life
Having an affair seems a tricky business — and probably even trickier if you do it so well that nobody gets caught cheating. There's a lot to think about and a lot of planning to be done, starting from the very first meeting between affair partners.
A recent survey of 1,600 members of Ashley Madison, the extra-marital affairs site, found that women are often taking the lead when it comes to planning affairs. Within a week of connecting, 45 percent of women suggest a meeting — and the same number only wait one date before getting right down to sex. Although that is often the point of an affair, right?
"[O]ur female members have a great amount of agency over their intimates needs and desires,' Paul Keable, vice president of communications at Ashley Madison, tells Bustle. "In speaking with members, we hear routinely that the decision to join may take time but once their profile is filled out, they are signaling to our community that they are actively seeking a partner in an effort to outsource their intimate needs. This very behavior is backed up by research conducted by Dr. Alicia Walker from the University of Missouri."
But even though people don't wait that long before they have sex with an affair partner, the first meeting is often anything but sexy, with most people choosing a coffee shop for the first date of their affair. "It is a combination of their ubiquity (there is one on just about every corner of your city, it seems), and the normality of meeting someone there," Keable says. "If you were to happen to run into a family friend while out with your extra-marital partner, being a coffee shop wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary — compared to a more intimate setting like a romantic dinner."
Where else were people choosing for their first rendezvous? Here's what they survey found:
1A Coffee Shop: 42%
Coffee shops were far and away the top choice, with 42 percent of respondents choosing cafes as their ideal spot for a first meet up. Straightforward, public, and not suspicious — it's easy to see why they're a good first choice.
2Restaurant: 25%
Restaurants were another popular option, with 25 percent of people opting for them as a meeting place. They can have a more romantic vibe than a coffee shop and give you the opportunity to get to know each other over a meal, so maybe it's for those who want to go a little deeper.
3Bar: 19%
I think many of us would assume that bars were the obvious choice for affair-havers — it feels like that's where these kind of meetings would take place in a movie. Dark, sexy, a little sleazy, but somewhere you can get lost in the crowd — isn't that what you want?
4One Of Their Vehicles: 5%
Five percent of people chose to meet in each other's cars and, even though it's a small percentage, that still represents hundreds of people who responded.
5At The Park: 4%
This could be a little creepy or really romantic, depending on the park and the time of day — but four percent of respondents use a park as their go-to for a first meeting.
It definitely looks as though people are opting for public, neutral spaces for their first meet up, most of which don't seem that much different from traditional first-date spots — except for that car meet-up. Just be careful in each other's cars, OK?
