She looked me directly in the eyes and smiled. Again, I looked at her and then looked at the invoice. Still, no reply. It definitely wasn't my best moment, but it was not hers either. Apparently, as I discovered afterwards, I had fallen into a trap known as"the meal program." The meal program, if you're unfamiliar with it, is when women go on dates with men merely to get a free meal. It was obviously quite popular with attractive college girls, a classification she definitely fell into. When I first heard about the"meal plan," I did a mental rewind as I scrolled back through all the dates I had gone until there: all 37 dates to be exact. Of course at first I was outraged. How could women take advantage of me like this? As I matured in my internet relationship, however, I realized that this was really a response for what men do to women. There are 3 major levers in our lives which, if we pull on them properly, can change everything. Our career, our health, and our relationships can be the difference between depression and elation. I learned this first hand 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 more than 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 relationship novice. I was scarred. And then, for some unknown reason, my ambitious gene activated and a little voice in my head said,"you are going to give up? No, no you're not. You're going to kick online dating's ass!" I began to channel my misery into anger, and my anger into determination. I began to approach online dating just like one big experiment. I began creating what I predicted,"The Process." In this blog post I'll take you through the whole process I took to learn online dating. By optimizing your profile, A/B testing your descriptions, starting meaningful conversations, and even crafting interesting dates. We'll discuss how to streamline the online dating process so that you can not just get dates, but possibly find the love of your life (with minimal stress). Now, before I get into it, I must preface that depending on your context, your culture, and your comfort, your process may need to be different than the under. But, the important takeaway here is to pull back the feelings that come from relationship 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 will be more likely to enjoy the procedure. And, if you're diligent, you might end up finding that special person.