THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO ONLINE DATING: Tips, tricks, and manipulations to navigate the pains and pitfalls She looked me straight in the eyes and smiled. Still, no response. 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 plan, if you're not familiar 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 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 exact. Of course at first I was outraged. How could women take advantage of me like that? As I matured in my online relationship, however, I realized that this was really a response for what men do to women. There are three 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 stopped the career I had been building for over 7 years and I left my 10-year connection with my girlfriend that I thought I was going to marry. All of a sudden I was a career and dating novice. I was scared. After 9 months of misery and frustration I was going to give up on online dating all together. One day, I was sitting in the shower feeling sorry for myself for over an hour. And then, for some unknown reason, my ambitious gene activated and a small voice in my head said,"you are going to give up? No, no you are not. You're going to kick online dating's ass!" I started to channel my distress into anger, and my anger into determination. I started to approach online dating just like one big experiment. I began creating what I predicted,"The Process." In this blog post I will take you through the entire process I chose to learn online dating. By optimizing your profile, A/B analyzing your descriptions, starting meaningful conversations, as well as crafting interesting dates. We'll discuss how to streamline the online dating process so that you can't just get dates, but possibly 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 own comfort, your process might need to be different than the below. But, the important takeaway here is to pull back the emotions 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 much more inclined to enjoy the process. And, if you are diligent, you might 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've 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. Notice: You can also hear the Modern Dating Show podcast, where my friend Trevor and I pay a lot of these strategies as we browse the current 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 they don't define their target obviously. 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 found is that both men and women that are looking 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 help 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. The photos I saw in her profile looked like they belonged more on thechive.com rather than on any dating site. Basically, so as to maximize for getting dates, Maddy had chosen to just include her most provocative photographs. Now I want to be clear, there is nothing wrong with girls having"promiscuous" pictures online. The problem, in the case of dating, is the arrangement of a dating profile and what you contribute with. Our brains have evolved over centuries to intuitively pick up on visual cues much faster than written hints. In fact, they've found that men who are even walking with their girlfriend, will reflexively look if an attractive woman walks by without even activating their conscious brain. Because dating profiles hide most information other than the profile photo until a user clicks, resulting in provocative photos sets a bad first impression. So, while it's totally fine to have sexy photos up on your instagram, leading with them on your online dating profile is sending signals that could be attracting the wrong sort of guy. Additionally, there are lots of classy ways to possess intriguing 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 locate a relationship, her photos were sending signals that she is looking for"fun." Understandably, she had a line of douchebag guys filling up her inbox. Every man who has done online dating will testify to the struggle of getting a girl to swipe directly in their profile, let alone to make them engage in a conversation.
Men, this is entirely your own fault. I've seen men spend hours talking about the numbers of their favourite sports team, which player has what stats, who's health is suffering, as well as how financial reports will influence the team's chances. However, when it comes to online dating, guys have a tendency to slap a few pictures in their profile and then start swiping like orangutans until their fingers develop calluses. Guys, stop. Before you begin creating or re-creating your dating profile, stop and think about what you're trying to achieve. 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. As the saying goes... "If you try to appeal to everybody, you will interest no one." The techniques I will outline below work for either desired outcome, but the choices you make will vastly affect your"conversion" rate. For instance, the first time I mastered everything in this process, I started going on a lot of dates (3--4 per week, every week), but I still felt incredibly unfulfilled. I just realized months later that, while it is good to go on a lot of dates and get practice dating (recall I was off the dating scene for 10 years), it was even more important to make sure I had been dating the perfect folks. Luckily I realized this before I was the victim of some more"meal plans" STEP 2 -- A/B Test your online dating profile images 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 1 second. The single biggest flaw in online dating is that the first impression you make is based solely on your profile picture. They do not get to hear you talk. They do not get to shake your hand. They don't get to smell you (it's a thing).
All you get is 1 picture and there's a 99% chance it is the wrong one. If a person is coming online dating as an experiment, naturally the first thing to check is your profile picture. I started this process in a very unscientific way... One hundred, and I mean 100% of them said that my first picture wasn't my best. It was interesting feedback, but I wasn't certain how I could test numerous pictures considering that 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 same on each profile, but I put up another profile picture on each. I rotated the pictures across profiles until I could find a large enough sample size and be sure that the platform wasn't effecting results. Four of my real dating profile pictures Sure enough, the profile picture which I thought was my best was always the one with the least games. Interestingly enough, a picture I did not read much into, pic B, was actually a huge turn off for pretty much 100 percent of women. 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 I never would have made that connection. Sometimes your photos can be your greatest blind spot. To completely test out this idea, I really enrolled a couple of friends (both men and women) into the experiment and had them change out their profile pictures. Listen to The Modern Dating Show Episode 2 This is a super simple optimization that can look to be a pain today, but it will save you from dozens, if not hundreds, of missed matches. This is the 20% of work which will get you that 80% improvement in results, so please rotate your photos and rotate them frequently. Top Tip: If you would like to speed up this process, you can really ask your games what they think of your pictures. If a conversation with a game wasn't going well, I decided to get some"user comments" by asking her why she swiped right and which of my photos she believed was best. (I also used this technique to ask recruiters why I wasn't getting jobs.) Descriptions are negotiable Now, a part of this error may be my fault, since I took his advice quite literally. I started to speak my mind, dress how I wanted to dress, and act how I wanted to act.
This turned out to be a very bad idea. Without any filter or thought behind my actions, I rubbed more than a few people the wrong way. Now that I have 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 are by ourselves. Seth Godin has a wonderful 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 guy wearing a button up top, as an instance, is not necessarily wealthy, but the button up top is putting out the signal that he is wealthy. Much like someone who wears all black and an anarchy necklace is indicating she doesn't want to follow society's rules, the man in the button up shirt is indicating that he is okay with subsequent convention. Signals matter. In college I met a woman at a party who immediately caught my attention. I approached her and we immediately hit off. We spent the entire party flirting and dancing. We made plans to have a lunch date at the college cafeteria after 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 around her neck. Initially 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 began talking. After some awkward conversation, she explained that her friends were sick of her being single so they'd dressed her up to be"cuter" for the party to attract a man. I was that man. I did not care what she dressed like, but as we picked up our conversation we soon realized we had practically nothing in common. The outfit she'd used as a signal at the party didn't match her personality at all. We finished the date cordially and moved on. Choosing your signs is great, but picking false signals not so much. The same goes for your online dating profile description. You do not want to lie, but you also don't want to be your total self. You want to tell them about how you collect vintage records, you don't want to tell them about how you cry every time a U2 tune comes on. You want to tell them about the way you volunteer at the animal shelter, you don't want to let them know about how you ran over your cat. Crafting a fantastic description is perhaps the most difficult and personal piece of improving your online dating profile. There's no ideal answer, but there are definitely some wrong answers. The first step to having a great dating profile description is using a very clear structure.
I break down a relationship profile description into 3 components: Headline: A short sentence somebody can read quickly. Intro Paragraph: A little longer description that provides some colour to your interests and personality. Call to Action: A desired action you want them to take. Internet 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 guys messaging you"hey" or"wanna f*ck?" Then give them some fuel to start the conversation with. The Headline Unfortunately, people tend to surf internet 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 browse everything in a similar way. Due to this, I think the headline is possibly the most important bit of your description and you need to try different variations until you find one that works 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 fast snapshot of what is unique about you. Having a headline that is authentic, interesting, and short functions like a stop sign for the individual who is 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?" Chances are they'll laugh at the question. As any solid content marketer knows, terrific content is all about respecting the medium that you're producing the content for. By way of instance, if I went up to a woman at a bar and said,"Outdoorsy, curious, ambitious, energetic," she will definitely get up and leave. The opposite is true for online dating, however. You need your headline to be fluff free. Keep it to a 3--6 words, or a single sentence, and be certain that it is quintessentially you. The Intro Paragraph Once that initial curiosity is peaked, you should start paving a path towards them getting to know you a little bit more. This is not the time to compose a book about yourself. After all, this is only your 3rd touch point with this individual, your picture and headline being the first two. The intro paragraph gives a small amount of color and perhaps some talking points that you two can talk about in chat (again, ladies, this is incredibly important to add if you would like to have more meaningful conversations). The intro paragraph that worked best for me was: "I love being outside as much as possible! Some of my favorite things are surfing, climbing, and playing volleyball. I am a creative at heart but I love learning about new and businesses ideas. I'm into photography, layout, and Tim
Ferriss. My ideal Saturday is playing volleyball at the beach with friends. My perfect Sunday is reading a fantastic book at Promenade cafe." This paragraph outlines a couple of basic hobbies and activities I enjoy and some non-standard items like business, design, and Tim Ferriss that might peak curiosity. The most important thing to remember about this section is to avoid the generic actions that could apply to pretty much anybody. "I like hanging out with friends, watching films, binging on Netflix, and going on hikes." While I'm sure there are people in the world who don't enjoy watching movies or hanging out with friends, probably 95 percent or more of those people in your area enjoy both those things too. As opposed to trying to fit in, try to stand out. Try to balance your description between things most people like, so you can discover common ground, but also things that are uniquely you. For instance in my description above: -- Many people like being outdoors and photography. -- But very few people like learning about businesses or Tim Ferriss. The Call To Action This is optional, although it certainly helps. In marketing, 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 need the person to message you. This seems like a no brainer, but I've found that a lot of people, both guys and girls, have been rejected so many times that they finally become discouraged from making first contact. I have heard countless stories of girls who have matched with a man who they really like, but the man never messages them. When I ask them why they don't message first, they say that they don't know what to say or they don't want to seem desperate. The call to action helps alleviate this problem by making it clear that you want them to message you. But, obviously you do not want everyone to message you, so make your call to action specific. On OkCupid they have an individual section that states: "You should message me if..." ← This is OkCupid's sub-heading but you can just manually add it on other online dating programs too. Again, as with all this information, when in doubt just check it out. Try having a call to action and see if your conversations improve. If they don't, simply delete it.
The beauty 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 example, you have thousands of opportunities and"do-overs" to play with. STEP 3 -- Making first talking and contact The place where online dating falls flat on its face compared to"in real life" relationship is when it comes to the conversation. Having to chat online as your initial conversation is a huge limitation when you are trying to start a new relationship. For starters, it is a really unnatural method of communicating, since it's been shown that we receive 55 percent of our communication from non-verbal (or in this case non-typed) communicating. It makes sense then that if 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 good relationship through online relationship, then it is a fantastic idea to study 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 didn't have a high match rate. Listen to The Modern Dating Show Episode 6 I will 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 good opener from a poor one. How's it going?" B) "Hey! How was your weekend?" (or any other variation of this type of question). D) "Hey! (based on a book they listed in their profile) I will allow you to consider it for a second. (I'll add some space before the answer below. Scroll once you're ready.) Scroll for the answer
Scroll for the answer Scroll for the response Scroll for the response 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 picked the worst answer.) In order of best to worst, the answers are D, B, A, C (D being best). There are pluses and minuses to any conversation starter. While I found the absolute best conversations resulting from"Hey! How did you like X book," that clearly depends if they have put a book in their profile. You can alter this to ask about some other part of their profile, such as a picture or a location in their pictures. The reason I suspect the book one works best though is because a) it shows you actually read their profile and b) it shows 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'm 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 started with this opener felt a lot more natural and went past a few messages. The next best option,"Hey! Works almost as well, but it is obviously confined to Sundays, Mondays, or Tuesdays. (It would be strange if you used this on a Friday). This worked pretty well, but not nearly too. I suspect it's because it sounds too much like I'm 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 the other person has responded, it is time to have a dialogue. Every dialog changes, but there are a few guidelines that I'll put in here as suggestions. First, some online dating suggestions for men: DON'T attempt to be interesting by being obnoxiously weird. I can not tell you the number of messages my female friends have shown me that sound objectively psychotic. The sad thing is that I know that the guy is just nervous and trying to think of something interesting to say. Just have a regular conversation like you would with a friend. DO attempt to talk about things she's interested in but also add your own thoughts. One of the most common complaints I have heard from female friends is that they feel like they're being interviewed. Be sure that you ask questions, but that you also share things about yourself in equal measure. DON'T make comments about her body or appearance. Regardless of how well intentioned you are, it will be
perceived in the wrong way. Saying things like,"you're so beautiful! You have a cute smile! You are..." will only lead to a polite"thank you" and won't create meaningful conversation.
Now, a couple of online dating suggestions for girls: DO be nice and help guide the conversation. Even when I've tried to be friendly and nice, I have still received quite curt or standoff-ish answers. No matter how much men pretend that they don't care about the dialogue, they do. And they normally don't have any clue what they're doing, so offer them some help and guide the dialogue in a positive direction. DON'T answer questions without asking any of your own. If you're tired of conversations feeling like interviews, then be certain that you ask the man about things he's interested in as well. DON'T make judgments too soon. In my experience women tend to place a good deal more thought into their text messages than guys do. If a guy says something that looks weird or odd, give him the benefit of the doubt and don't read too much into it, chances are he didn't either. Now a proposal for the two parties: Attempt to move the dialogue from online to in real life relatively fast. Online dating is a excellent tool to fulfill someone, but it's just that. It is a tool, it is not actual dating. My overall 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 begun talking about using a date by Wednesday. So yes, use the programs, but also get off them 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 cause you to smile more and sweat less After I had mastered the online portion of relationship, I soon realized that securing the date is just half the battle. The second half of the battle, how well goes, is largely determined before you have even set out from your residence. As they say in real estate: location, location, location. Where you have your date decides about 50--70 percent of the outcome of the date. But a question... Where is the worst place to have a date?
As it happens, it's actually at the most commonly selected dating location: A sit-down restaurant. At first I was taking all my dates to restaurants for dinner. But remember, I was completely new to dating so I was just following what I'd seen in movies. Most of them didn't go well, but I was not certain why. After a dozen or so awkward (and pricey ) dates, I decided that I should experiment with several other locations. What happened next was absolutely mind blowing. Almost like flipping a light switch, my dates improved tremendously. It wasn't I was doing anything differently or that I was picking better women to go on dates with, it was simply a matter of context. Here's why I think dinner dates don't work, it goes something like this: You meet a complete stranger outside a restaurant. You have an awkward hug. You sit down at a table. You start talking, then the waiter interrupts asking about 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 waiter comes back ten minutes later. You order food. Then you run out of things to discuss. What do you do next? There are no exits, nothing around to comment on, nothing to see or do. You have to keep talking. A dinner date provides no choices. It is a singular task that depends on you connecting with a complete stranger almost instantly. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that many of us are getting worse at getting in-person discussions. Spending so much time online has improved our written communication skills, but it has also atrophied our in-house communication abilities. So, if we're getting worse at getting in-person discussions, why would you bet your entire love life on the fact you will be able to have an remarkable in-person conversation with a complete stranger? 3 Rules for Creating Great Dates I never thought that dating could be a life-or-death action, but one day changed all that. I had been holding on to a small ledge, about the size of a golf-ball, while the rest of my body dangled 30-feet above the ground like a giant cat toy. My fingers started to sweat and I knew that I couldn't hold on to the ledge much longer. "O well," I thought,"this is going to be a great bonding experience." As I let my fingers slip off the ledge I expected the sharp jolt of the rope in 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 as I had slipped off the ledge. She panicked and didn't catch the rope until I had fallen 15 ft to what I was certain was my upcoming death. Finally the rope eventually stopped and I felt a massive jolt, both emotionally and physically.
"Okay this date may be a little too exciting," I thought. My whole dating profession made a 180-degree turn when I started taking my dates on fun activities instead of dinners. I'd 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 great date place could be distilled into three categories: Walkability -- Do we need to sit together or can we walk around? When you're walking, your landscape is shifting so that you can grab new conversation topics as you go. "O look at that naked man on rollerblades!" Action -- Can we do the activity reasonably well? I've seen guys get this one pretty wrong. It's fun to teach someone something that you are passionate about, but be sure it's not too hard. Taking a woman rock climbing? Make sure she isn't scared of heights first. Scalability -- Can the date increase or shrink in scale as needed? Having a great time? Great! Let's go get dessert! No chemistry? No issue, how do we end the date sooner? With these three criteria, I crafted a 3 date sequence which nearly doubled the amount of successful dates I went on. I know what you are thinking,"This guy took women out to the very same areas like it was some sort of regimented assembly line?" This was my go-to order, but, based on interests, I would substitute different activities to keep the dates intriguing. This was simply a template which simplified my decisions and decreased the cognitive load I was putting on my brain. Happy brain = Happy dates. So here is my perfect dating arrangement: Date #1 -- Off the Grid: Off the Grid is a gathering of food trucks every Friday by the San Francisco bay. Why I like it: One of the difficulties of inviting someone out to dinner is that everyone has different food tastes. Then (if you're a guy) you have to account for cost of meals. Off the grid solves this since there are over 20 different kinds of (affordable) cuisine. Additionally, it lets you walk around, people watch, and get drinks. Feel like going all out? Date #2 -- Variable: This date could vary based on interests but I had a couple of go-tos, specifically: Little Italy, rock climbing, tennis, picnic on the beach. Why I like it: What these activities had in common were the 3 variables: walkability, action, scalability. We could walk around Little Italy, catch cannolis, stay for drinks at Jack Karouac's favorite pub, or abort early. With both rock climbing and tennis we can alternate between activity and talking. If we did a picnic on the beach, we could go for romantic walks or huddle around a fire pit on Ocean Beach. Why I like it: This date was particularly important because if a girl had made it #3, it meant I really liked her. Additionally, it meant we might take the connection to the bedroom. The Cal Academy night fulfilled all requirements, also it was a semi-formal occasion so we can both dress nicely for that particular night. This was also my secret test because if a girl didn't like facts and science it likely More helpful hints 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 sequence. Here are a few tips on what to search for on every date as you try to create your own dating arrangement: Date #1: Look for a casual environment that is not intimidating. Dark bars or loud places don't make for good conversation. Be sure that you can reliably go to this area, so avoid places with long waits or where you need to make reservations. Ensure you can schedule the date for a weeknight (try to not book a person's weekend for a first date). Date #2: You have broken the ice and you've both agreed to a second date, so have fun with this one! Choose an activity you will both like that is not too difficult. Ideally choose an activity which has a cadence where you alternate between doing something and speaking. Going on a 10 mile run is great for exercise, but it doesn't allow for conversation. Watching a movie at a movie theater has similar limitations. Date #3: You confirmed you like each other, it is time to take it to the next level. Try to make this date a bit 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 or not you want to continue 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 relationship. For example, if I didn't visit the Cal Academy I'd go dancing instead. STEP 5 -- Obtaining your Timing Right maybe one of the most important pieces of the internet dating mystery that I see guys screw up again and again is time. Assuming the guy is the one forcing the dating sequence (which is not necessarily the case) there are a few questions you need to ask: When should you ask her to go on a date? How long should you wait between date 1 and date 2? When should you sleep together? Here I'll share my answers to these questions that I've found most useful. But again, depending on your context, your culture, and your comfort your answers may vary. I will share my experience (as a heterosexual male living in San Francisco) and you can make whatever adjustments you deem appropriate. The main thing is to actually think about 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 , she messages you, back and forth, back and forth. To be able to make certain I don't waste all my time with online conversations I found it was best to ask a woman to go on a date after about 2 days of messaging or roughly 20 minutes of constant conversation. Again, try not to linger at the safe-space of this virtual world too long. It might feel like it's necessary, but it is quite easy to waste a lot of time and momentum in the chat room. Going from Date 1 to Date 2 once I was 25, working as"the new guy" at a tech startup, my desk was placed right behind the sales team. Every day I overheard their sales calls where they would use their jedi mind tricks to close deals with multi-million dollar accounts.
One thing that I discovered 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 then? O that's no great also. Okay how about the week then?" Regardless of what the prospect said, the salesperson would always insist on at least"penciling" another meeting to the calendar with the option of cancelling if needed. Once I took this technique and applied it to dating, it led to a pretty incredible results. This rule is somewhat contrarian, but it's worked really well: Always ask for the second date on the first date. One of the worst things about dating is that you are putting yourself out there. You are opening yourself up to strangers and in return you're getting a lot of uncertainty. Nobody likes uncertainty. No one likes to check their phone every hour to determine if you've texted them or not. Nobody likes to wonder whether you like them or not. Surprisingly, most individuals don't mind if you do not like them, they just want to know. So my suggestion is to stop playing games, both with the other person and with yourself. If you don't, have the respect to let them know you don't. (A gentle way to do this is by telling them that you aren't ready to date right now. I had a girl tell me and it was the easiest let down I have ever experienced and used it later myself also ). I must pause here for a single caveat: Yes, you should tell them you like them, but not always. Nobody likes to be smothered or chased constantly. I see this a lot with both guys and girls who get really excited by the person they have 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 told me,"Women are like shadows, the more you chase them, the more they run away. The more you run away, the longer they pursue you." If you discover someone who you would like to be with really poorly, don't scare them away by being obsessive. If they like you as well, there's no need to chase them. Yes, you should actively attempt to establish a date, but there's no reason to go on dates every single night of the week. Permit the relationship to get some breathing room. A fantastic way to judge whether a relationship is going well is if you end up missing the other person and vice versa. There is a lot of truth in the saying,"absence makes the heart grow fonder," and now there's even scientific evidence for it also. 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 telephone patterns and duration, the researchers at the university found that humans may also invest more effort into relationships if there is a probability of that
relationship weakening. I tried applying this research to relationship in a relatively straightforward way and, to my surprise, it worked very well. It turns out that by simply allowing for some time to elapse between dates, ironically, makes the connection strengthen rather than weaken. My cadence for dating that I found worked fairly 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 arrangement meant that I'd spread out the first 3 dates across a 1 month period. This allowed for enough time for the relationship to grow and helped me make sure I didn't suffocate my dates, which was especially helpful when I was really into them. Takeaways and Next Steps As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, these dating approaches helped me tremendously, but depending upon your context, your culture, and your own comfort, your process may have to be different than the one above. In actuality, because relationship is such an emotional activity (similar to job hunting), it is vital to have a system set up to assist 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 simply hop on and hold on. Making certain you have that lap belt secured and that you have been on a few less extreme rides can allow you to enjoy the ride a whole lot more. As we frequently discuss on the podcast, when you let go of expectations and just make your goal 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 wide investors, you need to diversify your portfolio and minimize your chance of catastrophic failure. A means of doing this is by going on dates that aren't just sit-down dinners, so that regardless of how your dating 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 relationship sequence so that you reduce the cognitive load of having to think of new dates constantly. Locate a few activities you enjoy doing and then match the dates into these activities. This is also a wonderful way to filter out people who aren't compatible with you in the first place, which will save you time and money in the long run. Of course, regardless of how well I did all the above items, I had my share of terrible dates. The girl who used me as a meal program being just one of many. But bear in mind, once you're feeling down and enjoy giving up on love altogether: "You are not 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 work on your own, improving your conversations, your dates, and your connection with other people, that investment will pay off far beyond online dating.
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