As an intended consequence of the ‘hooking up with 4 girls’ resolution, a.k.a. Resolution #8, I have been going on dates and stuff. (Refer to the previous post for an explanation on The Resolutions and Resolution #8). Going on dates has many desirable outcomes:-

1. I meet new people, which is fun in itself. These people are also largely girls. I sometimes hook up with these girls. With the right people, hooking up is a lot of fun. Outcome #1 can be summarized as ‘Fun’.
2. I’m learning how to be charming and stuff. A very important first step in this that I have never done before is immediately and openly expressing admiration, infatuation and interest. This expression, of course, needs to be gradually turned up only when the subject is receptive. I think I have a pretty good handle on gauging receptiveness by now so this is really pretty easy. This first step can be as little as offering a brief smile (and maybe a wave) when she catches me looking at her instead of quickly looking away hoping that she didn’t notice. It helps that I’m good at not being creepy. It helps that I’m not unattractive. This, however is only an example. Outcome #2 can be summarized as ‘Self Development’.
3. It’s likely that I will end up in some sort of a serious relationship with one of these girls. The desirability of this outcome is can be debated, but that’s only because it eliminates outcomes 1 and 2 once it happens. It’s clear however, that the elimination of Fun and Self Development as a consequence here are only in the context of meeting and hooking up with new girls, and Outcome #3 should create new avenues for Fun and Self Development in the future. I shall, for the course of this examination treat this outcome as desirable. Outcome #3 can be summarized as ‘Long Term Companionship’.

In the context of Outcome #3, this process of dating can be looked at as a way of experimentally acquiring the best candidate for Long Term Companionship. From my observations of other people’s experiments with relationships, The time between a first date and a serious relationship usually varies between 2 weeks to 6 months, and in most cases us under 3 months. Now, this data hasn’t been scientifically gathered but if I was to draw a graph with what I have it would look something like this:-

The Y-Axis says “Chances of dating turning to a serious relationship (%)”, in case that’s hard to read.

 

Assuming one of the girls I meet by the end of the year (and this experiment) is a suitable candidate for Outcome #3, I have a 50% chance of being in a relationship by 10th February 2017 and an 80% chance of being in one by June 2017. Of course, the probability of this assumption being true must also be factored into this calculation but this is something for which I can not come up with any meaningful data. All I can say is that I have a good feeling about the girls that I can potentially date and fair confidence in my current ability to find more such girls.

Now the reason I bring this up is because of a particular girl, let’s call her Candidate A. I know her well enough to know most of her incompatibilities for Outcome #3 and I can still say that she’s a fairly good candidate. The best course of action would be for me to date her along with say 2 other good candidates. I can then be fairly certain of entering Outcome 3 with someone who’ll make it worth it. The problem is that Candidate A doesn’t want to date me now but at some point in the future. My inference is that this point will be 2-4 months from now (if at all) given that she’s chosen to start dating someone else at the moment. Since I consider her a good candidate and want there to be a chance for her for outcome 3, I am left with the following options:-

1. Delay / postpone the experiment
2. Keep course and let chance decide the outcome.

While I agree that Option 2 seems like the right thing to do, my partiality towards Candidate A tempts me to find a compromise between the two, which is to delay but at a later stage of the experiment and by a small amount of time. The biggest resolution of uncertainties is required when trying to answer the question, how much time? We shall take a dig at that in part 2 to this blog post. Meanwhile, here are a few pressing questions that we can try to answer for now:-

1. Am I trying this concurrent approach to dating to make up for all the time that I haven’t been dating?
2. Is this concurrent approach to dating to flawed to work? Is dating meant to be done sequentially?
3. Am I grossly overestimating my chances of success with only a few months of dating?
4. Am I favouring Candidate A only because I already know her well?
5. Will anyone ever date me after she reads this post?

P.S. This post is to be taken lightly. However the comments section is open to all your opinions on the situation.