THE HOTTEST RECESSIONARY ACTIVITY IN TOWN

Over the past month, I have picked up 247 men. Fast work in just four weeks but I've been putting my back into it. During my sabbatical from the Financial Times, I have obsessively e-mailed strangers on an adultery website, thereby taking part in what I find is the hottest recessionary activity in town.

Among my new boyfriends are a formerly powerful hedge fund manager, scores of newly idle bankers, a few entrepreneurs, various company directors, a well-known musician, some corporate lawyers, a couple of barristers and a rather dishy builder.

I doubt if this was what the FT had in mind when it decided that journalists should be given a four-week break every four years for self-development. Neither, come to that, was it what I had had in mind when I embarked on my sabbatical: my intention was to write a novel.

So when I first joined Illicit Encounters, the most upmarket of extra-marital websites, it was for research on internet adultery for my book. But, within the first half an hour of posting my details on the site (under the pseudonym of Sophie Scribe), I had acquired 20 boyfriends and, within an hour, I was hooked. Four weeks later, I have emerged, feeling slightly soiled and more than slightly cross at the way that real life is so much more exciting than the novel I'm writing.

Illicit Encounters is a Turkish bath of a place in which 230,000 mainly professional, married people leer at each other through virtual steam searching for anyone who might be a suitable lover.

While I was on the site, I noticed business seemed particularly brisk among those citing financial services as their occupation. Over and over again, I was approached by men using names such as "Alpha123", or "Civilised1" or "CityGent", each telling the same story: I'm a successful banker, now with time on my hands, looking for excitement/love/romance/casual sex, etc.

Curiosity aroused, I contacted the site's owners to find out what was going on. They told me that, since September, the number of London-based males in the financial sector registering had risen by nearly 300 per cent. It seems the colder the market for jobs, the hotter the market for adultery.

If the sheer numbers surprised me, the men themselves surprised me even more. The ones I talked to weren't lotharios, and didn't seem sleazy either. They were often adulterers for the first time and more the balding-banker-next-door type than anything more alluring.

For those readers who don't already know from personal experience, I should perhaps explain a little about how the site works. To maintain secrecy, everyone uses false names and members release their pictures only to other members they like the sound of. This presented a ticklish problem for me, given the high density of FT readers who turn out to be online. At the briefest glimpse of my picture, various of them fled in fright, saying: "Oh God, are you Lucy Kellaway?" As well as meeting people who read the FT, I even came across one who used to write for it. This took me into a whole new area of office etiquette: what is the correct way to behave when you stumble on someone you know on an adultery website? I daresay it happens more and more. Indeed, one result of my four-week infiltration into the lives of adulterers is that I now suspect every man of living a double life on Illicit Encounters.

Last week, I had lunch with John Quelch, professor of marketing at Harvard Business School, and asked what he thought it all meant. Why is it that so many senior business people are responding to recession with adultery?

He said that, in a recession, people wanted hugs. This struck me as a pretty feeble explanation. Surely there are easier ways of getting hugs than putting one's marriage on the line? Hugging one's children or - if one is desperate - even one's spouse might seem easier and safer.

He said that this was just the point: that the risk was the lure. That bankers are suffering from a risk deficit: their working lives have been derisked compulsorily and this could be a way of compensating by adding risk to their private lives.

If this is true, one wonders what the macro upshot will be. If there has been a mass shift from taking risks in financial markets to taking risks in the domestic market, will it mean mass domestic instability with surging divorce rates and so on?

The founders of the website like to argue that, by providing a well-behaved marketplace for adultery, they are actually creating domestic stability. Seventy per cent of Illicit Encounters' clients claim to be attracted to adultery as an alternative to divorce, not as a precursor to it. This may not be altogether laughable but it seems a little early to draw any conclusion one way or another.

However, it's not too early to draw three other conclusions from my month on the site. The first is that people who are still in work seem to have an inordinate amount of spare time from nine to five. Second is that everyone lies: they understate their ages and overstate their attractiveness, gym attendance, good humour and so on.

The last lesson is one we knew already: more men are interested in adultery than women. The website tries to correct this by differential pricing, charging men £119 a month while women go free. Yet even so, the imbalance persists, and I now find my 247 suitors may not have been entirely due to my own charms. I told a female friend about the site and she signed up. Her boyfriend tally after just one week: 295.



过去一个月里，我结识了247个男人。才短短4周，真是神速。不过我可是一直在埋头苦干。我从英国《金融时报》休假期间，着了魔地给一家婚外情网站上的陌生人发电子邮件，也由此参与了堪称经济衰退时期伦敦城最红火的活动。

在我新交的男朋友中，有一位过去权力非凡的对冲基金经理、众多新近无所事事的银行家、若干企业家、各色公司董事、一位知名音乐家、一些公司律师、几个出庭辩护律师以及一位颇具魅力的建筑商。

恐怕这不是英国《金融时报》规定记者每4年可以休假4周以追求个人发展的用意所在。说起来，这也不是我休假的初衷：我本打算写一部小说。

所以说，我起初加入最高级的婚外情网站Illicit Encounters，是为了写书而进行有关网络外遇的研究。然而，在我将个人详细资料（用索菲•斯克里布(Sophie Scribe)这个化名）贴到网站后的半个小时之内，我就有了20个男朋友；一个小时之内，我就上了钩。4周后，我终于摆脱诱惑，感觉有点受到腐蚀，也颇为恼怒：现实生活比我正在写的小说要活色生香多了。

Illicit Encounters是一个类似于土耳其浴室的地方，多为已婚专业人士的23万名会员在虚拟蒸汽中互送秋波，寻找任何可能合适的情人。

在该网站上，我注意到，那些自称从事金融服务业的人士似乎尤其活跃。不时有名叫"阿尔法123"(Alpha123)、"文明人一号"(Civilised1)或"都市绅士"(CityGent)的男士跟我套近乎，而且每个人都讲着同样的故事：我是一位成功的银行家，目前时间充裕，想寻找激情/爱情/浪漫情缘/一夜情，等等。

好奇心起，我联系了网站的老板，想知道这是怎么回事。他们告诉我，自9月份以来，在伦敦从事金融业的男性会员注册人数增加了近300%。似乎就业市场越冷清，婚外情市场就越红火。

如果说纯粹的数字已让我感到惊讶，这些男人本身就更加出乎我的意料。与我交谈的人并非好色之徒，似乎也不像不正派的人。他们通常是第一次玩出轨，更像是隔壁头发逐渐稀落的银行家，而不具备更多的诱惑力。

为那些没有个人经验因而不甚了解的读者着想，我或许应该解释一下，这个网站是如何运作的。为了保密，每个人都使用假名，而会员只向他们喜欢的名字公开照片。这让我有些不好办，因为在线的FT读者竟然为数众多。在匆匆瞥一眼我的照片后，他们许多人吓得逃之夭夭，说到："哦，上帝，你是露西•凯拉韦吗？"我不仅遇见FT的读者，甚至还碰到过一位过去曾为FT撰稿的人。这让我进入带来了一个全新的职场礼仪领域：当你在婚外情网站上邂逅熟人时，怎样做才是正确的举止？我敢说，这种事会越来越多。事实上，打入出轨者生活圈子4周之后一个收获是，我现在怀疑每个男人都在Illicit Encounters上过着双重生活。

上周与哈佛商学院(HBS)营销学教授约翰•奎尔奇(John Quelch)共进午餐时，我问他对此事怎么看。为什么这么多高级商务人士以出轨行为来应对经济衰退？

他表示，在经济衰退时，人们渴望拥抱。这在我看来是相当缺乏说服力的解释。比起拿自己的婚姻冒险，不是有更容易的方式来获得拥抱吗？拥抱自己的孩子--如果你极度渴望的话--甚至拥抱自己的配偶，似乎都更加容易，也更加安全。

他说，这正是意义所在：风险就是诱饵。那些银行家正遭受"风险赤字"：他们工作中的风险被强制消除，因此增加私人生活中的风险可能是一种补偿方式。

若果真如此，人们会想知道，将会产生怎样的宏观结果。假如在金融市场冒险大规模地转变为在家庭市场冒险，是否意味着将有大量家庭出现不稳定，导致离婚率大幅攀升等一系列状况？

该网站的创立者会如此辩解：通过为婚外情提供一个规范市场，他们实际上在为家庭稳定做贡献。Illicit Encounters网站70%的用户声称，被婚外情所吸引，是离婚以外的另一个选择，而非离婚的前奏。这或许并不全然是荒唐可笑的，但现在要做出"非此即彼"的结论似乎为时过早。

不过，根据我一个月来在该网站的体验，得出以下三个结论并不过早。首先，仍有工作的人在朝九晚五之外似乎有着过多的空闲时间。其次，每个人都会说谎：他们低报自己的年龄，夸大自己的魅力，吹嘘自己的健身频率和出色的幽默感，等等。

最后一点是我们早已知道的：男人比女人更热衷于婚外情。该网站试图通过差异定价来改变这一点：男士每月收费119英镑，女士则免费。但即便如此，不均衡现象仍然存在。我还发现，我的247个追求者可能不完全是受我的魅力吸引。我把这个网站告诉一位女性朋友，她也去注册了。仅仅一周后，她的男朋友总数就达到了295个。
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