Dating in 2010: Is it All Four-Man Plans and Online Shenanigans?
Photo: Nad Renrel
Dating. Ugh, even typing the word makes me squirm.
Now, I’m hardly interested in being the Carrie Bradshaw of holistic dating. So don’t worry, this will probably be the only post you’ll see on this topic from me. And yet it’s such an endless topic of intrigue to most everyone I know, coupled or single, looking or content, that I feel compelled to write about it once.
Here’s my deal: if I would actually ever mark my relationship status on Facebook (yeah, I went there), it would be “It’s Complicated“. Not exactly single, but definitely not coupled. Does that put me in the dreaded dating category? It’s seems it might be so.
I’ve never quite “tackled” the d-world in the same way as most friends have. I don’t internet date, I don’t go to bars “looking”, I don’t get flirty at school, or work, or walking down the street. Yeah, I’m a pretty f’in bad dater. And yet the first thing I wanted to know when I visited San Francisco recently from all my single ladies was the dirt on boys (since interestingly enough, all my lesbian friends always seem to be in relationships), and how they were making it happen.
“I’m on the four-man plan,” my friend Vera* said.
“The waha?” I questioned.
“Ok,” we all hunkered down in my friend’s living room, glasses of wine perched in anticipation of the juiciness bound to follow. “It’s based on this idea that dating one guy at a time is for chumps. To actually find a relationship, you need to be dating at least, at least, four men at a time. That way, their biological drive to compete against each other means they’ll actually be working to get you, instead of just letting women fight over them,” Vera finished.
Photo: Bashed
“Hmm, so what happens if you actually LIKE one of the guys?” I ask.
“Doesn’t matter,” she answered. “ESPECIALLY if you like one, you need to keep other men in rotation to get that guy to a place where he is ready to commit. For instance, I have three dates tomorrow.”
“Three dates?!” two of us shouted in unison. “How…uh, when…uh, how are you gonna fit that all in?” Sarah asked.
“Simple. One for coffee in the morning, second one for an early afternoon walk around the lake, and third one for a late afternoon cocktail,” Vera finished.
Oh my God. I was sweating bullets just contemplating all the energy and chit chat that would take. But for people like Vera, who thrives in situations with new people, I can see how the four-man plan could work.
The next day, I learned that PlentyOfFish.com was in, and Match.com was out. How quickly things change, when just a few months ago, friends on either side of the country seemed to depend on the ole’ Matcheroonee. Now, all the “decent” guys had apparently jumped ship to where the fishies are aplenty.
“Wait, wait,” I asked my friend Nancy. “How do you figure out when to stop using one site and to start using the other?”
She replied, “It’s just like anything else. How did everyone know when to stop using MySpace and instead use Facebook? People talk, things are written, intuition is at work.”
Knowing me, if I ever decide to start internet dating, I’d be caught with the redneck sex offenders on Craigslist. Cause you know, it’s free and all.
Last weekend when I was visiting some friends in Raleigh, I asked a friend from high school, who recently became single, what she thinks of online dating. “Sorry, but I think it’s kinda pathetic. I mean, that’s not something we’d ever need to do.”
Photo: Made Underground
I realized how different the outlook on online dating might still be in Raleigh as compared to SF. “Well, most of my friends that are single in the Bay are gorgeous, seriously cool and smart. I think more people kinda have to use online dating – it’s seriously ridiculous out there. I mean, I barely “dated” anyone the whole nine years I lived there. Those guys get away with murder.”
“Yeah, but you still didn’t do it, right? And you had some relationships.”
Uh huh. With my boss, a professor, a trainer at my gym. Almost all situations were scandalous – and in no way, shape or form, normal. Why is that? Am I addicted to drama? Don’t answer that.
“And now you’ve got a good situation, right? Kinda.”
Yeah, kinda. Sometimes, I think about what it would be like to really put myself out there, to go sit at a bar and wait to be approached, or to walk up to that guy in a cafe and say, “I think you’re super cute. Here’s my number if you’re interested.” Then I remember I have rosacea and would turn beet red before I even got to his table. It might just be like the time when I was five and felt like the world was mine as I danced onstage with my jazz group. We got into formation and kicked our legs up in the air, moving in a circle, and I KNEW I was the shit…until I kicked myself in the face and fell backwards onto the ground.
That pretty much sums up my dating life.
Let’s hear how you are working it out in the dating scene these days!
*names have been changed. Duh.
About the Author
Christine Garvin is a certified Nutrition Educator and holds a MA in Holistic Health Education. She is co-editor of Brave New Traveler and a featured author at Healthier Talk. When she is not out traveling the world, she is busy writing, doing yoga, and performing hip-hop and bhangra. She also likes to pretend living in her hippie town of Fairfax, CA is like being on vacation.
That Vera is a feisty one! As a former salesperson, I’ll tell you the numbers game can sometimes be a good tactic. Lotta work though. And, as a result of further conversations with Four Man Plan readers, we’ve decided the concept probably won’t work if you’re into SNAGs.
You didn’t mention okcupid.com, which still seems to be held in fairly high esteem here in the Bay Area.
I met my boyfriend of two years on Match, and he *seems* pretty normal…so far anyway.
Thanks for the laugh Christine!
I feel like doing a similar blog post, it’s been weighing heavily on my mind lately. And this post kinda verifies my thoughts: it all has to do with location.
Online dating here in St. John’s? Stupid. There is a severe lack of men, so the ones driven to using Internet dating are…questionable (mostly). I’ve lived here for four years, and I’ve been on a total of two dates. TWO DATES.
Anywhere else, I have absolutely no problem attracting other men.
I LOVE the four-man rotation. To me, it’s what dating should be about…trying out a few different things before you “settle.” I’m not quite sure if I’d be good at it, but it’d be wicked fun.
Since I’ve been in a committed relationships for a really, really long time, I don’t even know what it means to date. Nor do I know the complications, rejection, and craziness I hear so often when I vicariously date through my friends.
That said, I still cannot help but feel that there simply has to be an easier way than this. Right?
I also see the allure of a four man plan, although perhaps not all in one day. Do they four know about each other? How do you keep it all straight?
Hmmm… I like this “Four-Man Plan” when it comes to dating.
In theory it sounds delightful. But in practice, I can only imagine the energy it takes to maintain that sort of dating/social inertia.
And really, who has the budget these days to hire someone to keep track of all those names?
Wow! This is the second time I have made an appearance in one of your blogs…I feel so special! Okay…Four Man Plan update. Here’s what I have discovered. Do NOT try the Four Man Plan if you live in the Bay Area. The men are too sensitive and the Four Man Plan does NOT bring out the competition and good sportsmanship in them. Part of the 4MP is to let the men you are dating know that you are dating other men so they are aware that they have to compete for your affection. When I did this…it totally backfired. The men looked like I had just kicked them in the gut or something. They actually seemed….wounded.
Maybe on the East Coast this would work. Or wherever alpha males still exist (the south?) Which is not here, I tell you. The men are way too metrosexual and snaggy for this plan to work.
Not to mention that is was totally exhausting. Maybe I’m too old for the 4MP (almost 40)…but I burned out fast. Now I’m back with my ex and could not be happier to be done with all of that silliness.
xo,
Vera
Fascinating.
As a single bloke who seems to dip in and out of dating with a kind of blundering, half-assed approach that is simultaneously exciting and ridiculous, maybe I’m not qualified to comment on systemic dating. But I’m going to anyway. (Maybe because I just *love* the sound of my own voice).
I like the idea of the 4-Man Plan in practice. As long as us guys are told that we’ve got competition (which Vera notes is indeed part of the rules, above). And a bit of mild jealousy is a good way to raise the stakes in a budding relationship and make both sides a bit more invested, which makes it much more fun when it all boils over in an energetically horizontal fashion. Ahem.
However, in my case: I’ve read too many books to attempt anything like the 4-Girl Plan. I recently had a situation where I was flirting with two girls at the same time, both leading towards actual dates…and I started feeling wretched. I hadn’t yet told either of them about the other one, because nothing specific had happened – but the fact that I was sorta-kinda nearly “seeing” two women at once made me feel a complete worm. And the possibility was there of telling both of them and then dating both of them at the same time, with everything in the open. I thought about it (urged on by a friend). And the thought of it made me feel *dreadful* about myself. Even if they were both up for it. Inner gut reaction = Mike, You Are Pond Scum.
So I chose between them, and told the other one that I was on the verge of seeing someone else. (At which point she confessed she had a boyfriend and was looking for something on the side. Eeee, life).
Since I grew up reading umpteen Boy’s Own Adventures about stoic, lantern-jawed romantics who spend years braving the worst that life throws at them while holding a torch for some permanently unavailable lass (and since I spent a year doing that myself), I reckon I’ve had true dating programmed out of me. (And I’m British, which doesn’t help. “Experimenting? *Trying out* different women? Good lord, what an appalling show, old man. I’d rather spend my time digging the garden, quite frankly.”)
But…there’s also the fact that I spend a couple of decades around women who date to find someone to settle down and have babies with immediately – or are completely and utterly apesh*t. (I suspect Candice’s St. John’s is twinned with Hornsea, East Yorkshire, in a lot of horrible ways). And I wanted to travel instead.
So I’ve always figured I’ll find my other half out there on the road.
(Which makes her sound like roadkill. How very romantic of me).
The four man plan is a bad idea in any city.
While it has some plus sides, there aren’t many. Jealousy is a quick route to getting what you want out of a person, and once you introduce it into your relationships, it never goes away. The chances that you’ll settle into a relationship with any of these men will be rare, and it’s usually only after men 1-3 move on to something less complicated where their egos aren’t bruised- and you’re left with number 4, who is most likely: a narcoleptic, or has that annoying habit of public indecency, or owns a poodle that gets more attention that you do.
You start having fantasies of running his dog over with your car. And those are the nicer fantasies. And before all of this, you had never once thought of brutally murdering a helpless animal.
But he was the only one apathetic enough to not care about the rumors that you were rotating men throughout the city, and is just happy to take you out to a movie once a week where he falls asleep before the opening credits.
Or at least, this is my personal experience with it.
Generally, the 4MP is put into use when a woman is dating an emotionally unavailable man she adores, and it helps level the playing field. If she really wants to stay with him, she’d be better off taking up a few new hobbies, instead of a few new men. Hobbies like: crocheting, adopting an apartment of stray cats, or the occasional throwing herself out of a plane because it seems like an appropriate metaphor for her relationship.
The 4MP: use with caution. If anyone is truly intent on trying it, every month, dump all four of them and start fresh.
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