What Kind of Person Goes Online to Try to Steal a Partner?

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Mate poaching is a term that describes pursuing a partner despite knowing they are in an exclusive relationship with someone else. Some people mate poach for quick sexual flings while others are interested in luring the targets of their attraction into new relationships entirely. Although seldom discussed outside of academic circles, researchers estimate that successful mate poaching attempts may be responsible for 15 percent or more of relationships.

Not everyone, however, is equally likely to mate poach in pursuit of a partner. Mate poachers tend to be more self-important, manipulative, callous, and less reliable and kind toward others. The individuals who are the most likely to succumb to these attempts also tend to share similar qualities to mate poachers.

Just as the Internet has made it easier than ever to connect with people who are single, it has also introduced possibilities for mate poaching. Nowhere is this more apparent than on infidelity websites. As a niche category of online dating, infidelity websites have created an industry around the search for extradyadic relationships by providing dedicated platforms for people to seek out already-attached partners and to entice the mate poaching efforts of others.

In an effort to better understand mate poaching as a strategy for initiating online dating relationships, we recently surveyed 1,676 users of Ashley Madison, one of the oldest and largest infidelity websites on the Internet. Our sample was spread across four continents and composed mostly of men, around half of whom were themselves married. Much of our sample reported concurrent use of traditional online dating platforms (e.g., Tinder, Plenty of Fish, OkCupid) in addition to the Ashley Madison website.

When asked to describe their objectives for using infidelity websites, many users indicated a primary interest in short-term sexual relationships. For instance, one user emphasized that they were seeking “a friendly relationship, not to change my current status” while others used the platform for “hookups and hangouts” and to find a “playmate” or a “sex fling.” That said, we were surprised by the number of users who hoped to find more than just sex and who expressed openness to long-term affairs or even new exclusive relationships. In the words of one user: “My marriage has been awful for years. Hoping to meet the man worth divorcing for.”

We also found that the more inclined users were to mate poach, the more they desired to bring their online relationships into the real world. Just because people use infidelity websites does not necessarily mean that they have any intention of entering a physical relationship with another user. For some people, infidelity websites may fulfill a fantasy rather than a desire to engage in any sort of offline involvement. For others, mate poaching may explain why their online relationships sometimes escalate beyond the platform.

In this study, we only surveyed users once, which means we do not know the outcomes of their activities on the platform. However, research shows that the relationships formed through mate poaching tend to be low in quality, assuming they ever do make it offline.

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