Finding Mr. Right

With Valentine's Day only a few days away, the media is throwing countless dating stories at us. This year the hot topic is social media and dating—they had to find a new angle for a new year, but they all chose the same one…

Rachel Greenwald, author of Find a Husband After 35: Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School, has a new book out called Have Him at Hello: Confessions From 1,000 Guys About What Makes Them Fall in Love… or Never Call Back. She blogged about it today on the Huffington Post, focusing on four ways to find men in the digital age. In the post titled "Valentine's Day Book: Where Can I Find Mr. Right?" she says women too often ask "where" rather than "how." Her suggestions for how:

1. Using Facebook - Scroll through your friends' friends and ask for an introduction
2. Tweeting - Tweet details of a casual meeting, i.e., happy hour, and ask your friends/followers to bring friends
3. Meetup.com - Search for local singles groups
4. Teaching your own man-class - Teach a class on a topic about which men are often clueless, i.e., cooking; men will flock to the class, and hopefully some will ask you out after

Of these, I've done one of the four. After Henry and I split, I joined Meetup.com and joined a number of groups, including some targeted at singles. I've yet to go to any group designed for singles; however, I did meet Alex through a Meetup.com group. 

I have thought about asking my friends on Facebook to set me up on a blind date, but I've never looked at their friends to find a date.

I—and most of my friends—refuse to use Twitter (at least for my personal life). Therefore, I won't be using Twitter as she suggests.

Finally, teaching a man-class? I don't think so. I'm way too introverted.

Have you, dear readers, ever used any of these techniques to find a date? Please let me know.

Second Date with Alex - Part 2

The date was…fine. The movie we saw, "An Education," was excellent. The rest of the date, well, there was lust and not a lot else. Once that haze cleared we realized that maybe we're not the most compatible of people and decided that would be our last date.

This experience with Alex made me think a lot about the differences between dating someone from online vs. someone one meets in person. Alex and I technically met in both realms before our first date. Had I just met him in person at the meet-up group, I would have been attracted to him, but probably not have asked him out. I'm too shy. If I'd only ever encountered him online, I probably wouldn't have messaged him, given our "match percentage" on the dating site. (It wasn't particularly low, but about at the bottom of my current threshold.) Instead, we met in both places and he asked me out; unfortunately, we seem to have overlooked the fact that we don't really have anything in common. We aren't radically different from each other, but enough that anything long-term (or, apparently, short-term) never would have worked out.

He was, however, well-dressed.

Dating Standards/Second Date with Alex

Before I get to the main point of this post: I'm going on my second date with Alex tonight. We're going to go see the movie "An Education." I'll write again tomorrow to update you all on that.

OK. On to the main point. Standards. We all have them. Some are high, others are low, but, I would venture to guess, there are some basic things we all look for in a potential partner. I wrote a post about this ages ago but it's been a while since then. While Henry met a lot of my standards, there were a few (especially at the end—this should have been a warning sign) that he didn't.

As a joke, a co-worker gave me a page-a-day calendar for 2009 called "A Year of Bad Dates." It got buried in my closet upon leaving that job in June, so it was fun to spend a few minutes the other day catching up on what I'd missed. I've got a post to write about the calendar in general, but for today I'll focus on one page that said, "Do you think you're being too picky? Heck no!" Here are their "dating standards":

While I don't care about the George Clooney part, I quite like the "impeccably dressed" part. If there's one standard Henry didn't meet that Alex does, it's that one and I can't even begin to tell you how nice it is to have someone who puts as much effort in looking good as I do.

What do you think of the list?

First Date with Alex

A few weeks ago, I started regularly attending a Meetup.com group for people, like me, who are unemployed. We do free or fairly cheap things during the day on weekdays and generally have a great time. When I went to sign up for my second meetup, I noticed that a guy (I'll call him Alex) from the dating site had also signed up (same picture, same guy). Deciding to play it cool, I said nothing on either site and went to the meetup—a walk around the zoo—with the expectation we might talk a bit, but that I wouldn't mention the dating site unless he did.

To make a long story shorter, we had a good time talking at the meetup, he eventually found me on the dating site, we exchanged a few messages and IMs, he came to another meetup (one that I was in charge of), but then there was silence. However, it was Thanksgiving week. Then on Monday I got a message from him asking me on a date—for milkshakes. My favorite. So I said yes and we set the milkshake date for today.

I had no idea how the date would go, but I shouldn't have worried. Alex is a really nice guy, quite different (and much better dressed) than Henry, and we had a pretty darn good time. We tentatively set another date for next week. I'll keep you posted.