Meet the sex surfers

Forget about looking for Mr Right on the internet. More and more women are interested in Mr Right-Now.

Thousands of people a month are posting their availability for no-strings sex on websites and many more are browsing for a casual relationship, liberated by the anonymity of email addresses.

One website even aims to link up married people who want an extra-marital affair to relieve the "tedium" of their everyday lives. But experts today warned that "sex surfers" risk getting their fingers burned trying to find love or lust on the net.

They say there could be long-term emotional repercussions from drifting from one anonymous sexual encounter to another. "Ultimately, sex without real connections is unsatisfying even though it can be very thrilling for a while," warned Malcolm Stern, a psychotherapist and presenter of Channel 4's Good Sex Guide. "It's like a drug-fuelled high - it starts to become much less attractive. But it's quite an addictive pattern."

One website originally aimed at antipodeans in London has seen its "casual encounters" page take off since it was launched in 2000.

About 3,500 ads are now posted each month, about 700 by women. This is far more than on Gumtree.com's "relationships" section. And the majority of people browsing the page are women.

Lucy Freeman, from Gumtree.com, admitted: "It's quite addictive - people log on to have a look and a giggle and end up answering an ad. Before they know it, it's their main form of dating."

The site's founder, Michael Pennington, said: "The men are often expected to be quite well-built and the women sexually confident. I think also the fact that some of our users are in London on a relatively short-term visa makes them appealing.

"People can retain an element of emotional distance, or even anonymity, and can't get too involved. The ads are getting racier. We've recently had a spate of people organising orgies on the site, which seem to be quite labour-intensive events to manage - and there's outdoor activity, too."

Another site actually goes as far as arranging affairs for people looking to cheat on their husband or wife. For many of the thousands of would-be adulterers who log on to the "casual encounters" page on Craigslist, wedding rings are a draw.

Phillip Hodson, fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, said: "This is in the same psychological territory as cottaging and cruising.

"It's about instant gratification of a fantasy encounter - you are not going to discover a deep and meaningful relationship this way."

The websites are where homesickness meets lovesickness, he added. "People in London have come from all over the country to seek their fortune like Dick Whittington and are driven. Quite a lot are not going to marry or have children and they have to solve the sex and intimacy question.

"For 8,000 years women have been trained to think about the family and haven't had the power to be single-minded in self-expression. This is the first generation of free women and they are sociologically demob happy."

But the figures show plenty of people are still seeking romance as tens of thousands of people a week join internet dating agencies, a third of them Londoners. Almost 10 per cent of under-35s met their current partner online.

Ms Freeman added: "People are so used to email now they are more expressive with language. Email puts the onus back on communication. You can't just rely on your looks, flashing the keys to your Ferrari or buying a girl lots of drinks."