So you’re using a dating app. Tinder. Bumble. Hinge. CoffeeMeetsBagel.
You have hundreds of men at your fingertips and you’re getting lots of matches.
The problem is that it’s overwhelming.
Guys will match with you and not take action. Guys will text you through the app and not
take action. Guys will ask
for your phone number and not take action. Guys will start texting you and not take action.
Guys will ask you out and then not follow through on the date.
Everyone just seems so busy, so flaky, so insincere that it feels like too
much work - only to result in meeting some lame guys. What’s a girl to do?
Stick around and I’ll explain.
I’m Evan Marc Katz, dating coach for smart, strong, successful women and your personal trainer
for love. Welcome to the Love U Podcast. Keep listening to learn how to use dating apps better.
When we’re done, I’ll let you know how you can apply to Love U to create
a passionate relationship that makes you feel safe, heard, and understood.
I've been in this for, as I said, about 17 years and wrote my first book about online
dating in 2003 and ended up doing a TEDX talk about online dating called No More Bad Dates.
I think I did it in 2014 off the top of my head. The idea behind that is the idea that I want to
briefly present to you here today. Basically, I came up with this idea that I think works
really well for both men and women, regardless of the dating mechanism that you're using.
And the idea is called the 2-2-2 rule, and I don't want to get into the weeds and all the
details here. But the idea is that if you're using a conventional dating site like Match or OkCupid,
you want to lead a guy through a process that feels good to him where you can make a connection
on the dating site, leave the site to go to Gmail and schedule a phone call all in less than a week.
And the point of this is to avoid texting, and this is something that I teach my clients in
Love U, and it's one that still works beautifully for those who employ it. But since lots of people
fight me on it and I have no interest in fighting with anybody because they insist on using dating
apps over conventional dating sites, I've had to modify my 2-2-2 role, but I haven't modified
the principle behind it, just the execution. So the principle behind 2-2-2, the principle
behind online dating, the principle behind Love U is this: You are the CEO. Men are the interns.
There's no shortage of people who are going to be interested in a job with you. Your job
is to make a fast fund screening process before the guy earns the right to take
you out to dinner on a Saturday night. If you don't do any screening. What's
going to happen? You'll end up getting stuck in texting, hell. Where are you going to go on lots
of terrible blind dates with strangers? And if that somewhat describes your dating experience,
you should listen up, even if what I'm about to say sounds a little bit weird.
I’m going to give you three steps to making dating apps work for you. And
they're kind of counterintuitive. If they were intuitive, you'd already be doing them.
So this is probably going to challenge your way of thinking.
Number one: Screen IN, not OUT. This is something we see a lot, and I notice a lot more on dating
sites because you have search criteria on looking for a man who's six feet tall. I'm
looking for a man who makes $150,000. I'm looking for a man who has a master's degree.
We search, we search and we search for this unicorn of a man. “I'm looking for
my husband.” “I know what I want.” “I know what I'm worth.” And then you narrow your
search to nothing. And then we work backwards from there and we say, “Oh, there's no guys.”
Online search mechanism is the same thing on a dating app. You're mostly looking at your faces,
you're judging people on attraction. But the point is to screen in and give more
people a chance. As counterintuitive as it is, that seems because trying to choose a
man from a photo and a two line buyer is obviously not the best mechanism.
The goal is to give yourself an opportunity to meet good guys.
And statistics show, and this is not about you, the listener, this is about, the statistics show
women tend to reject swipe left on ninety five percent of guys. Ninety nine percent of guys
like an astounding number of guys are rejected. And if you're only choosing the guys who seem like
9s and 10s, why would you go out with anybody else that is part of the problem? Even if you feel like
you're overwhelmed? I need you to open up to the seventh and you'll be in a much better position
to choose a partner. And I want you to remain open to this idea, even when it challenges you,
not telling you to slam it and not telling you to settle right. I couldn't tell you whether
I'm a seven or not, but I can tell you a lot of people would scream at me online because
I'm pretty much average in terms of my build and height, et cetera. So stay open to sevens
when you're looking at guys. Don't just go for the GQ guys that every single person goes for
because it perpetuates more of the same problem. Now that you're screening in and not out.
Number two, we want to screen out based on effort. We screen in based on looks, giving guys a chance.
Now that we have guys in the fold, we screen out based on effort.
And that's where this modified version of my 2-2-2 role comes in, which is a couple of emails
on the dating side. Couple of emails on Gmail. A couple of phone calls on a date that's two to two.
Don't worry about that because it doesn't work the same way on an app, but let's keep an eye on
the spirit of the idea in mind. If the worst thing about dating is that everybody's flaky,
what we established at the top of this podcast, everybody's flaky. Everybody's busy, nobody says
anything interesting. All guys are about instant gratification and looks. Here's my number. Text
me. Let's meet. This push, push, push, push on guys terms. You have a lot of power and tons
of power. Don't worry about what other women are doing. Just worry about how dating feels to you.
If you feel that you spent too much time texting, too much time getting ghosted, too much time
not getting anywhere with everybody because nobody has a real connection. Your job is to make a real
connection where other women fail to do so. So the idea is that if you're not going to use email like
old school online dating, fine, make your text longer, have a conversation, and differentiate
yourself from the crowd. And instead of involving those one line texts back and forth, I did another
podcast about it recently, but it is a recurring theme since this is where most dating takes place.
If you're going to use this medium, let's try to have conversations that feel a little bit
more real. The kind that you'd simulate in real life, as opposed to doing what everybody is doing,
what everybody thinks comes naturally, which is usually the laziest form, right? How do I
communicate with 30 people at the same time? While you can't really put too much attention into it?
You want to put a little more intention into it. Make people feel interesting. I want to
be an interesting person yourself. You've got to put in a little more energy. So now
you're making an effort. We're screening guys and we're paying attention to how they show up.
This is what I mean by screening out based on effort. Just because Guy's really cute
doesn't give him a free pass if he writes you one sentence and then disappears, if he
is really intermittent in his communication with you. If he never asks too many questions,
if the conversation really never goes anywhere except, “hey, want to meet?” You're really hot,
send me some pics. That's literally all you're getting. There's a guy who's going to try harder
with the proper prompting. So we want to see what kind of effort a guy is going to make over a few
days or a week to earn the right to take you out if you don't have that H.R. department, right? If
you're the CEO, this is our H.R. department. If you don't have your screening mechanism,
you're going to find yourself texting a whole bunch of guys or going out on a whole bunch of
blind dates with total strangers because you didn't do anything to pay attention to whether
he was going to make an effort. You just gave him a free pass because he was cute and he was
aggressive. You can't just get a free pass because they're cute and they're aggressive.
Now number three, you screened in rather than out on looks, you've given a chance to the sevens
for lack of a better term, and you're choosing guys based on how they caught you,
the kind of skin they're putting in the game, the kind of effort that they're making
with those two things. Now that you've established somewhat of a relationship and made a connection,
schedule a phone phone call, a Face Time or a Zoom call rather than texting a meeting. You don't want
to meet total strangers, you don't want coffee dates, you don't want to play phone tag and just
leave messages for each other. All of this is a momentum killer. Your first date really should be
this phone. Call this Face Time, this Zoom call, and if you could do this for a half hour,
hour, hour and a half where it's just really easy, fun, organic,
think about how great your first date is going to be in person. Know if this date is good,
there will be another one. You don't have to rush into it. You don't have to meet in person
if you insist on meeting every cute guy in person. I just talked to someone the other day
who's now married, who's talking about a single life, and his methodology was to really just try
to spam as many women as possible and line up for days in a row for coffee to see
if there's chemistry. If you like that, keep doing. I'm presuming you don't like that,
so now you don't have to get dressed up in an entourage across town, you don't have to
meet guys for coffee. Coffee is a date no one makes out after coffee. So if you want to have
a real date, hold out for a real date. Your phone calls your face, time your zoom. That's your first
date as opposed to meeting a stranger who has no investment in you. Completely blindly. All
you've done is exchanged three texts. Now you're going to have better first dates. Fewer bad dates
doesn't guarantee a connection, but between you and me and I've said it before. Say it
again. Would you rather have one date with a guy you're excited about meeting on a Friday night?
Would you rather have four blind coffee dates back to back to back to back?
The choice is yours. And if you try to do things my way and a guy can't be bothered
to play along. He can't write longer texts. Too difficult for him. Let's just need to
put up a big fight or he refuses to set up a time to talk to you on the phone because that's too
much effort. He wants to be more spontaneous or if he insists on just one line of back and forth
texts that take weeks and weeks and weeks to build up any momentum or any of these things happen,
and you just don't feel good. Realize that's the whole process of being the CEO. It's just another
intern who doesn't want the job bad enough. Let that guy go and focus on the men who do make
more of an effort. So with this comment below, we'd love to hear your thoughts. I know nobody
else on the internet gives advice on this. I know this sounds really impossibly old school. But
if you're not happy with the status quo of dating, what are we going to do to nudge men
into putting more effort in to treat you better? If you allow them to get away with all this stuff,
they're going to keep on getting away with all this stuff. So advocate for yourself, show men how
to treat you. See who rises to the occasion. Now you're going to have a good date. And if you go
on one day a week, a good date each week, you're going to find a guy you like before you know it.
My name is Evan Marc Katz. Thank you for tuning in to the Love U Podcast.
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