She looked me directly in the eyes and smiled. Again, I looked at her and then looked at the bill. Still, no reply. At this time I imagined picking up the bill and slapping her across the face with it as hard as I could. It definitely was not my best moment, but it was not hers either. Apparently, as I discovered afterwards, I had fallen into a trap called"the meal plan." The meal plan, 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 the dates I had gone on until there: all 37 dates to be exact. How could women take advantage of me like this? Especially since I was being so vulnerable by putting myself out there to ask them out in the first place. As I matured in my internet relationship, however, I realized that this was really a reaction for what men do to women. There are 3 significant levers in our lives which, if we pull them correctly, can change everything. Our career, our health, and our relationships are the difference between depression and elation. I learned this firsthand because in the last 5 years I went through the excruciatingly painful and draining process of pulling all three levers at once. I stopped the career I had been building for more than 7 years and I left my 10-year connection with my girlfriend that I believed I was going to marry.
All of a sudden I was a career and dating newcomer. I was depressed. I was scared. After 9 months of misery and frustration I was about to give up on online dating all together. And then, for some unknown reason, my ambitious gene activated and a little voice in my head said,"you're going to give up? No, no you are not. You are going to kick on online dating's ass!" I began to channel my misery into anger, and my anger into determination. I began to approach online dating like one big experiment. I began creating what I predicted,"The Process." In this blog post I'll take you through the entire process I chose to learn online dating. From optimizing your profile, A/B testing your descriptions, starting meaningful conversations, and even crafting interesting dates. We'll go over how to streamline the online dating process so you can not just get dates, but possibly discover the love