But it claims to have more than 100,000 members in the UK.Many of them are middle-class, many have young children.We have encountered one another via an internet dating service established for the sole purpose of enabling married people to commit adultery.

"My preference is for a man who is much younger than me with rugged features," says one. This is a way of paying someone a compliment without typing out the words. And over the course of a week I get almost 100 replies, messages and propositions.

Postings such as: "I want a man who can look after me and knows how to treat a woman. I'm surprised and unsettled by the forward tone of some of the material. Determined to avoid the connotations, I reply: "The Beatles." I never hear from her again.

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.

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.

And all of them are looking for an opportunity to betray their spouses. 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.

Tags: Adult Dating, affair dating, sex dating