Craigslist and Relationships

Over the past month I've been conducting an experiment on the Craigslist personals pages. 4 times I've put 3 or 4 messages in various places on the Casual Encounters pages.

99% of the messages are flagged in the first 5 minutes, regardless of the topic or page it was placed. Interesting: who flagged them? Why? A mystery that will doubtless never be solved. Of those that are left, almost all the responses are from married men...most of them specifically say they're married and looking for something on the side, or their wives aren't satisfying them, or whatever other pathetic excuse they're using to troll the net for a fling. Only a few asked if I'm a real person or if my *ahem* offer was real.

The questions about these married men trolling the web are numerous: 1) how many of them respond to ads just to see if they can get a responce (which begs the question, if given the opportunity would they truly cheat)? 2) How many of them are actually married...as being married gives a better impression of NSA (no strings attached) if they're looking for a quickie with someone they can discard? 3) is this the new, interactive version of Playboy or Penthouse, or is it REALLY a place people use to hook up?

I found one response to my ads in particular personally interesting, which caused me to really think about the possible motiviations for a man to read the casual encounters ads and respond. Given the volume of response (my last post had over 200 responses in 3 hours) there are either a WHOLE lot of assholes in my city or there are a whole lotta bored boys looking for a little excitement, and not necessarily the physical act: I wonder how many of them would've followed through and how many were just responding to see what would happen.

Are men wired to have trouble with monogomy? Will any man cheat if given the opportunity? I can't to believe that, because I think if I could it would be impossible for me to be in any relationship...with a man OR a woman. Believing most of a gender is wired to cheat just isn't fair to either gender. However, there are documented studies about men being more easily stimulated by visual cues and it's possible the fantasy is exciting enought to prompt responding to the ads. When faced with choosing between the fantasy or a real wife, which would they choose?

Gods help the man whose wfe finds a response her husband sent to ads in that section. If those boys are looking for a little excitement in their lives, it's bound to get exciting in their households when they're caught.

I have jealousy on occasion, sometimes seriously uncomfortable jealous thoughts. They're irrational and based on my own fear of being left because I'm not good enough. I try to control them, but they're there all the same. However, I've noticed that spending a lot of time on CL looking at the ads and rants and raves have exacerbated those feelings when I've had them. A fact my poor husband has to deal with and probably doesn't even know why. Hopefully I'll continue to be lucky enough to have a man willing to put up with my occasional craziness and love me enough to work it out, because I think if I couldn't talk about stuff and work through it I'd end up hitting the self destruct button on my marriage without intending to.

I wonder how often that happens with the people on the CL personals?