How do I get a date?

We can get a fabulous dinner easily enough...thank you Open Table!!! We can pick out the perfect car and get a great deal...thank you promotion at work. We even can get new living room furniture WITHOUT leaving the living room.

So, in this day and age of convenience and in a time in our lives when things are running just fine, why is it so hard to get a date?

The problem certainly isn’t that there AREN’T any potentials out there. We see plenty of attractive, well-dressed, successful looking individuals out there. So why don’t we get to meet them? The folks that we really want to meet that is, not the guy who still lives at home with his mom, or your friend’s trainer from the gym who is “really hot”. 

Now, more than ever it can be more difficult for successful people, particularly successful women, to find dates who measure up to their expectations. 

So how do we solve this dilemma? Well, at It’s Just Lunch Toronto, we’ve known how important it is to match our successful clients with quality individuals for more than 20 years. The secret of our success lies in knowing that creating lasting relationships is based on a date with someone who you really want to date again. So, let us set you up on a great date. All you have to do is just show up and enjoy. Mission accomplished. 

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Stopping to Smell the Roses

There sure is a lot of buzzing about online dating these days. The water-cooler which was once a glorious place to waste a few minutes of a very long day is now ruined with profile speak. Heck, you can’t even peacefully grind your teeth in the 10 items or less line without being subjected to a fascinating conversation about choosing the right “user name”. 

According to the commercials, featuring the most attractive people (models), with the whitest teeth you’ve ever seen (caps), there’s a hot model with perfect gums that practices your exact religion, subscribes to your favorite reading materials (Wow! They read too!), and is just waiting for you to jump online and find them. And if for some reason, you two don’t hit it off, there are 100 more just like them.

So does all this dental work live up to its promise? Are people really falling in love left and right like an episode of the Love Boat on ecstasy? 

According to a recent study*, what online dating has accomplished is a platform where  “romantic browsing triggers” happen. Instead of considering a potential partner on specific characteristics that would align with your true ideals, speedy decisions are made, based upon finding, “the best” profile, which of course includes a picture. This study found that when folks were faced with many profiles (up to 90), they made faster decisions, and wrote potentials off quicker, instead of weighing important information. These hasty decisions demonstrated that people forgot what they were really looking for in a mate. In contrast, those who had to select from say four people, considered real options, and complex information for a potential partner. This same study also found that going on a REAL date was more productive in truly getting to know someone, than just online chatting. 

The morale of the study? Take time to smell the roses! Focusing on what you want, going out on a date, and then deciding what comes next. We at It’s Just Lunch® are proud of our 20 years of dating success stories. No user names, no photos, ...ever. Just lunch with someone specifically matched to your interests and values.

*Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H. T., & Sprecher, S. (2012). Online dating: A critical analysis from the perspective of psychological science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(1), 3–66.

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Is it just lunch or is it more?

As matchmaker, I often come across interesting studies that relate to the intricacies of dating and courtship. A recent study released by researchers at Cornell University really caught my attention…

The Researchers, Kevin Kniffen and Brian Wansink, were interested in the importance of what they refer to as ‘commensality’. Yes, I had to Google that, and it means ‘the practice of eating meals at the same table.’ They asked the question, “Does sharing food involve sharing more than just food?” And there answer was a resounding YES.

To investigate this, participants in their research study were asked to rate how jealous they (Study 1) – or their best friend (Study 2) – would be if their current romantic partner were contacted by an ex-romantic partner and subsequently engaged in an array of food- and drink-based activities. They consistently found – across both men and women – that meals elicit more jealousy than face-to-face interactions that do not involve eating, such as having coffee. These findings suggest that people generally presume that sharing a meal enhances cooperation. In the context of romantic pairs, they found that participants are attuned to relationship risks that extra-pair commensality can present. For romantic partners left out of a meal, they found a common view that lunch, for example, is not“just lunch.” In fact, knowing your partner is having lunch with an ex can trigger sexual tension!

Their tests found the lowest rated activity in terms of eliciting jealousy was email correspondence. A live phone chat was somewhat higher. The next step up was face-to-face interaction, over a coffee. But what was particularly interesting was the elevated jealousy recorded when the face-to-face meeting occurred over lunch, and involved eating a meal together, versus just consuming a beverage.

Now here is a fun part of their research report. They found it interesting that the world’s most successful non-internet dating service was called‘It’s Just Lunch’, and postulated that the implicit behavioural associations that relate to ‘communal preparation and consumption of food may impart an advantage to It’s Just Lunch’…as people intuitively know that there is more to this whole thing than just lunch!

Who knows if it does? But my two cents worth is that that Lunch is a great way to approach a first date. Because it is mid-day, it reduces the stress of ‘what to wear, and what to do after’. Because it typically has a time line of about an hour, it is a comfortable amount of time to get a solid first impression of someone you are meeting for the first time. And because you are in a public place, it gives you the opportunity see how a potential date interacts with others such as waiters, and so on and this always helps you gauge chemistry.

So my advice is to get out from behind your computer, put down your smart phones, and Do Lunch this summer with someone you find interesting. Maybe it will turn out to be more than just lunch!

But if you really like being behind your computer, you can read the full report at:http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0040445

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