The Juggling Act of Online Dating

Online dating and reporting the stories back to all of you have become a bit of a part time job. I'm active on two different sites, signed up for an in-person meet up group called Events and Adventures, and marginally active on three additional sites. It's become a bit of a juggling act to keep all of it straight, especially since I've never dated multiple people simultaneously before. I'm a quite organized person so I've developed a few tactics to keep myself sane.


I'm available Tuesday. Wait, no I'm not.

When I first started talking to guys about scheduling dates, I didn't pay close enough attention to which days I said I was available. A few times that resulted in more than one guy saying he wanted to see me on the same day. There's no way I can handle more than one date in a single night (even in 24 hours as the date-a-thon proved) so I needed to do something differently. My entire life is in my calendar so I started adding holds to my calendar if I told a guy I was available that day. This method seems to be working and has meant far less back and forth trying to schedule things.


Where are we meeting again?

At the beginning I was a little lazy about what I put into the calendar entry for a date and often just entered the guy's name at the date and time we agreed to. This worked fine until I accidentally deleted all of my OKCupid messages. Since I don't generally give out my phone number before meeting a guy from OKC that meant I had no way to contact the guy and didn't know if we had actually confirmed a place to meet. It's also helpful to read the messages you've sent each other or at least look at his profile again before meeting in person. After some digging through my search history I managed to figure out their usernames. I had to send a few awkward messages asking if we'd picked a place yet. Now I make sure to add any details on the location as well as the guy's username to my calendar. And I don't delete messages anymore either.


Sorry, but who is this?

On Coffee Meets Bagel you don't have much of a choice about exchanging phone numbers because the number they set up for you expires after a few days. With the first few it was easy to keep the phone numbers straight. Then yesterday happened. I was texting with one guy and about to confirm a date. Then I got a text from a number I didn't recognize. He turned out to be the guy I thought I had already been texting with. Oops. Now all phone numbers get stored with a name. I'll have to clean out my phone at some point, but no more close calls like that.


I'll be at home washing my hair.

In prior relationships I've often gotten way too involved with the guy far too quickly at the expense of relationships with my friends and participating in activities that I enjoy. When these relationships have ended, it often felt like there was a gaping hole since I'd been spending so much time with that person. Now that I've been single for awhile, I've gotten much more protective of "me time". An interesting side effect of these dates being exhausting at times is that I've started scheduling much more time with my friends as well as time to take care of general life tasks. I also won't cancel on my friends just to see a guy I'm interested in. I'll need to re-read this post when I actually start another relationship.