The wanted board · United States
Looking for a Mistress in New York
New York holds more women who lead than anywhere else on this board, and it is also the city where a man most reliably looks for them in the wrong place. The professional side here is large and highly visible, and it is not what this board is. The women posting on it lead inside their own lives and have nothing whatever for sale. They are approached constantly, so a letter that could have gone to anybody is read as one that did. The boroughs behave like separate searches, and everybody says which one they are in.
Posts come from Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and the Jersey side. People lead with their quarter of the city because in a search it decides more than anything else they could tell you about themselves.
Women who lead in New York
Lifestyle Mistresses, writing for themselves. They lead in their own relationships and have nothing for hire: no sessions, no tribute, no arrangement with a price attached.
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The most requested thing on this board is the one thing I will not do
Wants: somebody who wants structure rather than to be made small
Twelve years leading, and twelve years of saying no to this.
Roughly two thirds of what arrives in my messages is asking, in one wording or another, to be humiliated. Verbally, in front of others, in writing, in whatever form. It is the most requested thing by a distance and it is the one thing I have never done in twelve years and never will.
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I decide in one line and I want to tell you which line
Wants: somebody whose opening sentence could only be his
Seventeen years leading, one arrangement currently ending well.
I read the first line and about eighty percent of the time I stop there. I want to be honest about that rather than pretend everybody gets a fair hearing, because the volume makes a fair hearing impossible and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
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This is not a job application and I am not hiring
Wants: a man who writes to a person rather than to a position
Thirteen years leading. Three arrangements, all still on speaking terms.
About a third of what I receive is formatted like a job application. Skills listed. Availability stated. Sometimes actual headings. One man sent me a document. I understand where it comes from, particularly in this city, where everybody is trained to present themselves as a package of capabilities, but it is the wrong instrument entirely.
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Three men have offered me a monthly figure and all three were refused
Wants: an arrangement whose value is not measurable in anything
Sixteen years leading, and a growing weariness about this one subject.
Three times in the last two years a man has offered me a monthly allowance, unprompted, in an early message. Each of them was polite about it. Two of them explained that they preferred an arrangement with clear terms. All three were told no, and all three seemed to think the no was a negotiating position.
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Here is what makes me open a second letter, since nobody says it
Wants: one man who can write two paragraphs about his own week
Twenty one years leading. Two arrangements, seven and eleven years.
I have been on the receiving end of this for twenty one years and the thing men get wrong has not changed once in that time. It is not tone, it is not length, and it is very rarely rudeness, though rudeness ends it immediately.
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Sixty three, thirty five years at this, and not remotely done
Wants: a man who is not looking for a mother or a museum
Thirty five years leading. Four arrangements, the longest sixteen.
Two kinds of letter arrive when a woman my age posts. The first tells me at length how rare and wonderful it is to see somebody my age here, which is a compliment about a number. The second, and I say this without any coyness, is from men who want a mother, and the giveaway is always in the vocabulary rather than the request.
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The disappearing act happens at the third message and I have theories
Wants: a man who is still here in the fifth week
Eleven years leading, and a great many half conversations.
It is always the third message. The first two are warm and quick, and then I write something that requires an actual answer about his life, and there is silence. Not a decline. Nothing at all. Eight times last year.
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Thirty, leading for eight years, and constantly told I am too young
Wants: a man who does not need me to be twenty years older
Eight years leading, from twenty two, two arrangements.
The most common thing men say to me, after they have said the other thing, is that they were expecting somebody older. It is often meant as a compliment and it never lands as one, because what it actually says is that they came here looking for a type rather than a person.
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I keep a note of who I answer, and the number is small
Wants: somebody who understands that a slow board is not a dead one
Ten years leading, two arrangements, one of them ongoing.
Since January I have answered nine letters out of something over a hundred and thirty. I know the number because I keep a note, mostly so that I can look at it when I start to feel uncharitable and check whether I am being fair.
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The tenth man this month asked me my rates and I am done being polite
Wants: a lifestyle arrangement with somebody who read the page
Fourteen years leading, privately, never professionally.
Ten this month. Some of them were courteous and one was extremely angry when I said no, which I found instructive. This city has an enormous, visible professional world, and I understand why a man who has only ever seen that assumes every woman who leads is part of it. But I am not, and I have never been, and the assumption arrives in my messages about a hundred times a year.
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I have two hours a week and I am not going to pretend I have five
Wants: a man who would rather have a small certainty than a large promise
Nineteen years leading, and one lesson learned the hard way.
I used to promise more than I had. Not deliberately. I would meet somebody, want it to work, and describe a version of my week that did not exist, and then spend four months quietly cancelling and watching a decent man decide he had been unimportant all along.
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You are writing to somebody with a full week and a tired Thursday
Wants: a man who makes a week easier rather than fuller
Fifteen years leading, all of it around a demanding career.
The version of a woman who leads that circulates in most men's heads has an enormous amount of free time. She is available, unhurried, and apparently unemployed. I have never met her. Every woman I know who does this is doing it in the gaps of a life that is already full, and a good number of us are doing it while exhausted.
Submissives looking in New York
People hoping to submit to a woman who leads, saying what they want and what they will not do before anybody has to ask them.
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I left this city at thirty nine and came back at fifty
Wants: somebody who does not mind that I know nobody here anymore
Six years before I left. Eleven years of nothing. Two months back.
I moved away for work in my late thirties, spent eleven years in a part of the country where I knew of exactly two people who did any of this and did not like either of them, and came back in March. Everybody I knew here has moved, aged out or gone quiet.
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A woman sent me a critique instead of a rejection and it changed everything
Wants: one arrangement, written for properly this time
Three years, and one very useful paragraph from a stranger.
In February a woman I had written to replied with four sentences explaining exactly why she was not going to answer properly. She said my letter was about how much I wanted this and contained no information about who I am. She said the word she used four times was intense and the word she never used was Tuesday. Then she wished me luck and that was that.
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Somebody asked me what I would do with a free Tuesday and I had no answer
Wants: a woman who asks better questions than I ask myself
Six years, three short arrangements, a lot of thinking in between.
A woman I was writing to last year asked what I would want a free Tuesday evening to look like if she were running it. Not a fantasy. An actual Tuesday. I could not answer. I sat with the message open for four days and eventually wrote something vague, and she stopped replying, which was reasonable.
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I sent two hundred messages and every one of them was bad
Wants: one conversation, done properly, at whatever pace she likes
Five years of volume. Zero years of attention.
I did the numbers last winter because I wanted to know how bad it was. Something over two hundred messages sent in five years. Six replies. Two conversations that lasted more than a week. Nothing that ever reached a room.
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I went to eleven events and did not speak to anybody at any of them
Wants: a written correspondence that leads somewhere eventually
Four years, eleven rooms, no conversations.
Everyone tells men to go out and meet people in person. I did. Eleven times over two years I stood in a room full of strangers, and eleven times I left without having managed a real conversation, and on the way home each time I felt worse than when I had arrived.
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I am not a good writer and I refuse to pretend otherwise
Wants: somebody who does not mind plain sentences
Fifteen years, one arrangement of nine.
Every post on this board is better written than mine. I have read a lot of them. I left school at sixteen, I have worked with my hands for thirty five years, and I write the way I talk, which is short and without much decoration.
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I did the travel math before I wrote a word and I will show it
Wants: somebody who values planning over enthusiasm
Two years, several conversations, nothing that reached a second month.
Fifty five minutes door to door on a weekday evening, with one change, and I have done it enough times to know it is fifty five and not the forty the map claims. I am putting the number at the top because I have watched three promising conversations die over exactly this and never once over anything about either person.
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I am not falling apart and I do not want to be handled
Wants: a woman who will read the request rather than the man behind it
Ten years, two arrangements, both of them long and ordinary.
Something happens when a man in his forties writes about wanting structure. It gets read as a symptom. Three times in the past two years I have had a long, kind reply suggesting that what I am really looking for is help of a different sort, and each one was well meant and each one missed what I was asking.
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For a decade I called it worship and it was never that
Wants: a woman who wants somebody accountable rather than reverent
Eleven years of the wrong word. Two of the right one.
I spent about eleven years describing what I wanted as worship, and every time I got close to a woman who took that seriously I found the reality strange and slightly embarrassing, and I would go quiet and blame myself for being a fraud.
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I have been asked four times and the answer has not changed
Wants: somebody who takes a settled answer as settled
Twelve years, three arrangements, all of them the same way round.
Four separate people have suggested that I might be a switch. Two of them meant it kindly, one was flirting, and one seemed genuinely unable to accept that a man could be sure. I have thought about it seriously each time, because it would be foolish not to, and the answer has been the same at twenty six and at thirty eight.
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I work overnights on a dispatch desk and my life is upside down
Wants: somebody whose hours are also strange, or who does not mind mine
Nine years, two arrangements, both ended over scheduling.
Eleven at night to seven in the morning, four on and three off, for the last nine years. I sleep from nine until four in the afternoon. Both arrangements I have had ended because somebody eventually got tired of proposing Saturday evening and being told no again.
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Four years sober, and this has to fit around that, not the reverse
Wants: a woman for whom nothing important happens in a bar
Seven years total, four of them since I stopped drinking.
Four years and two months without a drink. That fact governs everything else about how I do this, and it has cost me two conversations with people who found it inconvenient, so I put it at the top now.
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Two years of reading in a public library before writing anything
Wants: a slow start with somebody who is not impressed by reading
Two years of study. No practice whatsoever.
I did not want it on my own devices, so for two years I read about this in a public library on Saturday mornings, at a desk, like a man doing research for a dissertation. That is either endearing or a warning sign and I am honestly not sure which.
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I do not send a photograph first and I want to explain why
Wants: a conversation that starts with words rather than a face
Three years, entirely in writing so far.
Every guide tells men to lead with a photograph. I have decided not to, and since it probably costs me replies, I should explain the reasoning rather than have it read as evasion.
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Three jobs, one day off, and everything I have is time on a Monday
Wants: somebody who can use a Monday and does not need money spent
A year and a half, mostly in writing.
I work three jobs. Two of them are shifts and one is whatever comes in. I have Mondays and half of Sunday, and I have almost no money, and I want to say both of those things before anybody works them out and feels awkward about it.
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It took me a year to learn this is five searches, not one
Wants: somebody in Queens, or the top of Brooklyn, and nowhere further
Four years, one arrangement of ten months.
For a year I wrote to women all over this city as though it were one place. It is not. It is five separate searches that happen to share a subway map, and the difference between a woman thirty minutes away and a woman seventy minutes away is not forty minutes, it is whether anything survives past the third month.
Service and duty in New York
People whose interest is usefulness rather than play: standing orders, errands, a household run properly, and being depended on.
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I am strong, free most days, and good at the heavy dull jobs
Wants: somebody with a list of things too big for one person
Two years, one arrangement, almost entirely physical work.
The most useful thing about me is completely unglamorous. I am strong, I have a flexible schedule, and I do not mind six hours of dull physical work. In a city where everybody lives up three flights and nobody owns a truck, that turns out to be worth something.
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The request for money is the only signal that never lies
Wants: an arrangement with no financial element whatsoever
Nine years, two arrangements, and one expensive lesson avoided.
Two years ago I spent seven weeks in the best conversation I had ever had on a board like this. Specific, warm, patient, remembered everything. In week eight I was asked to wire a sum to cover a travel emergency, with a full and convincing explanation and an apology attached. I said no. Every message stopped that day.
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I want to be depended on, which only works if nothing is owed
Wants: a woman who will simply expect things of me and give nothing back
Eighteen years of service, two arrangements, both long.
Twice in eighteen years somebody has tried to balance the books with me. Once with money, which I refused, and once with a standing arrangement of gifts that I also refused, and in both cases the person was genuinely trying to be decent and could not understand why I was making it difficult.
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Sixty eight, retired, and the days are far too long
Wants: a standing obligation with somebody who expects me
Fourteen years of service, one arrangement, ended when she died.
I retired at sixty five and it was the worst decision available at the time and I made it anyway. Nobody tells you that a week with nothing fixed in it stops being a holiday around the fourth month and becomes something closer to fog. I need to be expected somewhere.
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Nothing physical, ever, and it is not a limit I am negotiating around
Wants: a household where usefulness is the entire relationship
Twenty years of service. No physical contact in any of it.
I am not interested in sex and never have been, with anybody, at any point in fifty five years. That is not a wound and it is not a limit that patience will erode. It is simply how I am built, and it has made this part of my life very difficult to explain to people who assume that everything here is ultimately about bodies.
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I am at my most valuable in the months everybody else is avoiding
Wants: somebody with paperwork she has been putting off since last year
Four years, two arrangements, both built around paperwork.
What I am good at is the pile of official documents that everybody has and nobody opens. Filings. Insurance. The letter from an agency that has been on the counter since November. The forty minutes on hold. I do it quickly, correctly, and without needing to be thanked, and I find the whole business genuinely calming, which people find strange.
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When I say I want to do the laundry I mean the actual laundry
Wants: a household with real domestic work that needs doing
Three years, one arrangement, all of it household work.
I have had this conversation enough times to lead with it. When I say I want to do somebody's laundry, cleaning and cooking, I am not describing a scenario. I mean the actual work, done properly, on a schedule, for years, in a real apartment with a real dryer that eats quarters.
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I am the person who remembers everything, which is a job nobody wants
Wants: somebody who would like to stop holding all of it in her head
Three years, one arrangement, entirely organisational.
The thing I do well is hold the whole of somebody else's schedule in my head and make sure nothing falls out of it. Appointments. Renewals. The birthday of the difficult cousin. When the thing that was ordered in March is actually due. It is not glamorous and it is the single most useful thing anybody has ever done for me, so I know what it is worth.
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One animal, one hour, every day, for as long as she wants
Wants: a fixed daily duty and nothing else at all
Six years, two arrangements, one of them entirely about a dog.
For three years I walked somebody's dog at a quarter past six every morning. I had a key to a lobby and a set of instructions and I saw the woman herself perhaps twice a month. That was the arrangement in its entirety and it was the most stable thing in my life.
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I own a car in this city, which makes me more useful than I am interesting
Wants: somebody who needs the driving done and the errands run
Five years, one arrangement, mostly logistics.
I have a car, a garage, a clean record and a tolerance for traffic that borders on a medical condition. In this city that is a rarer offer than anything about my personality, and I have made my peace with being valued for it.
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Give me one instruction that never changes and I will not break it
Wants: a permanent rule rather than a set of occasional tasks
Seven years, three arrangements, all built on one fixed rule.
The thing that works for me is a single instruction that never changes. Not a list, not a schedule that gets revised, one rule that operates every day regardless of circumstances. In three arrangements over seven years the rule has been different every time and the effect on me has been identical.
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Twenty years in kitchens, out of them now, and I still want to cook for somebody
Wants: a household that would like proper food twice a week
Two years in this, twenty years of doing the actual work.
I spent twenty years on a line and my back finally decided against it two years ago. I do something quieter now and the thing I miss is not the pace or the shouting. It is cooking for people who are going to eat it, to a standard set by somebody else, with somebody checking the plate before it goes out.
This page is stage two of five
Knowing where dominant women are is the stage you are standing on. Nothing above it can be acted on until the three stages after it are, and they run in this order for a reason.
Somewhere else
A search only works where you can actually get to. The board runs in 21 cities.
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