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There are a lot of fish in the sea—something your mother, grandmother, or any other relative in your family may have told you once, twice, or hundreds of times before. If you’re not catching anything worthwhile in a pond, why don’t you move out and try your luck in the ocean?
In 2011 and 2012, that’s exactly what I did. Frustrated with the inefficiency of monogamous dating, I went on 101 dates with 52 different men, a partly personal and partly academic social experiment that I designed while finishing my undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley. My voyage into the world of megadating was an honest attempt to find true love, as well as the groundwork for my future career as a successful dating coach in San Francisco.
Before you get the wrong idea, let me explain what I mean by megadating. Megadating is not sleeping with as many people as you can find, nor does it involve dating other people on the sly while involved in a relationship. Megadating means going on a lot of dates with a lot of people in a short amount of time—a process that I believe is the best and most beneficial way to speed up your chances of finding the right person.
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My approach to megadating was highly methodical. I kept a log filled with my observations, even scribbling down information in the bathroom stall of a bar or restaurant at times, lest I forget some important detail for my research. Afterwards, I analyzed the information, rated the date and categorized the experience according to several key factors. After a while, the data revealed clear patterns and rich insight into men, the dating process, and the efficiency and vast benefits of finding true love through megadating.
Through this experiment, I also learned a lot about myself and what I wanted from a partner—as well as what I knew I didn’t want—important information that is quite difficult to learn from traditional dating tactics. While megadating, I quickly enhanced my self-confidence, improved my social skills and found the love of my life.
Are you interested in megadating? You should be. Here are the top 4 reasons why dating multiple people while you are single can help you find true love:
You won’t be tempted to “settle”.
Nobody wants to be alone forever. But settling for someone often can bring disastrous results that last a very long time. So many men make the same catastrophic mistake and stick it out with someone they’re not completely compatible with.
Whether men settle out of a fear of being alone forever or in order to prevent hurting their partner’s feelings, settling for someone cheats you and your partner out of finding true love and real happiness with someone else. You deserve to find true love, and that means holding out for the right person. Megadating doesn’t give you the option to settle.
You won’t have time to obsess over the wrong person.
Want to waste a substantial amount of time while looking for The One? Great! Start obsessing over the wrong person—one of the most common dating phenomena in the history of romantic love.
In all seriousness, obsessing over someone that is just not that into you is something we’ve all done before. Megadating is a wonderful way to keep busy, distract yourself with other people and avoid thinking too much about someone that’s wrong for you.
You’ll worry much less, if not at all, about rejection.
Whether it’s through a blunt text, a long, overdrawn and humiliating explanation, or ghosting—rejection is painful. No one likes feeling rejected by a romantic interest, and many men are crippled by the fear of it.
Rejection is an inevitable part of dating, and can also be the worst feeling in the world. Traditional dating culture greatly emphasizes the impact of rejection, leaving you hanging without anything to distract yourself from the pain—not to mention the hit it can take on your self-esteem.
Megadating will help you conquer your fear of rejection. If you have three new dates setup for next week, chances are that one may not go as well as the other two. How can you feel rejected if you still have two other women that are interested in seeing you again? In fact, you will eventually have to do “more rejecting” yourself, since you’ll have so many women to choose from.
You’ll develop a surprisingly healthy self-esteem.
Dating multiple people will fill up your social calendar and give you the feeling of being wanted and in-demand. As you become more comfortable with meeting new people on a constant basis, your self-esteem will rise and you’ll become a happier, more confident person. Throw in a good workout routine, and your self-esteem will be through the roof!
The dating process has evolved. The things that used to work before, no longer do—or rather, we’re finding out that they never worked too well in the first place. More and more people are open to the idea of dating multiple people, and see it as a very logical approach to find true love.
Most of my clients are very open to the idea of megadating and come to me for help finding dates and preparing for them. Having been through it all before, I understand how nerve wracking it can feel at first, but I also understand how quickly those nerves are replaced by excitement and confidence.
Emyli (EmLovz) is a worldwide dating coach who helps smart, single men find their perfect partner. Learn more at EmLovz.com.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
How do you keep track of all this data (in your head) instead of confusing it? Even getting everyone’s name correct when you date them must be hard. Also, one of the main problems in a relationship is that the other person is lukewarm to you. It may be that they don’t really know how to deeply care about another person, or have some hang-ups regarding commitment. Doesn’t Megadating just worsen that since such people will now jump from one person to the next when they really need to work on themselves? Isn’t this also a bad idea for those… Read more »
Interesting article and indeed very helpful! I applaud you and that you were able to do this so well, to be honest. I’m a 56 year old woman who is said to be very attractive and look much younger for my age. Thank heavens for women and those compliments! Been on a dating site 8 months now after deciding I’d had enough solitude the last 6+ years after a miserable mean divorce. (Yes I worked on myself to recover from that before trying this). With all that being said, I’ve had a total of 3 dates. 3 first and only… Read more »
Thanks for the comment. I think it’s great that you put yourself out there after 6 years of solitude. There is a huge problem with people not looking like their photos on dating sites. That’s one of the first things I look for when a client of mine is struggling getting from date #1 to date #2. I of course have questions for you – what is the age range of men you are targeting? And are your pictures up to date? I would look at that first. If you’d like more of my assistance I offer a new client… Read more »
To anyone who can manage to line up 50 different people to date during a 1-2 year period, I offer my congratulations.
To the author here, I can only add that being rejected for hundreds of dates or efforts to approach someone, will also teach you an awful lot about yourself…
Absolutely. Getting rejected is part of life. I guess the sooner you learn that in dating, the better.
I feel like I was born at the wrong time or something. Or maybe this is just something women, and a small subset of men can pull off. From the end of the 80s right through into the early 2000s, before the rise of dating sites, I asked out a number of women that would truly shock people. Thousands, and I won’t admit the first digit. I’ve never been on a date. Been stood up nine times though, and last-minute cancelled on a couple dozen times. I’m not single now, but that paragraph about settling is me, 100% I could… Read more »
Too many people settle, you are definitely not alone. I would love to see your copy on settling- feel free to email me directly. Question – if you’ve never been on a date, how are you taken now? Did you skip the date somehow?
Yes, it’s a long story, but basically it was a situation of landing, somehow, in a relationship with nobody asking anybody out, no dating, nothing like that. It was almost exactly like one day we were friends talking long distance, and the next day we were living together. That was over a decade ago, so clearly something worked, but the reality of it is, I didn’t really choose this situation, so much as saw my one chance, after decades and thousands of failures, at being with a woman who actually wanted to be with me.