Roxanne Wilson

Do you Google your dates?

by roxanne on 09/11/09 at 7:13 pm

How much due diligence do you do before you date someone? I mean, do you search Google, Facebook, and Twitter to find out more about a guy before you spend a few hours one-on-one with him?

Six years ago Googling your date was “the thing to do.” I remember sitting in front of my computer at work, on the phone with my girl Jennie as we Googled the guy she or I had just agreed to go out with. It was so much fun. And I never really expected to find anything major, just learn a little more about the guy.

Well since then the novelty of Googling wore off for me and I gave it up.

Here’s why:

* You have to fake it. If you read up on the guy, then you have to act surprised every time he reveals something you already know! That can get a little silly. I would be sitting across from a guy, and want to give him my undivided attention when he was telling me something personal, like he was divorced, had a child, or had a fear of dancing. And instead of focusing on his words, I was totally concerned with giving him the right reaction, as if I didn’t already discover the info through a little sleuthing. Ridiculous! Yet telling him you read all about him is equally weird.

* You think you know me, but you have no idea… Even with Twitter and Facebook, the internet is not my diary. People are more than what the internet can tell you about them. I learned this one first hand. After I came back from competing on “The Apprentice,” I would meet a guy, we would hit it off and then plan a date. Well somewhere between meeting and the first date, the guy would Google me, discover I was on a reality show, pour over my website, and by the time we sat down for dinner, he was a different guy completely. AHH!!

Suddenly I was one-dimensional to him. He either wanted to talk solely about the show, would get competitive and weird, or feel uncomfortable. To him I became “Roxanne the girl on TV” and not “Roxanne the girl who is multi-faceted, and one of those facets happens to be that she was on TV.”

* You’ll cheat yourself out of the experience. What does Miley Cyrus say in her song (yes I am quoting the Miley) “It’s not about how fast I get there, It’s not about what’s waiting on the other side. It’s the climb.” It is true. The journey is what makes you bond with someone.

I have girlfriends who take the Googling to the extreme, and I don’t know, you lose the natural progression of a relationship when you cut corners. And even though I am impatient, I want to learn about the potential guy at a slower pace.

That was where I stood until this year when the unexpected happened. There was a need to do some serious searching of one of my friend’s new guy. What came up was shocking. But it gave me a wake up call. Sometimes it is helpful to get the 411 on the guy so you can avoid needing to dial 911.

The last guy I dated was my first under the modified plan. I really wanted to know him for him, at our pace, in our way, so I had my girlfriend Kim, Google him. She was only allowed to tell me if he was an offender or was dangerous. Other than that, I didn’t want to know.

He passed that test thankfully. And I got to know more about him organically. I had done my due diligence and could let the dating commence!

Googling someone doesn’t predict how they will be with you, or reveal everything. But it is a resource worth using in moderation.