Our Double Date with Misters A and B - Part 3

We do have Mr. B’s phone number and the name on the caller ID matches what he told us several weeks ago.  We feel much more confident that he will show.  He's the first man we've met from AM.

We make our way into the third eating establishment of the evening.  Wife orders a Mich Ultra and I get a Shock Top.  It comes out with an orange slice which surprisingly goes well with the flavor.  After a few minutes I see a guy that vaguely resembles Mr. B’s photo.  I ask wife if she thinks that’s him, and she’s not 100% sure.  At first he seems to be looking around, but then he picks a spot at the bar.  We’re not sure it’s him.  After a minute though, he’s looking around again and I give him a head nod.

We are seated at a square table and he sits next to Wife, opposite of me.  He turns out to be a nice guy, which we expected from his emails.  He has met a few couples before and was obviously comfortable with the situation.  Our conversation covers many different topics, but rarely touches on anything sexual.  I try not to take control of the conversation so that he doesn’t feel overwhelmed by my presence.  There is a band and at times it is quite loud.  Due to my position, I sometimes have trouble hearing the conversation between him and Wife, and even they had to lean together to hear.  I left them alone a couple of times, the longest for about 10 minutes to be sure to give him a chance to get to know Wife.  As the night gets older, I suggest that we take a walk in a nearby park.  Everyone thought that was a good idea.  I thought Mr. B might make a move like trying to hold my wife’s hand.  At times I try to walk a little ways away from them so they can get close, but it never seems to happen.  After about 30 minutes, we decide to call it a night.  He hugs Wife and we head back to our cars.

On the way, I ask Wife what she thinks.  She likes him, he was nice, but something was missing.  Later, she told me that she tried to catch his eye but he would never look at her.  He was not aggressive at all.  We agreed that we need someone with more lustful desire.  Someone that will let Wife know that she is hot and he wants her.  Someone like Mr, C.

Intro to Mr. B

We met Mr. B on AM.  Just a few days before we went on our trip, he sent Wife a wink and a private showcase key.  She liked what she saw and read.  He’s tall, fit, and a couple years younger than us.  He said he likes to kiss a woman’s neck, fingers, breasts, all over; he’s very oral. Wife sent him back a wink and her private showcase key.  He does live over an hour away, so meetings will have to be planned.

After he and Wife started emailing each other, we found out that he immensely enjoys being with a married couple.  He’s tried it a few times and loves it.  It’s good to know that he will be comfortable with this situation. 

Anyway, he’s been pretty good at responding to emails in a day or so, but when Wife texted him, he was very slow to respond.  Maybe he doesn’t text.  That’s OK.

We meet him tonight for drinks after we meet Mr. A.  I hope 3 hrs is enough time to have dinner and get to the second place which is about 20 minutes away.  That shouldn’t be a problem, but you never know.  We’ll use the time in between to discuss our impressions of Mr. A, and what we need to discuss with Mr. B.  Twenty minutes may not be enough time for that.

I’ll let you know how it goes from both our “dates” soon, but remember I don’t think anything real interesting is going to happen.  Then again, if she clicks with one of these guys, maybe something more interesting than sex will happen.  Maybe she’ll make that special connection that will last a long time.

Impressions of Ashley

So it’s been three weeks since we signed up for 3 online hookup services, and two weeks since I wrote my first impressions of them.  We’ve been getting a lot more action from these, well at least from Ashley Madison and Adult Friend Finder.  The other one is small and there are not many members in our area.

Here are my updated impressions of AM. 

First, what I like:
•    The mailbox is great.  When you log on, you are taken to your mailbox, and it shows all your contact messages with other members (messages, winks, add to favorites, private photo keys).  I like that it is all in one place.  So checking for any updates is easy.
•    Open an email and there is a link to show message history for last 10 messages or 30 days with that member
•    Helpful help
•    And good getting started page - Helpful Tips for Using the Ashley Madison System.  It’s hard to find though.  I didn’t find it until doing research for this post.  Go to the bottom of any profile, including your own, and click on “about member feedback [?]”.  Check out their fun lists of acronyms and emotions.  I’m sure you’ll find a few new ones.
•    Lists for favorites, keys sent, and block profiles – all available on the “Lists” tab
•    Feedback checkboxes at bottom of profiles
•    Easy navigation

Plenty of free services:
•    Anyone can send a wink
•    Including a wink that says sorry I’m not interested
•    Anyone can view profiles, many don’t have public photos, most of those have private photos, anyone can request a private photo showcase key and anyone can send their showcase key for free
•    Full function search
•    Favorites list
•    Email By name who has sent you a message
•    Emails showing a summary of how many members have put you on their favorites list, winks, showcase keys and messages you’ve received in the last 24 hours – but not by name
•    Emails showing new members in your area

Additional services available for a fee:
•    As of this writing, credits cost between $.25 and $.50 each, depending on how many you buy at one time, and never expire.
•    Only costs to send a message to a member for the first time (5 credits).  After that the two members can reply all they want for free.  Messages can contain alternate contact info such as email addresses and phone numbers. 
•    Also costs to initiate instant messaging. (30 credits for 30 minutes, 50 credits for 60 minutes, with some limited methods to save minutes)
•    Collect messages (5 credits for the receiving (male) member, free for the sending member)
•    Priority mail (additional 5 credits)
•    Gifting (20 to 50 credits for gifts) Why, you ask.  I don’t know.  Why would anyone want an electronic necklace?

What I don’t like:
•    Fewer members in area.  They seem to think that anyone in my state is in my area.  I guess if you live in Rhode Island, that works out well, but in larger states these “members in your area” are more often than not, hundreds of miles away.
•    Chat box takes up 1/3 of the screen, across the top always.  We don’t use the chat, because it could be me or Wife that happens to be logged in, and that wouldn’t be fair to a potential suitor.  So this is wasted space for us, but even if you use it, it takes up too much space.
•    No couples selection.  You can’t register as a couple nor can you state you are interested in anything but a male or female (but not both).

What I don’t know:
•    Apparently you can transfer credits to other accounts (for a 25 credit fee plus the number of credits you transfer).  You can select the account number to receive them, and the number of credits. (Hey, give me credits rather than a fake necklace, moron.)  I'm not sure how this really works.  There doesn't seem to be much documentation on it.

Summary:
I like the way the Ashley Madison site is laid out.  It is easy to use and the impression I got is they really want to help people connect.  Their site reflects that philosophy. Sure, they want to make money but they let you know in the help section exactly which services are complementary and which will require credits (and how many credits).  Another page, conveniently labeled “Buy Credits”, shows the price for packages of credits.

While it was a little slow at first, which we accredited to the fact that I knew and approved of Wife’s activities on AM, it soon picked up.  The more likely reason is that there are fewer people on AM and therefore fewer people in your immediate area.  We have been conversing with 4 guys on AM and have exchanged winks (including several (5) no thank yous) with many more.  I’ll post more about them soon.

I definitely recommend Ashley Madison for people that are looking for long term relationships.  If you want to hook up tonight, try somewhere else (like sending me an email, lol).

Ketchup – April 23, 2009

It’s been awhile since I posted. Five days. I think that is my longest dry spell yet. And even that post was a fantasy. So I haven’t shared anything about us in over a week. Must not have been anything to share. ;)

We did sign up for AM, AFF and another online site. As of today, we’ve had no luck on AM. Surprising, I thought that would bring out a, I don’t know, more sophisticated man. I think the fact that Wife did not hide that I know of her activities probably frightened off some. Wimps! :)

The unnamed site (AM and AFF are too big to fail, this one’s not, and you know my track record with endorsing sites, lol) has one interesting prospect, but he hasn’t been on since 2 days before we entered our profile. He would definitely find us if he did a search, and I think he would at least be interested. I guess we need to write to him. He lives about an hour away, but half way there are restaurants and hotels. What more do we need? :)

But we haven’t gotten around to that yet cause of all the activity on AFF. We put up a quick profile without much effort in it and got winks (and spanks), hotlisted and several emails. Then we went back and created a profile of which we can be proud (although our first one had more info than many others). This resulted in even more winks, hotlisting and emails. We are now seriously emailing with one guy, who we will probably meet, and started emailing with a couple of others.

(The AFF is a little confusing. We are standard members. I thought we would look around for a few days to see what it is like. Now I click on some things and it takes me to the order page. OK I guess I need to upgrade for that feature. That’s fine. But do I upgrade gold or silver? Nothing tells me what I can do as a standard member, as a silver member, or as a gold member (I think there are also VIP members). Usually at this point I just hit the back arrow and get back to the naughty bits. Yesterday, I finally went looking for a membership benefits or FAQ page. Couldn’t find one. So I thought, why upgrade? We’re getting more action than we can handle already. If they had just shown me a simple table listing what you can do for free, as a silver member and as a gold member, I would have already signed up for 3 months. I guess the marketing strategy is aimed at the single males.)

I guess at some point I am going to have to figure out how to tell everyone that we are not currently accepting resumes as we are in the process of interviewing candidates to fill the slut slot, but that should there be another opening we will update our profile and start looking again.

So the poll results were 3 for Craigslist, 2 for AM and 2 for AFF. After less than 2 weeks of data, we can reach some tentative conclusions. For us it looks like AFF is working out the best. I like that there is a form of feedback on the profiles. That probably means I’m going to have to figure out to which level we should upgrade. AM is not for couples and therefore probably won’t yield promising results. The unnamed site really only has the one prospect for us and we’ll see how that works out.

I haven’t said anything about Craigslist. I guess it’s been OK. It gave us Mr. X (a dud, but if he wrote to us today, we would go meet him), Mr. Y (nice guy, but the chemistry wasn’t there), and now Mr. Z.