We recently interviewed a group of singles for our upcoming Beautiful People issue (November) and found that many of them are, in fact, perfectly happy to be single. They’re in no rush to be joined at the hip or give up the freedom (or the closet space) that comes with finding someone special. In some instances, it sounded as though they were just sick of the pressure that comes with searching for, and meeting someone, one-on-one.
Well, we’re in luck. Sort of. A new dating site has taken the stress out of blind dates or first meetings by including your friends in the mix. Grouper (JoinGrouper.com) lets you include as many friends in your group as you’d like (with a minimum of two for your first Grouper experience) that will join with another group of the opposite sex. The groups are then paired via your Facebook profiles. Grouper then picks a bar/club/restaurant and sets everyone up for a group date. It’s like Meetup.com but more to the point. Unfortunately for those of us in Southwest Florida, the closest city they operate in is Miami, so unless you want to go hangout there, this site probably won’t work for you. But we bring it up because it seems like you could do this yourself with a little effort.
Though Grouper works as the matchmaker and everything is done blind, it seems like any of us could just cast a net through some of our own Facebook acquaintances and set up a group get together. All you need to do is find a few interesting-looking people on your friend’s FB page and send some invites saying a group of you are meeting at a cool spot. Zero pressure.
It kinda takes us back to the days of college where everyone just hung out and finding someone cool seemed easier. Don’t we all miss those days?
The Chronicles of Miss X:
She continues to meet guys off of PlentyofFish.com even though we think it’s a site just for hookups… There’s a new guy she seems to really like because she wouldn’t give us any details even though all we wanted to know was that they had for dinner... OK, maybe we wanted to know a little more…
Date #1: We ate at a chain restaurant: the full apps, meal and shared a dessert. You need more? OK, so I swooned over pot stickers, pasta and caramel vanilla cake! Happy? Date #2: It was a fabulous evening! Short boat ride, awesome grilled steak and vegetables, and a movie. He is a great guy with very soft lips and nice hands. ;) He seems very grounded, sane intelligent and his personality fits with mine. But (OK, here we go…) he is an extremely busy guy. Should I read anything into the three dead plants in pots on his porch?