Modern Romance (27 page)

Since I’ve done this to hundreds of people, I will finally do it to myself. Let’s look at
my
exchanges. To set the scene, I got her number at a barbecue in Brooklyn and we talked about getting ramen later that week.

Okay, so the first message was sent by me after I called and sent the text in lieu of a voice mail. My girlfriend didn’t call me back, though; she texted. In the book she gave me, she reveals that at the time, she didn’t realize that I’d asked her to call. After realizing her mistake, she freaked out and was worried that by texting instead of calling she would come off looking too nervous or scared.

Note the day waiting period.

I didn’t respond to her next message until the next day at 10:13
A.M.
I definitely intentionally waited so as not to come off as overeager. And I specifically remember running a draft by a friend and rewriting it several times before sending it off. (The hokey pokey cookie is a reference to a cookie that her restaurant made, one that she knew I loved.)

Today I know for a fact that my waiting did indeed cause some uneasiness. She told me that she felt I must have somehow been offended by the “how funny are you?” comment. But the same night she was waiting, she got word that I’d asked a friend of hers if she was in fact single, so she knew all was well.

Still, the waiting did have an effect. She told me that she was really excited when I wrote back the next morning.

The early messages are interesting to look back on, because they reveal so much about our mind-sets at the time. Both of us were anxious about the texts we were crafting, but we were oblivious to the fact that we were in the same boat.

As things progressed in the relationship (and in our messages), she talked about how much it meant to her when I sent some early loving texts saying that I missed her or was thinking about her. When I read them, it took me back through all the excitement and fun we’d had during those times.

So although these new tools may cause us all stress and angst in the early parts of a relationship, the same technology has also given us all a new place to store, remember, and share our love for each other, and I’m glad we have it.

Don’t think of online dating as dating—think of it as an online introduction service.

Online dating has probably been the single biggest game changer in the hunt for your soul mate.
Remember: Between 2005 and 2012
one-third
of all the couples who got married in the United States met on the Internet. By the time this book is out, that number undoubtedly will be higher and some new app or site will make Tinder or whatever is currently popular seem outdated.

Many online daters we spoke with were having success, but many were also frustrated and fed up with the scene altogether. However, most of the ones who were fed up seemed to be spending more time in front of their screens than in front of their dates in real life.

Online dating works best as a forum where you can meet people whom you’d never otherwise be able to meet. It’s the ultimate way to expand the search beyond the neighborhood.

The key is to get off the screen and meet these people. Don’t spend your nights in endless exchanges with strangers. Communicate with people you have some chance of liking, then, after a few messages—enough to figure out if there’s something really, really wrong with them—just ask them out.

After a certain point, if you’re still trading endless back-and-forth messages online, you’re just wasting time. Have faith in your ability to size someone up in person.

The allure of online dating and its vast supply of potential dates can make staying in and clicking through profiles in your pajamas seem like a better option than heading out to a crowded bar or restaurant, but let’s not forget another great source of potential mates—
the real world.

Remember Arpan, the dude who was so burned out on online dating? We contacted him about a year after the focus group to see whether he was still meeting women online and taking them to the bowling alley (just for drinks, of course).

We were delighted to hear that his whole love life had taken a turn for the better. He had met someone special and been dating her for a few months, and he seemed genuinely happy, with way more energy than he had shown that sad Sunday morning with us.

Arpan met his new lady in real life, but he credited his online dating experiences with helping him meet new people. He explained that all those unanswered messages had reduced his fear of rejection and made him less apprehensive about approaching women.

He met his girlfriend at a bar, after seeing her at a distance and working up the courage to introduce himself. “I walked towards her group, said hello to all of her friends, looked this girl straight in the eye and said, ‘I saw you from across the room and I just had to say hello.’” It was heartwarming to learn that Arpan had turned things around since we’d first met him, and it was fascinating to hear him trace his success in real-world romance to the things he learned while dating online.

With so many romantic options, instead of trying to explore them all, make sure you properly invest in people and give them a fair chance before moving on to the next one.

We have so many options and we’re horrible at analyzing them.
We go on boring dates and we’re quick to move on to the next person.

Stack the deck in your favor. Go on interesting dates. Follow the “monster truck rally” theory, and do things that are going to help you experience what it’s really like to be with this person. Don’t just stare at each other across the table while sipping a beverage and making the same small talk you’ve made a thousand times about siblings, hometowns, and where you went to college.

Also, have faith in people. A person may seem just okay, but if you really invest time in the relationship, maybe they’ll be greater than you assume.

Think about it in terms of the music of rapper Flo Rida.
*
When you hear his latest song, at first you think,
Goddamn it, Flo Rida. You’re just
doing the same thing again, song after song. This song
is nothing special at all.
And by the tenth time you hear it, you’re like,
FLO!!! YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN! THIS IS A HIT, BABY!!!

In a sense we are all like a Flo Rida song: The more time you spend with us, the more you see how special we are. Social scientists refer to this as the Flo Rida Theory of Acquired Likability Through Repetition.

 • • • 

The other thing that has stuck with me is how important it is to analyze options in the real world, not just on the screen.
When I was finishing up this book, I got contacted by a woman who had been in the audience of a stand-up show I did in Michigan in September 2013. During the show I was discussing texting and asked if anyone had met someone recently and had been in a back-and-forth. This woman, who was sitting in the front, raised her hand, and I invited her to come up to the front of the stage and share her experience.

She told me she’d met the guy about a week earlier and had been messaging back and forth. She had met him through friends of friends at a bonfire. He lived in her apartment complex, and after meeting her, he left her a note on her door that said, “Dinner tomorrow?” and his apartment number.

She wrote, “I’m busy,” on the note and put it back on front of his door.

He then placed the note back on her door and wrote, “You’re busy tonight? How about Monday, Wednesday, or Friday?”

She then took the conversation to Facebook and sent him a message that said:

He responded: “No worries. Family always comes first.”

As always, you can tell so much by these messages. Her extended list of excuses, including that really intense one about the dying grandma, did not bode well for this would-be suitor. I asked the audience to clap if they thought she actually liked this guy and would go out with him when things “settled down.” There was a smattering of claps. When I asked if people thought she didn’t like him and they would never go out, there was massive applause. The audience knew this lady wasn’t ready to go out with this guy.

After hearing this, she said, “Well, I’ve seen him around since and he’s not terrible,” and that she would “maybe” go out with him. It was the last I heard of this situation.

Then in September 2014, a year later, the woman was able to get in contact with me. She said that after we read through the messages, she realized she should give him a second chance. They started dating, and now, a year later, they were getting married!

It was pretty insane to hear.

And in the context of this book I think it’s an important story to remember. With all our new tools for connecting and communicating, there’s still nothing more useful than actually spending time with a person face-to-face.

Often, when you’re out in the single world meeting people, you meet someone you like, get their number, and put it right in your phone, transforming them into an “option” that lives in your device. Sometimes you and that option engage in some phone-based interaction and you meet up in person. But sometimes that exchange never happens. That potentially cool, exciting person dies there, buried in your phone.

When I was actively dating, there was a woman I’d met in a bar. For whatever reason, our text conversation fizzled and we never met up after our initial meeting. We ran into each other at a mutual friend’s party years later and really hit it off. I felt dumb. Why hadn’t I ever followed up with this great person?

After writing this book, I think I know why. It’s probably because I was busy chasing other options. I didn’t text her and left her to die in my phone.

For me the takeaway of these stories is that, no matter how many options we seem to have on our screens, we should be careful not to lose track of the human beings behind them. We’re better off spending quality time getting to know actual people than spending hours with our devices, seeing who else is out there.

O
kay, well, I’m fucking done with my book!!! YEAH!!!

Before we part, though, I want to say one more thing about our current romantic conundrums. These days there are a lot of people out there saying that social media and all our new communications technologies are making it impossible for people to really connect with one another. There are an equal number of people saying that our new media makes things better than ever. By now I hope it’s clear that I don’t buy either of these extreme arguments.

Culture and technology have always shaken romance. When the plow came in and made women’s labor value in the family unit drop, it was disruptive. When the car provided a means for people to travel and see people who lived farther away, that was disruptive too. Same with telegraphs, telephones, televisions, and whatever future inventions may come. Who knows, maybe some woman is reading this in the future and wondering,
Ummm. . . well at least dudes weren’t teleporting
dicks to your house on a regular basis! This sounds great.

History shows that we’ve continually adapted to these changes. No matter the obstacle, we keep finding love and romance.

Now that I’ve finished this project, I have a much richer understanding of the new romantic landscape. And the main thing I’ve learned from all this research is that we’re all in it together. I hope you feel this way too.

I wish you, and all the readers, the best of luck in modern romance.

And by best of luck, I mean I hope that one day you’ll meet someone amazing, text them a thoughtful message, take them to a monster truck rally, and then hopefully at some point, after a bowl of delicious ramen, make love to them in a
Jurassic Park
–themed love hotel in Tokyo.