Adventures in Post-Grad Dating

It's Valentine's Day today so I figured I should probably blog about romance.  And then I remembered that I don't really know anything about romance because I've been single for the last three Valentine's Days, and the other 1,092 days in between as well.  But although relationships are a mystifying puzzle that I remain woefully ignorant of, there is indeed one thing that I have become a grand ultimate master of in my three years of singlehood.  That thing is the art of serial dating.

For some reason that term looks menacing, maybe because you probably associate it with serial murdering, so I'll elaborate.  After graduating college and ending my last relationship, I realized that 1) I had no idea how I was going to meet guys outside the bubble of the university experience, and 2) I had never actually participated in casual dating before in my life.  In college, I engaged pretty consistently in long-term relationships, and so became overcome with a burning desire to explore what else was out there.

So ignoring my natural inclination to lie in bed all day and eat chips, I decided to plunge head-first into the great unknown. I made online dating profiles, struck up conversations at the grocery store, and met a whole bunch of dudes.

The past three years have subsequently been a whirlwind adventure of dive bar number-scoring, horrifying Okcupid messages, first date butterflies, philosophical (slightly drunken) conversations over margaritas, awkward fade-aways, a little bit of heartache, and many, many new life experiences.  

But what does it look like?  Thankfully, I've kept a pretty solid record (*cough*extremelydetailedexcelspreadsheet*cough) of everyone I've ever gone on a first date with since 2012.  Turns out, there are 42 of them.

Some Handy-Dandy Stats

Total # of first dates: 42

How many turned into second + dates: 23, so about 55%. 
31% turned into 3 + ! 

Longest hang-out: 3 months 
This one was fun and we actually got to know each other really well. He ended up liking some other girl more than me - such is life!

Shortest hang-out: 1 hour
The most helpless feeling ever is when you meet someone for the first time and immediately can tell you're not into them but must grimly continue on because of social rules.

How contact was first established: 

UPDATE: someone suggested that I add a whole bunch of other stats in addition to these, so you can find them here. 

Let's delve more into how these dates came about, aka The First Encounter!

The First Encounter 

Ahhhh, online dating.  I was so skeptical of using the Internet to meet people but then one night I got drunk and made a profile on Okcupid and then was too lazy to delete it.  I would describe Okcupid (as a woman, anyway) as a cesspool of tons of weird shady people with the occasional awesome one.  If you're female on this site, you receive literally thousands of messages spanning from one word ("sup") to five paragraphs, utter indistinctiveness to extreme personalization, and creepy/strange to casually witty and hilarious.  

Over the course of nearly three years, here are some of my favorite and very least favorite messages I've received.

The Worst

BUT I THOUGHT THIS WAS A MODEL AGENCY

Not sure where to start with this one  

This guy is real, and he's really sending this message to every girl that doesn't reply to him

"The more exotic the better!" 

Immediately after reading this I barricaded myself in my closet just to make sure this guy wasn't lurking outside of my apartment about to reenact this story.  Seriously WHAT THE FUCK.

The Best 

Thankfully there are many cool and creative people out there with significantly lower ax-murdering potential.  Here were some of my favorites:

Okay obviously any clever reference to Harry Potter is going to instantly win my favor

And the same can be said for Pokemon. Seriously how could I resist (even though I did. I guess KELLY indeed used BLOG!)

This one was okay, I just really liked the idea of carrier pigeons  

Alcoholic butterbeer is like the trump card of offers 

I loved this song so much as a child that I included it in our high school prom limo mixtape so he gets points for that.  ...So basically, you just need to talk about Harry Potter, Pokemon, or Disney in your first message.



...But what about the 43% of guys I first met outside of online dating?  Honestly, the context of our first encounters varied drastically.  The ones that stick out in my mind are: 

1.  The guy that I canvassed on the street for money and later asked out using the phone number he wrote down on our donor form

2.  The guy that I met at 2AM in Downtown Berkeley on our way back from respective shenanigans
We started arguing about college football and then ran into an empty Indian restaurant where he convinced the owners to switch on their radio and proceeded to teach me how to swing dance.  I'm not sure what the owners thought about all this. 

3.  The guy that overheard me singing in the stairway at Kips' dive bar and left me the most hilarious voicemail the next day in the history of voicemails:



Meeting guys is something you just have to approach with open-mindedness and some spontaneity, I think.  Don't over-think it, just go for it!  If you're down for adventure, adventure will find you.

The First Date

The concept of first dates can be pretty weird if you think about it - it's kind of like a two-sided job interview in which both people are trying to convince each other that they're interesting, smart, funny, cool, and normal all at the same time.  I have to confess that I used to get ready for dates by watching videos of Jennifer Lawrence on talk shows in the hopes that her wittiness would transfer to my persona.  Whatever works, right? 

But practice makes perfect, and the more dates I went on, the more comfortable I got with hanging out with strangers.  When I asked a few friends what information they'd like me to include in a dating blog post, many immediately responded: "embarrassing first date stories!"  But truthfully, I don't really have any exceedingly mortifying stories to tell.  There were definitely some awkward ones, but nothing truly blogworthy.  Which is good, I think; it's like a testament to all of our social skills functioning at a decent level.

The only slightly distressing encounter I can think of is the time this hipster dude and I went to see an artsy indie movie about a recovering alcoholic.  The entire time I was stressing about what I was going to say about the movie afterward that would make me sound sophisticated and indie, but the only thing I came up with was

One of the most memorably epic first dates I've participated in was the one where I went to this guy's apartment and we drank beer and had an intense battle of N64 Super Smash Brothers.  We each won one game, and all of his housemates gathered to watch the tie-breaking match, in which I narrowly triumphed.  We then had an impromptu dance party with the housemates, played with his cat, spit on cars on his rooftop, harmonized "Titanium" and watched videos of acappella groups until early in the morning. 

Do I have any tips for a successful first date besides watching Jennifer Lawrence interview videos beforehand?  I'd say

1) Set a tone of easy-goingness immediately upon meeting.  Both of you are pretty nervous so you just want to take a figurative hammer and smash through any potential awkwardness from the get-go by making a joke about something - the bar decor, Google Maps, whatever.  If anything, just exclaim "this place is really awesome" and you can talk about that. 

2) Have an arsenal of entertaining stories to tell.  In case you're nervous and can't think of anything to say, be ready with a couple of funny/interesting anecdotes to whip out when there's a lull in conversation.  I'll tell the one about the time I got half a million people on the Internet to look at a dumb picture of a cat on my head, or the time I got into a fight about tax reform with the guy who sang the Pokemon theme song, blah blah.  

3) Think of some awesome, thought-provoking questions to ask.  To really get to know someone effectively, you have to cut through the surface-level stuff and talk about things that reveal a person's values, hopes, dreams, etc.  Don't just ask them to describe their job, ask them what they most love about their job and the biggest thing they've learned from working there.  Ask about their frustration, their mistakes.  Ask them what their definition of happiness, loneliness, and love is.  My personal favorite question to ask is what has been their favorite age so far and why.  

The Follow-Up

You saw earlier the different ways that these encounters ended - who broke it off, how, and why.  I wanted to talk more about the concept of fadeaways vs talking it out. 

In the beginning, if I wasn't interested in pursing anything I would take the cowardly route out by conducting the infamous "fade-away", aka replying to text messages later and later until I finally stopped replying altogether.  But this just left a dirty feeling on my skin and was just pretty douche-y in general.  I've learned that honesty is the best policy when you're not interested in seeing someone again, even if it's scary.  And when I told them the truth, 100% of guys appreciated my straight-forwardness.  And I felt the same appreciation when they were honest with me. 

Example of how this can play out in real life:

See? So much better than making up an awkward bullshit excuse!  #adulting

Lessons Learned 

So what did I take away from these three years of serial dating?  Not a relationship, obviously (heh.)  But no, in all honesty I'm glad that I've been able to experience singleton for this extended period of time.  I've learned how to get out of my comfort zone and rely on no other people but myself.  Dating so many people has also:

1.  Increased my self-confidence.  Remember back in middle school when you heard a boy liked you, so you started to like him back?  I feel like even through college I would get into a relationship just because it was easy, and because I was just glad there was someone who was into me.  I think a lot of people have the tendency to settle like this.  But now after going on dates with some seriously cool, smart, attractive guys I previously assumed out of my league, I realize that I was undervaluing myself all this time.  Now I'm not afraid to go after what I want, and that has been really empowering.

2.  Been an excellent way to get a glimpse into a hugely diverse range of career fields.  This is kind of a random one, but dating has allowed me to meet people in fields I never would have been exposed to otherwise, and it's fascinating.  Hearing a scientist describe why he loves his work (he's like an explorer into unknown territory) and hates it (he may never know if his labor will lead anywhere), learning about how an engineer applies his programming to cool personal projects, and finding out all the steps behind a film director's creative process has been awesome.  It's made me really appreciate people who are very different from me - being around them has helped expand my perspective. 

3.  Helped me learn more and more about what I'm looking for in a relationship.  This is probably the biggest one.  I figure that once you find someone you want to be with forever, you can't really afford to mess it up so you better be pretty damn confident in your decision-making abilities.  Now, I know a lot more about what I want and don't want.  


So there it is, my long-ass post about post-grad dating.  Hope you guys found this piece at least mildly interesting, and I hope all the single people out there can take comfort in the fact that it's totally fine to be single in our twenties and even advantageous in many ways!  As cliche as it sounds, you have to learn to love yourself first, and that's something I'm getting better at every day.

I'm not sure how to end this so here's a picture of some independent women for you