Rosters…

6 comments

1. I have a counter question. How do people not have time to date? Are you low energy/lazy? Do you work 60+ hours per week at a physical job that leaves you exhausted? Is spending time on tiktak a valuable hobby you just can’t let go of for one night?

   I have a lot going on and yet if a woman or two wanted to see me on a specific night I made it happen. I didn’t have an actual roster though. It was a lot of first and second dates. To me a roster is multiple people that you keep seeing. I didn’t click enough to see that many women for a long period of time but I usually had 2-3 of those. And to keep it straight I just took notes and reminded myself of things for a few minutes before a date. Even before a first date I went through our chats on the apps before I got out of my car.

2. I go out to have good time and enjoy life.

   If girl number 1 cannot. Go with number 2… wash rinse, repeat.

   How deep things go all depend on the time out and my feelings.

3. Not currently multidating (I don’t really like the word “roster”, but that’s me), but I have in the not so distant past.

   I do think it’s magnified by online dating. There is significant flakiness and variance when online dating, so keeping to one match/date is slow (it can be worth it for some people though, no problem with that). The illusion of choice and abundance of potential partners also contribute, I think. Personally, I just enjoyed meeting new people and making new connections.

   Making time can be a challenge, but if you value dating for the sake of dating, it’s not that hard. I have a hard cap of three people, two when the connection deepens (around 2-3 months, for me).

   I did get small details mixed up between people. I’ve always dated people comfortable with multidating (who were, usually but not always, multidating themselves), so it has never been a deal breaker. I’m usually not a bad listener so I haven’t gotten flak about it.

   I’m ambivalent about ethical non-monogamy, and ignorant about my own emotional limits concerning polyamory, so I can’t garantee developing two relationships simultaneously would work for me. It can get deep enough though. Elaborate and multi-day dates, frequent sleepovers, hangouts with friends, thoughtful gifts, etc. I could have become official with either people I was seeing at one point.

4. I currently have 85 matches in my Tinder chatbox. I send a copy-paste message to everyone, “Hope you had a good week” and another message of 1-3 paragraphs about my week.

   I also periodically send get-to-know you questions to everyone like What music do you like, and What are your dating dealbreakers, to try to stimulate conversation. Hopefully some of those questions / comments stimulate individual conversations. If they can’t / won’t engage over text, I am not going to progress to videochat or coffee. One of my dating dealbreakers is if they can’t write a complete sentence without spelling or usage errors.

   I have never used the word roster before about my chatbox, but that is basically what I’m managing.

   I am looking for more questions that I can copy-paste to my entire chatbox for getting to know people.

5. It’s not that deep. I went on dates. I was seriously dating with the intention of finding my partner…which I did. People have different approaches to dating. That’s ok, do what works for you. This is how I did it.

   I used the free version of Hinge. I liked to set up dates 3 to 4 times a week. Yes, it’s somewhat like a part time job. But if you don’t have time to date, how are you going to have time for a relationship? 

   When I first started dating my bf I was dating four men and he was dating two women. After our second date, he stopped dating the other woman. By our fifth date I had slowly stopped dating the three other men. I was ready to go back on the app. On our sixth date he asked me to be his gf and we deleted the apps.

   This method works when two people find each other at the right time and are compatible and attracted to each other. 

6. Assuming you mean just dating lots of people in overlapping time periods – ie going out on Friday with Eric, Saturday with Dan, etc…

   I’ve had plenty of times where it just happened naturally. It takes me awhile to decide if I want to be romantically involved with someone, so no reason to not get to schedule things as it makes sense to do so. Typically I just decline anything (didn’t matter who asks) that would create more than like one date every weekend.

   But I did try to date a lot more frequently for a little while as an experiment. I kept notes (nothing offensive) about each person (and I still do this when I get to know someone new), the type of stuff you want to remember about someone but are likely to forget, like birthdays, not-immediately-relevant preferences, etc. I didn’t confuse the people themselves but I did make sure I reviewed my notes if it was someone new.

   I didn’t think of it as a roster though, just getting to know people. I think the term implies a bit of dehumanizing involved, but really it works the same way it does with friends. You might want to spend time with one friend on one day, and time with another friend on another day. There’s nothing odd about that and doesn’t prevent you from having a good time with either friend and it doesn’t harm the bond you have either.

   I think at the most I had 5 or 6 guys I was going on dates with at a time. I only did that experiment for 2-3 months, for me personally what I found was that even if I enjoy someone’s company, it’s better to make the cutoff for dates stricter and to be more protective of my time. Now I only agree to dates if I’m actively excited about spending time with them.