How Not to Meet Girls on Facebook

Preface

As many of you already know, I just ended an eight-month relationship, which I thought was going to last infinitely longer. Upon returning to the single's dating pool,  I realized that my stay would be finite, and that I didn't have nearly enough funny dating stories to share with my posterity. This #datingprobs post is an attempt to remedy that.

Enjoy.

The FB Epiphany

Three weeks into my return to Tinder dating, I came to another realization—that I wasn't dependent on a dating app to present me with suitable, online-dating prospects. I have a facebook account! Facebook already suggests friends that it thinks I'd be compatible with. So why not leverage this list for dating purposes?!  (Surprisingly, this was the first time the thought of using facebook to find friends had seriously occurred to me. Perhaps, I should have thought more about why that was before doing what I did next.) 

With fresh eyes, I looked at the first row of suggested facebook friends and was particularly attracted to one girl named Alison. I clicked to open her profile for some light stalking to see if there was any friendship/dating potential.

• We had 10+ mutual friends.
• Alison had a beautiful profile photo.
• Her feed was full of wholesome activities with clean-looking friends.
• Her family looked happy together.
• She graduated from BYU a couple of years ago.
• She had a full-time job with a local company.
• This definitely deserved further attention.

Knowing full well that she may not respond, I decided to leave an interesting conversation starter in her fb message inbox. I figured that if she was brave enough to respond to a bloke chatting her up out of the blue, she might also be brave enough to initiate a friendship from scratch.

The Conversation

Reflection

Well, shucks. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. I don't blame Alison for being cautious. And while I don't want to guess at her motivations for not accepting my date proposal, her response caused me to wonder—what reason do young, attractive people have to make new friends online when they have so many viable dating options amongst their current (real life) friends and acquaintances. I felt this way, myself, until I was about 30. It was then, when my career started to take off and I felt confident starting a family, that I looked up and realized that all my single friends had vanished. Life is unfair, I remember thinking to myself. I'm getting awesomer, while my dating prospects keep decreasing.

In my final remarks to Alison, I thought to write, "Girl! You don't know what you're passing up; I am pretty much the best boyfriend material an LDS girl could ask for. No, seriously. I'm amazing!" But then I was like, she doesn't need to know that; it would just make her really sad in the event that she actually realized that she had disregarded the winning lotto ticket because she didn't gamble. Kidding aside, I think I somehow blew a potentially beautiful friendship opportunity.

Aside: I become like this immediately following every long-term relationship I terminate. I frenetically hop around like Lewis Carroll's egotistical White Rabbit—impulsive, completely self-absorbed, and seemingly late to get an extremely important date, which turns out to be an ordinary affair in the end. I tend to burn through relationships searching for Miss Right, without investing the time required to really get to know people and develop trust. Hopefully, I'll return to my senses shortly.

If I could rewrite my conversation with Alison, I would slow things down—play it safe—and try to develop a relationship with Alison before trying to meet her. Additionally, I would probably want to leverage our common friends and meet socially first, in order to give her an opportunity to form an opinion about me before seeing if she and I had chemistry.

While disappointed, I have no regrets about my course of action because it has caused me to pause and reflect on my poor dating technique:

• Lesson #1: Don't make assumptions about people's dating styles. Not everyone is ready for online dating; especially the younger crowd.

• Lesson #2: Women typically want to feel comfortable before going out with a prospective date. Therefore, when seeking to begin new friendships via facebook, men ought to take their time and give the relationship at least a little time to simmer before asking them out. Note: Leveraging the support of mutual friends is a great way to do this, assuming you share any.

• Lesson #3: Relationships and global supply chain management are dissimilar. In supply chain management, the primary objective is to eliminate bottlenecks and other waste as efficiently as possible. But people are not processes. So quit trying to be efficient with the women you date. Instead, give your partner time to trust you. (Bare minimum, help assure them that you are not a serial killer before suggesting a face-to-face meeting.)

• Lesson #4: "Manufacturing" relationships is not necessarily a numbers game. While emphasizing speed and volume an effective tactic in the door-to-door sales approach, burning through dating relationships is less effective, especially in online dating. The most-desirable women you want to date are constantly being invited out. In order to stand out from other suitors, try being a friend first. Help women feel comfortable and at ease and if things naturally turn to dating, great. Dating Coach, Evan Marc Katz, in his TEDxStJohns talk, No More Bad Dates, shares a technique to help men get to that first date.  He calls it The 2/2/2 Rule:

Screen capture from minute 13 of TED Talk: No More Bad Dates

• Lesson #5: Rejection stings. But your self-worth should not hinge on anyone else's perception of you. (When you remember your relationship with God—that you are His child—no earthly thing can diminish your perceived value.)

Conclusions

Writing this post has been a fun and educational exercise. I'm grateful I'm not so desperately wrapped up in my desire to be in a relationship that I am unable to laugh my way through these dating faux-pas! I recognize how bad I still am at dating. Evidence: When Alison didn't share my capricious dating priorities and motivations, I sabotaged the relationship and moved on.

I'm beginning to realize why cute girls opt out of online dating (and dating in general)—it's no longer fun for them. No one wants to deal with crazy guys, making them feel uncomfortable with their awkward dating invitations. It's time to make dating fun and natural again.

I can help women rediscover how fun dating can be by tweeking my communication approach ever so slightly. Instead of immediately requesting to set up a date (with the intention to see if we have a connection), I will first make an effort to develop a friendship through virtual communications (e.g., messages, emails, and phone calls). By making a connection first,  followed up by a date, I can filter out bad first dates. When I can't hold a phone conversation with a girl for more than 15 minutes, that's an immediately red flag that I shouldn't invest 2 awkward hours of driving and $30 on an in person date!. Yeah. This change is definitely going to help both me and the girls I interact with—I get my efficiency, and they get a better chance at real fun.

Love is all around me. There are plenty of incredible, amazing single women out there whom I would feel privileged to be with. But I've got to get out of my own way. If I try to skip the acquaintance/friendship season of a relationship by jumping straight to the dating stage, what foundation do I have to see if we have the magic? (Magic happens when you feel like the other person is as much into you as you are into them.) In most of my conversations with women, they say that on a first date, they haven't even decided if they like the guy, let alone determine if they feel that "real connection."

So in my quest to discover a relationship with "chemistry", I'll continue introducing myself to girls with dating potential. But this time, instead of insisting on something neither one of us is ready for, I'll allow the relationship to develop naturally by following the Rule of 2/2/2.