Absolutely 
Good information there about investing effort and time. The right one will come along hopefully.
It has taken me 12 months and I must have had seen 20 SB, about 8 I have had some PPM fun. A time consuming exercise certainly.
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The whole process recalls the novelty of doing your own holiday bookings when the internet first transformed that experience - researching and organising each aspect oneself, rather than paying over-the-odds to have a travel agent do it for you. Fired-up with an enthusiasm for the abundance of choice and preference newly available to us, we devote time looking for the hotel with the best situation, view & price; and then the best room class for our needs; flights at exactly the right time of day to catch the connecting train; the question of 'should I spend Avios to upgrade or redeem them outright' etc, etc... and, at the end, sure enough, you find that you've got a bespoke adventure, and have indeed saved a meaningful total of £562.43, but that you've also spent a total of 11 hours organising it and agonised over micro-choices that you probably wouldn't have otherwise.
I've put in days-worth of messaging to filter out the dross and zero-in on promising gals, and more besides for test-the-water introductions, and I'd guess at least a solid week's worth of hours maintaining the subsequent relationships (such as they are).
I started out in the hopes and that I'd play the field awhile, before narrowing it down to a serious one with whom I could enjoy a longstanding affair-like scenario. Situation report is as follows:
* A mid 30s American redhead appeared in earnest after two lunch meets, but shut me down when I later prevaricated. That bruised me, but as she was my 'first', I'd rather overbid her allowance, so relief was also in order
* An early 30s NE English gal is very funny and engaging, but is huge and simply isn't physically attractive to me, despite also being a bona fide perv. However I've just discovered she has some collectables which I really covet; so we're still lunching, at least until I can buy them off her
* An Irish beauty was due to show up to my booked hotel, but bailed the day before; albeit with decent apologies - though I guess she had a better offer.
* A striking Dane @30, is looking very much like a long-term squeeze; she enjoys a moderate monthly allowance, cannot get enough leg-over, is truly giving, and we speak daily. Hotels have been in order during lockdown, but her flatmate is off soon, whereupon she will be hosting
* A Londoner, 19
exceptional, clever, talented, very pretty - had me terribly nervous about the age gap. However, I had a hunch she could be a darling and went with a slightly bigger allowance than the Dane, on account that she lives closer, hosts, and showed such promise. We were chaste (from my hesitancy), bar the odd kiss, for the best part of 3 months, but jumped in the sack just recently, and all is now as the sunlit uplands
* New-entry: a Polish student in her mid 30s, who'd been very terse with me in January, to the point where normally I'd have thrown the towel in, agreed to a lunch in early February; we conversed afterwards about a possible arrangement, whereupon she said she'd think about it... finally reverted to me in the last week. Shockingly attractive to me, several hours worth of true girlfriend intense nookie later, she'd had forgotten what we had discussed vis a vis an allowance - and seemed quite happy to settled for the very modest, unsolicited thank you that I'd secreted in her jacket pocket (which would scarcely cover 2 hrs with a good value AW regular). She told me today that she thinks we can 'potentially see each other again'. This is a splendid prospect.
So, I find myself with an unforeseen kind of predicament. I'd previously been spending c. £800 pm on my favourite tart-with-a-heart, but, approaching a milestone anniversary, I had wanted some novelty & variety. After a good 120+ hrs of groundwork of various sorts invested, a dozen size-'em-up lunches, and a fair dollop of ongoing attention and relationship building, I'm committed to two monthly allowances, with perhaps another half of one in prospect AND I still haven't wholly moved-on from the regular. One has an exceptionally high sex drive, the other is up for more and the Pole is like catnip to me. I simply don't have the means to see all that through for more than the next 6 months, at least, not without making serious sacrifices elsewhere, and particularly not if they start asking for regular nights-on-the-tiles, and hotel prices revert to their normal rates. Perhaps it will resolve itself for me in that time.
Worth it? I believe so.
Taxing? Very.
