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Here's why I believe dinner dates don't work, it goes something like this:<br>You meet a complete stranger out a restaurant. You have an awkward hug. You sit down at a table. You start talking, then the waiter interrupts asking about drinks. You continue to talking. The waiter interrupts again to your food order. You are not ready to order since you have been talking. The waiter provides you"another minute." You look at the menu making remarks about the choices. The server comes back ten minutes later. You continue talking. You then run out of things to discuss. What do you do next? You hav
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I looked at her and then looked at the dinner bill. She looked me directly in the eyes and smiled. Still, no reply. It definitely was not my best moment, but it wasn't hers either. Apparently, as I discovered later, I had fallen into a trap called"the meal program." The meal program, if you're not familiar with it, is when girls go on dates with men merely to get a free meal. It was obviously quite popular with attractive college girls, a classification she certainly fell into. When I first heard about the"meal plan," I did a mental rewind as I scrolled back through all of the dates I had gone on until there: all 37 dates to be precise. How could women take advantage of me like that? Especially since I was being so vulnerable by putting myself out there to ask them out in the first location. As I matured in my online relationship, however, I realized that this was actually a response for what men do to women. There are 3 major levers in our lives that, if we pull them properly, can change everything. Our career, our health, and our relationships can be the difference between depression and elation. I learned this firsthand because in the past five years I went through the excruciatingly painful and draining process of pulling all three levers at once. I quit the career I had been building for over 7 years and I left my 10-year connection with my girlfriend who I believed I was going to marry. All of a sudden I was a career and dating newcomer. I was scarred. One dayI was sitting in the shower feeling sorry for myself for over an hour. And then, for some unknown reason, my ambitious gene triggered and a little voice in my head said,"you are going to give up? No, no you're not. You're going to kick on online dating's ass!" I began to channel my distress into anger, and my anger into determination. I began to approach online dating like one big experiment. I started creating what I predicted,"The Process." In this blog post I will take you through the entire process I took to master online dating. By optimizing your profile, A/B testing your descriptions, beginning meaningful conversations, as well as crafting interesting dates. We'll discuss how to streamline the online dating process so you can not just get dates, but maybe discover the love of your life (with minimal stress). Now, before I get into it, I should preface that depending on your context, your culture, and your comfort, your process might have to be different than the below. But, the important takeaway here is to pull back the emotions that come from dating and treat it like an experiment. If you approach it with the mindset of,"I will go meet interesting people and do interesting things," you'll be more inclined to enjoy the procedure. And, if you're diligent, you may end up finding that special person. UPDATE: As of 2019 I've been with my new girlfriend, who I met on OkCupid, for 4 years and we have moved in
together. So maybe these strategies are not all that mad, but maybe they are, I will leave it for you to judge. Listen to the Modern Dating Show Podcast for more tips, tricks, and embarrassingly real stories. Note: You can also hear the Modern Dating Show podcast, where my friend Trevor and I cover a whole lot of these strategies as we navigate the present struggles and embarrassments of his own dating trip (and answer listener questions). The complete most common error I see both guys and gals making when it comes to online dating is that they don't define their goal clearly. Deep down inside, the majority of us know whether we are searching for a serious relationship or just to have fun. The more common scenario that I've discovered is that both women and men who are searching for a meaningful relationship are optimizing their dating for fun instead. I remember how one day when my coworker, Maddy, heard about my success with internet dating, she asked me to assist her with her OKCupid profile. She is a remarkably smart and capable woman and she's' really beautiful, a true 10 out of 10, so I was confused why she'd need my help. In less than 5 seconds I saw the problem. Basically, in order to optimize for receiving dates, Maddy had chosen to just include her most provocative photos. Now I would like to be clear, there is nothing wrong with women having"promiscuous" pictures online. The problem, in the case of dating, is the arrangement of a relationship and what you lead with. Our brains have evolved over centuries to intuitively pick up on visual cues much faster than written hints. In fact, they have found that men that are even walking with their girlfriend, will reflexively look if an attractive woman walks by activating their conscious brain. Because dating profiles hide most information aside from the profile photo until a user clicks, leading with provocative photographs sets a poor first impression. So, while it is totally fine to have hot photos up in your instagram, leading together in your online dating profile is sending signals that could be attracting the wrong sort of guy. There are also plenty of classy ways to possess interesting pictures that speak to more than just the subconscious mind. Internet Dating pictures can be both intriguing and classy So, although Maddy was attempting to find a relationship, her photos were only sending signals that she is searching for"fun." Understandably, she had a line of douchebag men filling up her inbox. For men, we tend to have the opposite problem.
Every man who has done online dating will attest to the struggle of getting a girl to swipe directly in their profile, let alone to make them participate in a conversation. Men, this is entirely your fault. I have seen guys spend hours talking about the statistics of their favourite sports team, which player has what stats, who's health is suffering, and even how financial reports will effect the team's chances. However, when it comes to online dating, men have a tendency to slap a few pictures in their profile and then start swiping like orangutans till their palms develop calluses. Men, stop. Before you start creating or re-creating your dating profile, stop and think about what you're trying to attain. Are you trying to date a great deal of people? Or are you trying to find a meaningful relationship? And"both" isn't an answer. "If you try to appeal to everybody, you will interest no one." The techniques I'll outline below work for desired result, but the choices you make will significantly affect your"conversion" rate. By way of instance, the first time I mastered everything in this process, I started going on a great deal of dates (3-- 4 per week, weekly ), but I still felt incredibly unfulfilled. I just realized months after that, while it is good to go on a great deal of dates and get practice relationship (recall I had been off the dating scene for 10 years), it was even more important to make sure I was dating the right people. Fortunately I realized this before I was the victim of any more"meal plans." STEP 2 -- A/B Test your online dating profile pictures and descriptions First impressions matter. According to a study from Princeton, it's projected that in any relationship, whether its work or social, we make up our mind about whether we like the person in less than one second. The single biggest flaw in online dating is that the first impression you make is based solely on your profile picture. They don't get to hear you speak. They don't get to shake your hand. They do not get to smell you (it is a thing). All you get is 1 picture and there is a 99% chance it's the wrong one. If a person is coming online dating as an experiment, obviously the first thing to check is the profile picture. I first started this process in a very unscientific way...
One hundred, and I mean 100% of these said that my first picture wasn't my best. It was interesting feedback, but I wasn't certain how I could test multiple pictures considering I could only put one as the default. The answer: testing across apps. I created profiles on Hinge, OKCupid, CoffeeMeetsBagel, along with the dreaded Tindr. I kept my profile description the exact same on each profile, but I put up a different profile image on each. I rotated the images across profiles until I could get a big enough sample size and be certain that the platform was not effecting results. Four of my actual dating profile pictures Sure enough, the profile picture that I thought was my best was always the one with the least matches. Interestingly enough, a picture I did not read into, pic B, was really a huge turn off for pretty much 100% of girls. When I asked them why, without skipping a beat they answered,"it makes you look like a player." I was shocked when I found out this, because the two girls in that photo are really good friends of mineso that I never would have made this connection. Sometimes your photographs can be your biggest blind spot. To totally test out this idea, I really enrolled a few friends (both men and women) into the experiment and had them change their profile pictures. Listen to The Modern Dating Show Episode 2 This is a super easy optimization that may look to be a pain today, but it will save you from dozens, if not hundreds, of missed matches. This is the 20 percent of work which will get you that 80% improvement in results, so please rotate your photos and rotate them often. Top Tip: If you want to speed up this process, you can actually ask your games exactly what they think of your pictures. If a conversation with a match wasn't going well, I decided to get some"user comments" by asking her why she swiped right and which of my photos she thought was best. (I also used this technique to ask recruiters why I wasn't getting jobs.) Descriptions are negotiable In highschool I had a history teacher, Mr. Hernandez, who gave me perhaps the worst piece of advice I've ever received:"just be yourself" Now, part of the error may be my fault, because I took his advice quite literally. I began to speak my mind, dress how I wanted to dress, and behave how I wished to act. This turned out to be a horrible idea.
With no filter or idea behind my actions, I rubbed over a few people the wrong way. Now that I've matured a bit, I have come to realize that there is a difference between being your overall self and being yourself. Whether we like to admit it or not, we're never our total selves except when we're by ourselves. Seth Godin has a great podcast on"signals," that you can listen to here. In the podcast, he explains that we actively choose which signals to give to other men and women. A man wearing a button up shirt, as an instance, isn't always wealthy, but the button up top is putting out the signal that he is wealthy. Much like a person who wears all black and an anarchy necklace is signaling she doesn't wish to follow society's rules, the guy in the button up shirt is indicating that he is okay with subsequent convention. Signals matter. In college I met a girl at a party who immediately caught my attention. She was wearing a summer dress, flower earrings, and looked really cute. I approached her and we immediately hit off. We spent the entire party flirting and dancing. We made plans to have a lunch date in the college cafeteria later that week. I got to the cafeteria early and decided to save us a booth seat. As I was waiting, a woman walked up to me and smiled. I looked up and saw a cute girl dressed all in black, wearing black eyeshadow and an anarchy necklace round her neck. At first I didn't even recognize her, but after a few baffled blinks with my eyes I realized it was my date. She sat down and we started talking. I was that man. I did not care what she dressed like, but as we picked up our conversation we soon realized we had almost nothing in common. The outfit she had used as a sign at the party did not match her personality at all. We finished the date cordially and proceeded on. Signals matter. Choosing your signs is good, but picking false signals not so much. You don't need to lie, but you also don't want to be your complete self. You want to tell them about how you collect classic records, you don't want to let them know about how you cry every time a U2 tune comes on. You need to tell them about how you volunteer at the animal shelter, you do not want to tell them about how you ran over your cat. First impressions matter. Crafting a good description is perhaps the most difficult and personal bit of improving your online dating profile. There's no right answer, but there are definitely some incorrect answers.
The first step to having a great dating profile description is having a clear structure. I break down a relationship profile description into 3 parts: Headline: A brief sentence someone can read quickly. Intro Paragraph: A little longer description that provides some colour to your interests and personality. Call to Action: A desirable action you want them to take. Online dating is inherently awkward, so help another person by letting them know something that you two can talk about. Ladies this is especially true for you. If you do not want men messaging you"hey" or"wanna f*ck?" Then give them some fuel to start the conversation with. The Headline Unfortunately, people tend to surf online dating programs the way they surf social media sites: quickly and without much thought. It might be, in fact, that mobile devices have trained us to surf everything in a similar way. Because of this, I think the headline is possibly the most important piece of your description and you need to try different variations until you find one that is right for you. After a lot of testing I discovered that this one worked best for me: The objective of the headline is to provide a quick snapshot of what's unique about you. Having a headline that is authentic, interesting, and short functions like a stop sign for the individual who's scrolling through the dozens of profiles on their cell phone. If you ask any top-performing marketer,"how do I create content which will be successful?" It is likely that they'll laugh at the question. As any good content marketer knows, great content is about respecting the medium that you're producing the content for. By way of example, if I went into a woman at a bar and said,"Outdoorsy, curious, ambitious, energetic," she'll definitely get up and leave. The reverse is true for online relationship, however. You want your headline to be fluff free. Keep it to a 3--6 words, or one sentence, and be sure it is quintessentially you. After that initial curiosity is peaked, you can begin paving a path towards them getting to know you a little bit more.
This is not the time to compose a novel about yourself. After all, this is only your 3rd touch point with this person, your headline and picture being the first two. The intro paragraph provides a small amount of colour and possibly some talking points that you can talk about in conversation (again, ladies, this is incredibly important to include if you want to have more meaningful conversations). The intro paragraph which worked best for me was: "I love being outside as much as possible! Some of my favourite items are surfing, climbing, and playing volleyball. I'm a creative at heart but I love learning about new and businesses ideas. I am into photography, layout, and Tim Ferriss. My ideal Saturday is playing volleyball at the beach with friends. My perfect Sunday is reading a good book at Promenade cafe" This paragraph outlines a couple of basic activities and hobbies I enjoy and some non-standard things like business, design, and Tim Ferriss that might peak curiosity. The main thing to remember about this section is to avoid the generic activities that could apply to pretty much anybody. "I enjoy hanging out with friends, watching films, binging on Netflix, and going on hikes." While I'm sure that there are people in the world who don't enjoy watching movies or hanging out with friends, probably 95% or more of the folks in your area enjoy both those things too. As opposed to trying to fit in, attempt to stand out. Try to balance your description between things most people like, so you can find common ground, but also things which are uniquely you. For example in my description above: -- Many people like being outside and photography. -- But very few people like learning about companies or Tim Ferriss. The Call To Action This is optional, although it certainly helps. In advertising, a call to action (CTA) is the action that you want the user to take after they've viewed your content. In relationship, you essentially want the person to message you. This seems like a no brainer, but I have found that a lot of people, both guys and girls, have been rejected so many times that they eventually become discouraged from making first contact. I have heard countless stories of women who have matched with a man who they really enjoy, but the man never messages them. When I ask them why they don't message first, it is said that they don't know what to say or they do not want to seem desperate. But, obviously you don't want everyone to message you, so make your call to action specific.
On OkCupid they have a single section that says: "You should message me if..." ← This is OkCupid's sub-heading but you can just manually add it on other internet dating apps too. My CTA goes as follows: "You should message me if you're badoo portal randkowy facebook an interesting person who likes to play outdoors." Again, as with this information, when in doubt just check it out. Try having a call to action and see whether your conversations improve. If they don't, just delete it. The attractiveness of dating programs is that rather than having 1--5 chances to make a relationship, as you would if you went to a pub for instance, you have thousands of opportunities and"do-overs" to play with. STEP 3 -- Making first contact and chatting where online dating falls flat on its face compared to"in real life" dating is when it has to do with the conversation. Having to chat online as your first conversation is a massive limitation when you are trying to start a new relationship. For starters, it is a really unnatural way of communicating, because it's been proven that we receive 55 percent of our communication from non-verbal (or in this case non-typed) communicating. It makes sense then that when you take millions of people and set them in a supernatural communication environment you get some fairly unnatural conversations. While it might be fun to play around with bizarre conversation openers, if you're serious about finding a fantastic relationship through online dating, then it is a good idea to research your results a little bit. As I got better at optimizing my profile, I started matching with a growing number of people. This gave me the chance to start testing different conversation openers and see patterns that I just would not have been able to determine if I did not have a high match rate. Listen to The Modern Dating Show Episode 6 I'll spare you some of the terrible thoughts I had, but in the spirit of good fun, let's test how well you can judge a fantastic opener from a poor one. QUIZ Which of the following conversation starters performs the best? A) "Hey! How's it going?" How was your weekend?" C) "Question: Batman or Superman?"
(or some other variation of the type of question). D) "Hey! (according to a book they listed in their profile) I will let you consider it for a second. (I'll add some space before the answer below. Scroll as soon as you're ready.) Scroll for the response Scroll for the answer Scroll for the response Scroll for the answer Scroll for the response Scroll for the answer And the answer is... If you guessed D, you chose the best answer! (If you guessed C, you chose the worst answer.) In order of best to worst, the replies are B, D, A, C (D being best). There are pluses and minuses to some conversation starter. While I found that the absolute best conversations resulting from"Hey! How did you like X book," that obviously depends if they've put a book in their profile. You can modify this to ask about some other part of the profile, such as a picture or a place in their own pictures. The reason why I guess that the book one works best though is because a) it shows you really read their profile and b) it indicates that you read. If I can use the book opener to start a conversation I usually also extend it to,"Hey! How did you like x book? I am now reading'Losing my Virginity' by Richard Branson and highly recommend it!" (This is how I opened the dialogue with my now-long-term girlfriend). Pretty much every conversation I began with this opener felt a lot more natural and moved past a few messages. The second best option,"Hey! Works nearly as well, but it's obviously limited to Sundays, Mondays, or Tuesdays. (It would be odd if you used this on a Friday). An alternative version I tried on Thursdays or Fridays was,"Hey! This worked pretty well, but not nearly too. I suspect it is because it seems too much like I am going to ask her on a date or it puts her on the spot to think about something interesting. The Do's & Don'ts of Online Conversation
Now that you have made contact and another person has responded, it's time to have a conversation. Every dialog changes, but there are some guidelines that I will put in here as suggestions. First, some online dating tips for men: DON'T attempt to be interesting by being obnoxiously weird. I can't tell you how many messages my female friends have shown me that sound objectively psychotic. The sad thing is I know that the man is just nervous and trying to think of something interesting to say. Just have a regular conversation like you would with a friend. DO try to talk about things she is interested in but also add your own ideas. One of the most common complaints I've heard from female friends is they feel like they're being interviewed. Make certain that you ask questions, but that you also share things about yourself in equal measure. DON'T make comments about her body or appearance. Irrespective of how well intentioned you are, it'll be perceived in the wrong way. Saying things like,"you are so beautiful! You've got a cute smile! You are..." will only lead to a polite"thank you" and won't create meaningful conversation. Now, a few online dating suggestions for women: DO be nice and help guide the conversation. Even when I have tried to be nice and friendly, I have still received quite curt or standoff-ish answers. No matter how much guys pretend they don't care about the conversation, they do. And they usually don't have any clue what they're doing, so offer them some help and direct the conversation in a positive direction. DON'T answer questions without asking any of your own. If you are tired of conversations feeling like interviews, then make sure that you ask the guy about things he's interested in as well. It takes two to tango. DON'T make conclusions too soon. In my experience women tend to put a lot more thought in their text messages than men do. If a man says something that looks weird or strange, give him the benefit of the doubt and do not read too much into it, chances are he didn't either. Now a proposal for the two parties: Try to move the dialogue from online to in real life relatively quickly. Online dating is a great tool to meet someone, but it's just that. It's a tool, it is not actual dating. My general recommendation for moving from online to in real life is one long conversation or two short conversations. It should never take more than a week to establish a date. So, if you match with each other on a Monday, you should definitely have started talking about using a date by Wednesday. So yes, use the programs, but also get them off quickly. In real life is a good deal more fun too if you know how to set up good dates...
Step 4 -- Making a date sequence that will make you smile more and sweat less After I had mastered the online portion of dating, I soon realized that securing the date is only half the battle. The second half of this battle, how well goes, is largely determined before you have even set out from your house. As they say in real estate: location, location, location. In which you have your date decides about 50--70% of the outcome of the date. But first a question... Where's the worst place to have a date? As it turns out, it is actually at the most frequently selected dating place: A sit-down restaurant. At first I was taking all my dates to restaurants for dinner. Boring, I know. But bear in mind, I was totally new to relationship so I was just following what I'd seen in movies. Many of them didn't go well, but I was not sure why. After a dozen or so awkward (and expensive) dates, I determined that I should experiment with some other locations. What occurred next was absolutely mind blowing. Almost like flipping a light switch, my dates improved tremendously. It wasn't that I was doing anything differently or that I was picking better women to go on dates with, it was merely a matter of context. Here's why I believe dinner dates don't work, it goes something like this: You meet a complete stranger out a restaurant. You sit down at a table. You start speaking, then the waiter interrupts asking about drinks. You choose beverages. You continue to speaking. The waiter interrupts again to your food order. You are not ready to order because you've been talking. The waiter provides you"another minute." You look at the menu making remarks about the choices. The server comes back ten minutes later. You talk and talk. Then you run out of things to discuss. What do you do next? You have to keep talking. Talk... Talk... Talk! A dinner date provides no options. It is a singular task that depends on you connecting with a complete stranger almost immediately. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that many of us are getting worse at getting in-person discussions. Spending so much time online has enhanced our written communication skills, but it has also atrophied our in- house communication abilities. So, if we are getting worse at having in-person conversations, why would you bet your whole love life on the fact that you'll be able to have an remarkable in-person conversation with a complete stranger? I had been holding on to a little ledge, about the size of a golf-ball, while the rest of my body dangled 30-feet over the ground like a giant cat toy. "O well," I thought,"this will be a great bonding experience." As I let my fingers slip off the ledge I expected the sharp jolt of the rope on my climbing harness. However, there was no jolt. I began falling for what felt like eternity.
As it happens, my climbing partner had momentarily let go of the rope just as I had slipped off the ledge. She panicked and didn't grab the rope until I had dropped 15 ft to what I was sure was my upcoming death. Eventually the rope eventually stopped and I felt a huge jolt, both physically and emotionally. "Okay this date may be a little too exciting," I thought. My entire dating profession made a 180-degree turn when I started carrying my dates on fun activities rather than dinners. I would take them to play tennis, rock climb, festivals, picnics at the beach, music shows, and everything in between. Some of these activities worked better than others. However, I found out that the most crucial elements to a wonderful date spot could be distilled into three categories: Walkability -- Do we need to sit together or can we walk around? When you're walking, your scenery is changing so that you can pick up new conversation topics as you go. "O look at that naked guy on rollerblades!" Action -- Can we do the action reasonably well? I've seen men get this one fairly wrong. It is fun to teach someone something that you're passionate about, but be certain it's not too hard. Taking a woman rock climbing? Make sure she isn't afraid of heights first. Scalability -- Can the date grow or shrink in scale as needed? Having a terrific time? Great! No chemistry? No issue, how do we end the date sooner? Using these three criteria, I crafted a three date sequence which nearly doubled the number of successful dates I went on. I know what you're thinking,"This man took women out to the same places like it was some sort of regimented assembly line?" This was my go-to order, but, depending on interests, I would substitute different activities to keep the dates interesting. This was simply a template which simplified my decisions and decreased the cognitive load I was putting in my brain. Happy brain = Happy dates. So here's my perfect dating arrangement: Date #1 -- Off the Grid: Off the Grid is a gathering of food trucks each Friday by the San Francisco bay. Why I like it: One of the problems of inviting someone out to dinner is that everybody has different food tastes. Then (if you are a guy) you have to account for cost of meals. Off the grid accomplishes this because there are over 20 distinct types of (affordable) cuisine. Additionally, it allows you to walk around, people watch, and get drinks. You can extend the date by getting dessert or listening to the live bands. Date #2 -- Variable: This date could change based on interests but I had a few go-tos, namely: Little Italy, rock climbing, tennis, picnic on the shore. Why I like it: What these actions had in common were the 3 variables: walkability, activity, scalability. We could walk around Little Italy, grab cannolis, stay for drinks at Jack Karouac's favorite pub, or abort early. With both rock climbing and tennis we can alternate between talking and activity.
Why I like it: This date was particularly important because if a woman had made it to date #3, it meant I actually liked her. Additionally, it meant we might take the relationship to the bedroom. The Cal Academy night fulfilled all requirements, also it was a semi-formal event so we can both dress nicely for that particular night. This was also my secret evaluation because if a girl didn't like science and facts it likely would not work out between us anyway. As an additional bonus, it was also a 20-min walk from my place, so that helped with the"scalability" of the evening. Listen to each of the episodes of The Modern Dating Show These are just three examples of how to take online dating offline and make a reasonably successful dating arrangement. Here are a few ideas on what to search for on each date as you attempt to make your own dating sequence: Date #1: Look for a casual environment that is not intimidating. Dark bars or loud places don't make for great conversation. Be sure that you can reliably visit this place, so avoid places with long waits or where you will need to make reservations. Make sure you can schedule the date for a weeknight (try to not book someone's weekend for a first date). Date #2: You have broken the ice and you have both agreed to another date, so have fun with this one! Select an activity you'll both like that isn't too tricky. Ideally choose an activity which has a cadence in which you alternate between doing something and speaking. Going on a 10 mile run is great for exercise, but it does not allow for conversation. Seeing a movie at a movie theater has similar limits. Date #3: You confirmed you like each other, it's time to take it to the next level. Try to make this date a little more special than the first two. It needs to be romantic, it should test how compatible you both really are, and it should confirm whether you want to keep on seeing each other long term. Following the excitement of dates one and two, there may be a lull in date 3, so make sure whatever you select gives new intimacy to the connection. For instance, if I didn't visit the Cal Academy I would go dancing instead. STEP 5 -- Getting your Timing Right Perhaps among the most important pieces of the online dating mystery that I see men screw up again and again is time. Assuming the man is the one forcing the relationship sequence (which is not always the case) there are a few questions you need to ask: When should you ask her to go on a date? When should you sleep together? Here I will share my answers to these questions that I've found most useful. But again, depending on your context, your culture, and your own comfort your answers may vary. The main thing is to actually consider timing, as opposed to leaving it up to"feeling." Going from Online to Offline It's very easy to let a great online dialog die out. You message her, she messages youback and forth, back and forth. In order to make certain that I do not waste all my time with online conversations I found it was best to ask a girl to go on a date after about 2 days of messaging or about 20 minutes of constant conversation. Again, try not to linger at the safe-space of the digital world too long. It might feel like it's necessary, but it's very easy to waste plenty of time and momentum in the chat room. Going from Date 1 to Date 2 once I was 25, working as"the new guy" in a tech startup, my desk was placed right behind the sales staff. Every
day I overheard their sales calls where they would use their jedi mind tricks to close deals with multi-million dollar balances. One thing that I noticed is that each and every time they were finishing a call they would ask,"okay so what does your calendar look like for next week? Busy? Okay how about the week after that? O that's no great too. Okay how about the week after that?" Regardless of what the prospect said, the salesperson would insist on at least"penciling" another meeting into the calendar with the choice of cancelling if desired. When I took this technique and applied it to relationship, it led to some pretty incredible results. This rule is somewhat contrarian, but it's worked really well: Always request the next date on the first date. One of the worst things about dating is that you are putting yourself out there. You're opening yourself up to strangers and in return you are getting plenty of uncertainty. Nobody likes uncertainty. No one likes to check their phone every hour to see if you've texted them or not. No one likes to wonder whether you like them or not. Surprisingly, most individuals don't mind if you do not like them, they only want to know. So my suggestion is to stop playing games, both with another person and on your own. If you like them, tell them you like them. If you don't, have the respect to let them know you do not. (A gentle means to do this is by telling them that you are not ready to date at this time. I had a girl tell me this and it was the easiest let down I've ever experienced and used it later myself also ). I should pause here for one caveat: Yes, you should tell them you like them, but not always. I see this a lot with both guys and girls who get very excited by the person they've just met and they then proceed to text them, call them, and see them day after day after day. Stop Chasing Shadows once I was thirteen years old, my grandfather gave me some advice that I still use to this day. He explained,"Women are like shadows, the more you pursue them, the longer they run away. The more you run away, the longer they chase you." If you find someone who you want to be with really poorly, don't frighten them away by being obsessive. If they like you too, there is no need to chase them. Yes, you should actively try to set up a date, but there is no reason to go on dates every single night of the week. Allow the relationship to get some breathing room. A fantastic way to judge if a relationship is going well is if you end up missing the other person and vice versa. There is a great deal of truth in the saying,"absence makes the heart grow fonder," and now there is even scientific evidence for it as well. In a number of studies, anthropologists have discovered that lots of primates invest more effort into a
relationships if the people in that connection have been forced apart. What's interesting is that researchers at the Aalto University in Finland have recently confirmed that the same is true in humans. By data mining mobile phone records and comparing call patterns and length, the researchers at the university found that people may also invest more effort into relationships if there is a probability of that connection weakening. I tried applying this research to relationship in a relatively straightforward way and, to my surprise, it worked nicely. It turns out that by simply allowing for some time to elapse between dates, ironically, makes the relationship strengthen rather than weaken. My cadence for dating that I found worked pretty well was the following: Date 1 -- Day 0 Date 2 -- 7 days after Date 1 Date 3 -- 14 days after Date 2 Date 4 -- variable This sequence meant that I would spread out the first 3 dates across a 1 month period. This allowed for enough time for the connection to grow and helped me make sure I did not suffocate my dates, which was particularly helpful when I was really into them. Takeaways and Next Steps As I mentioned at the start of this post, these dating approaches helped me tremendously, but depending upon your context, your culture, and your comfort, your procedure may need to be different than the one above. In actuality, because dating is such an emotional activity (similar to job hunting), it is imperative to have a system in place that will help you navigate the ups and downs. By engaging in online dating you are getting on a rollercoaster of emotions and, like on a real rollercoaster, it would be foolish to just hop on and hold on. Making sure you have that lap belt secured and that you have been on a few less intense rides will allow you to enjoy the ride a good deal more. As we frequently discuss on the podcast, even when you let go of expectations and only create your target just having fun with other human beings, online dating becomes something to look forward to rather than something to dread. Similar to the advice of world-class investors, you need to diversify your portfolio and minimize your chance of catastrophic failure. A way of doing that is by going on dates which aren't just sit-down dinners, so that regardless of how your relationship partner behaves, at least you'll have a good time doing something interesting. And, to minimize the risk, you should build both an outreach and dating sequence so that you reduce the cognitive load of having to think of new dates constantly. Locate a few activities you like doing and then fit the dates into these activities. This is also a great way to filter out people that aren't compatible with you in the first place, which will save you time and money in the long run. Naturally, irrespective of how well I did all the above items, I still had my share of terrible dates. The girl who used me as a meal plan being just one of many. Dating is a rollercoaster that will frighten you, challenge you, and sometimes make you wish you had never gotten
on. But remember, when you're feeling down and like giving up on love altogether: "You are never as bad as they say you are, you are also not as good as you think you are." Take every date as an opportunity to improve yourself. If you constantly work on yourself, improving your discussions, your dates, and your connection with others, that investment will pay off far beyond online dating. Until then, strap in and enjoy the ride. If you enjoyed this post, I'd super appreciate if you hit the green hand clap button below to ensure that more people can find it. And, if you have any more questions about relationship, listen to our podcast where you can submit your own dating questions and we'll answer them on the display.
