Easy, Breezy Group Date
Table for eight?
It has been ages since I’ve done a Great Offline Dating Experiment but I am back in the lab! 👩🔬🔬🧪
Hypothesis
Make your dating life more efficient with group dates.
Background
This feels like cheating because, technically, I used an app to set up this group date, but IRL dating is beginning to feel more and more like app dating anyways (expensive, underwhelming, laborious), so maybe it’s fine.
Breeze, a dating app predicated on the idea that you don’t need to message before you meet (an idea I mostly agree with), launched group dates the other month. And I thought “sure, why not,” which, incidentally, seems to be the theme of my love life these last two years.
The app offers both themed and unthemed group dates. Some examples of themed groups:
Teetotal (must we refer to it that way?)
Single parents (that’s rad)
Personal development (I imagine the people at this date would be nightmares, you couldn’t pay me to attend)
Spiritual (again, very rad for the people who are into that)
Foodies (once more, I wouldn’t go near this group)
Ready to settle down (this one also scares me)
Creatives (I’d give this a go, but I’m wary of the self-selecting nature of the group)
I think non-drinkers, single parents, and spiritual are all good ideas for themed groups because they are lifestyles that can potentially really influence your dating life. But the others feel like extrapolations of personality traits, hobbies, or phases of life. If Breeze wants to know what I think (they don’t), I’d recommend they organize more events around lifestyle, and less around interests. For example, I’d be very keen to join an expat group date.
Despite the group date being an app-driven experience, it doesn’t require you to be on the app much in the lead up. You will need a profile, and the details you provide will help them set up the optimal group. It’s as simple as some multiple choice questions: do you like wine? Art? Football? Blah, blah, blah. A true window into the human soul.
Once you’ve got your profile, navigate to the little ticket icon at the bottom of the screen, opt in for the day you’re free (or the theme you want to participate in), pay for the date (£11.50, which covers your first drink…the non-drinking group pays the same, which is a bummer), and then you wait. Three days before the date you’ll learn the location of the date, and three hours before they open a group chat with everyone at the table, but everyone’s faces are blurred out. This experience is a practice in patience.
Method
I signed up and didn’t give the event another thought until 5PM on the day, when I lifted my head up from my computer and thought: what the hell have I signed myself up for?? How would a date with eight people even work? Would it be all small talk? Would it feel competitive? I thought this must be the worst idea that I’ve had in my “Great Offline Dating Experiment.” And that’s really saying something because I’ve done some bonkers stuff like having The Daily Mail set me up on a blind date, and cruising for guys at a gaming cafe.
The Only Living Girl in the Gaming Cafe
Sorry for going MIA last week, I came down with something on the way back from my friend’s wedding and basically slept for three days straight and when I wasn’t sleeping I was watching Friends and eating soup and just generally existing in the foggiest of brain fogs. But I’m back!
I took myself and my book out for a solo date before my group date. No matter how excited I am for a date when I plan it, I inevitably have a freak out on the day, especially in the hours leading up to it. I’ve found that if I have a plan to take myself for a nice dinner either before or after, I’m more likely to actually leave the house and be excited.
I sat at the enormous bar that wraps all the way around Wild Izakaya with my book, and cobbled together a dinner out of some absurdly expensive appetizers, plus a lychee sour to take the edge off. It’s true that all you really need is a book & a bar.
