curb online

Dating dilemma
Looking for love beyond the bars

by peter n. long

The post-collegiate world is a terrifying place.

A senior at UW-Madison enjoying my final year in the college dream world, I peer into the near-future and see nothing but horror.

It’s Tuesday morning—I’m tired and groggy from the night before, and I have to decide between breakfast and getting on work on time. I must prep for three meetings before lunch and finish a project due at five o’clock; I have rent, car payments, insurance bills, credit card payments and a health club membership renewal due before the end of the week. And to top things off, my favorite fichus just bit the big one.

Quite understandably, the things that “really matter” in life get put on hold. Dating—the key that unlocks the door to romance, love, marriage and family—exists as an ideal rather than a reality. I see my future—leaving academia, starting a career and juggling a multitude of responsibilities, tasks and finances—and it looks lonely.

As a journalist committed both to his readers and the acquisition of answers in a world of questions, I took on the assignment of delivering young professionals a fresh perspective on the realities of post-collegiate dating.

My task: don the mask of a young professional and infiltrate the various outlets available to those on the after-college quest for love. My target: young professionals on the scene and in the field. My problems: youth, immaturity and the lack of a diploma. My tools: a thirst for knowledge, Journalist’s Privilege and a willingness to craft the truth for the sake of my art.

I was locked, loaded and ready to take on the young professional dating establishment—one dating option at a time. Little did I know the cruel dating gods were aware of my plan and would attempt to disrupt my voyage to the isthmus of affection.

Out to Lunch
My first great idea was to break into the young professional dating scene by taking the leg work out of actively trying to meet an available young professional woman—namely, to have someone else do it. Enter It’s Just Lunch.

Created in 1991, the concept of It’s Just Lunch is simple: Potential members arrange to meet an It’s Just Lunch (IJL) coordinator for a one-on-one meeting. Desires, ambitions and preferences are discussed and a “dater profile” is made to be added to the pool of other eligible daters from the area. For about $1,200, daters are guaranteed 14 IJL “first dates” over a yearlong period with other members fitting within their interest parameters. IJL aligns itself with area restaurants, with whom they work to coordinate various aspects of each scheduled date.

Felicia O'Day, co-owner of the Madison and Milwaukee franchises, says the relatively young Wisconsin IJL programs have done well in their respective first years. The Milwaukee office currently has about 600 participating members and the Madison office has about 300 daters, with both offices evenly split between male and female members.

While many other dating avenues exist, O’Day says the IJL system fits especially well with romantically inclined young professionals who are short on time.

“[Our usual client is] definitely the educated, busy professional who uses us because they want to find individuals that they are just not meeting on a day-to-day basis,” O’Day says. “They are tired of the bar scene, uncomfortable with dating their coworkers and not interested in the people they are getting set up with by their friends and family.”

Hoping she would let me join, skipping the fee and removing the hassle of actually going out and finding single young professionals on my own, I inquired about the participation of college students in IJL. Predictably, O’Day politely reminded me the fee is necessary, and that ideal IJL candidates have real jobs and aren’t currently enrolled in Phys Ed 101.

In any case, I started to see why a program like IJL could be helpful for young professionals and why I would not be able to “trick” other daters into believing I was employed, successful and in my mid-20s. I needed to find another route into the world of young professional dating.

Web of Intrigue
With my plan to infiltrate the young executive dating scene via in-person dating services effectively thwarted, I turned to the last bastion of hope before resorting to creepy pick-up lines on random women at bars and cafes. I hit the Internet.

According to a May-June 2004 Pew Internet and Family Life survey, about 68 percent of American adults—approximately 137 million people—use the Internet. Eighty-two million adults report going online during an average day, with 9 percent using a dating website or similar service—a significant number of online daters to be sure, only expected to have increased in 2005.

Not surprisingly, a 2003 analysis by comScore Media Metrix placed Match.com, a comprehensive online dating service, among the top 50 most-visited sites in the United States, and Brandweek Magazine cited a $50 million ad campaign in 2004 for industry titan eHarmony.com. Undeniably, Internet dating websites are now in the forefront of our virtual lives. After missing the boat on It’s Just Lunch, it was time for me to get in on the action.

I scoured the Web for dating sites. From Yahoo Personals to Madisonmatch.com, I registered for them all. As I filled out the profiles and the survey questions, I made an agreement with myself that I would be completely truthful about what I wrote because to really develop an understanding of online dating and the young professional, I would need to be totally legitimate and honest.

I lie. Well, not icky, sticky heavy-handed lying—more like a tiny, necessary alteration of the truth. And of course, this isn’t national-scale, full-out “we’ll be taking back that Pulitzer now” type of scandalous lying either. I simply pad my age.

Solving the age issue by upping my 22 years of age to 25, the only major problem remaining was the whole student-not-having-a-real-job-thing. I clear this hurdle simply and near truthfully. I say I’m a freelance writer. This technically isn’t a lie because between classes and semesters, I dabble in farming out my writing skills to actual media outlets. Everything else stays the same. I honestly describe my physical self (tall, somewhat athletic but leaning toward the lanky side), my mental self (positive outlook on life with a hint of endearing neurosis not uncommon to most freelance journalists) and what I’m looking for in a potential date (someone who is kind, cute, funny, positive, intriguing and willing to put up with the qualities I listed for myself). Hardly a deceitful web of lies.

Yet my minor truth-stretching was for naught. As a “basic” level user on these dating websites, I can look at other online daters to my heart’s content, but I am unable to actually connect with any of them. The main problem with this situation is money.

Like most online dating services, you can check out the program for free and even create an entire profile replete with photos at no cost. The way they get you, however, is with the “special member” features. The most crucial aspect of successful online dating is communication—via web chats, instant messages or email. This, of course, is what they charge you for. 

Unwilling to fork over money that could be spent on more immediate things—romance not currently in the budget—I decide to drop the online dating route, broken but not completely beaten. Caught in a social bind, an opportunity from an unlikely source materialized. For the sake of journalism and the young professionals of Wisconsin, I turned to the one institution I knew wouldn’t let me down: the Republican Party.

The Fray
Bill, a good friend and uber-Republican, knew about my assignment and my inability to secure an actual dating “event” I could attend and maybe even participate in. Being the quality guy he is (not to mention his desire to bring me over to the red side from my straight-laced, journalistic stance in the middle), Bill forwarded me an open invitation he received to the monthly Republican Young Professionals social mixer.

Pay dirt.

After failing to secure a position within It’s Just Lunch and totally bombing on my online dating profiles, this truly was my last chance for young professional romance.

Politics aside, the Republican mixer I was about to infiltrate provides a microcosmic view of a burgeoning trend in dating: groups of like-minded people offering dating opportunities for single members who share similar (read: compatible) values. young republican professionals aren’t the first to realize this effective tactic—churches and business associations have been doing it for decades.

On the day of the mixer, I was excited to enter the fray, but I was also very nervous. Nervous not because I could potentially meet the woman who would make my life complete, but nervous because I was certain I would somehow blow my cover. I planned on showing up not as a journalist, but as a conservative young professional looking to meet new, like-minded individuals.

I took a deep breath and walked into the bar that was hosting the event. I bought a drink and headed toward the side-room where the mixer was cordoned off. What met me were eyes.

Eyes staring, piercing me with their demand for answers. Who is this boy? Why is he here? Who did he vote for in 2004? I produced a weak smile and nodded, slipping into the corner.

I watched as the young republicans socialized. Perhaps only 10 people were in the room, cavorting away even though a stranger was in their midst. As the only person who didn’t know everyone else, I wondered how I would talk to any of the women. I continued to stand uncomfortably.

Then, salvation.

James, my former roommate’s best friend from home and a guy I’ve hung out with on several occasions, sauntered into the bar. These were his people. A bona fide Capitol staffer, James would know everyone at the mixer. I had to work fast to prevent him from blowing my cover.

“Hey Long, what are you doing here?” he questioned in a puzzled tone.

“Hi James! I’m, ah, here for the mixer. A friend of mine told me I should check it out,” I replied, omitting the fact that my journalist’s hat was on and I was watching his every move.

With that, James proceeded to introduce me to just about everyone in the bar. We struck up conversations ranging from pit bulls to feral cats and every recently vetoed bill in between. It actually turned out to be a lot of fun. And the Miller Lite taps were at the ridiculously low happy hour price of $1.

As we chatted, I queried James about his experiences as a single young professional, especially as they related to events like these geared toward introducing like-minded members. When I asked him how the attendance usually was at a regular, monthly event like this, James said, “Not as low as this. But I guess it depends on how many people want chicken wings after work!”

A fitting and sagely simplistic answer. Today’s young professionals are primarily focused on their careers. Dating and attending scheduled events like this can easily take a back seat to work, bills, eating and sleeping. James said besides the monthly mixer, a night out at the bar each week and participation in a volleyball league, he doesn’t have much time to donate to finding Ms. Right.

We continued to drink and carry on, and I met a few more soldiers on the battlefield of romance. Though the night was certainly enjoyable, I silently agreed with myself that it would have been a ton of fun to try the “I’m a freelance journalist, what’s your sign?”-line on an unsuspecting young professional just once.

Back To The Future
Through all this, however, I actually accomplished what I originally set out to do: develop an understanding of the realities of dating for the young Wisconsin professional. It’s certainly not easy. Work, responsibilities and life in general do not help in pursuit of true romance, providing nothing but roadblocks on the highway of love.

Especially since that highway is driven by—what else—money. Besides cruising bars and other singles hotspots, the frugal dater is out of luck with a majority of the non-traditional methods of securing a date. Potentially costing hundreds, even thousands, of dollars, the new school of post-collegiate dating is not for the tight-purse or iron-wallet.

When it comes to dating, some people will invariably ask, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” After looking into the problem further, I’m inclined to reply with a question of my own: Can you really put a price on love?

At the risk of sounding too bleak about a reality that will become my own in a matter of months, I suppose the one positive aspect for Wisconsin’s young professionals, when it comes to dating, is that everyone is in the same boat, working hard to secure happiness, affection and bliss.

If no one minds, I think I’ll delay my near-future in post-collegiate dating and return to the world of dive bars, Greek crush parties and that good, old-fashioned college social life.

©curb magazine - winter 2005
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