Skip to content
Entertainment
Link copied to clipboard

Safety-in-numbers dating

Group meets group. You take it from there.

Ari Brownstein, Kevin Owocki, Greg Lopiccolo, Candace Stearns and Erica Goldberg (from left to right) on a group date at Nodding Head. (Ron Tarver/Staff Photographer)
Ari Brownstein, Kevin Owocki, Greg Lopiccolo, Candace Stearns and Erica Goldberg (from left to right) on a group date at Nodding Head. (Ron Tarver/Staff Photographer)Read more

It's Saturday night in Center City. At the Nodding Head brewpub on Sansom Street, three male friends in their 20s are looking for women.

As the first round arrives, so do the ladies. A quick introduction reveals that a potential pair share the same profession, and the group of seven settles into a cushioned red booth.

This is no impromptu meeting. They're participating in the recently reinvented social experiment known as organized group dating, billed as a low-key way to meet friends and lovers through informal gatherings. The drill: Six to eight single men and women go out for a few hours to find a mate in the crowd. They may hit a bar, pick pumpkins, or play laser tag - all in the name of finding love with minimal stress and more authenticity.

What happened to good old-fashioned one-on-one? It's a mad, mad world out there.

Blind dates can be scary and awkward. Professional matchmakers are costly, and speed dating requires nerves of steel. For a generation whose social life blossomed at the same time as online matchmaking sites such as match.com and JDate, they feel they've been there and done that. Plus, people often misrepresent themselves in their personal profiles.

Yet group dating, participants say, demands that you be yourself. You won't, after all, try out a new persona, or even a new hairstyle, in the presence of friends.

"Your friends keep you honest," said Adam Sachs, chief executive officer of Ignighter.com, a Web site that promotes group-to-group dating. On this site, a group of friends create one profile - and from there, groups are matched with other groups.

Testament to the growing trend is Ignighter's rising enrollment. According to Sachs, it has doubled in the last month without any marketing effort. He estimates the site currently has more than 20,000 users in more than 5,000 groups, primarily in larger urban areas. Other Web sites that promote group dates include Teamdating.com and Iamfreetonight.com.

Of course, using group dynamics to prospect for partners is nothing new. "The idea behind it is timeless. People have done this for generations," explained Bridget Jennings, one of the female group daters at Nodding Head.

Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University, says natural dating patterns evolved from hunting and gathering bands.

Millions of years ago in Africa, our ancestors took advantage of the dry season to meet at the watering hole, a precursor to courting as a crowd.

"Local communities existed within a wider network of parents and friends," she said.

During the earlier part of the 20th century, group dating was encouraged to promote chaste introductions.

Back at the Nodding Head, the Ignighter group called "Third and Cherry," comprising Ari Brownstein and Greg Lopiccolo, both 26, and Kevin Owocki, 24, are meeting with the female group known as "409 Friends." The stakes feel high and low at the same time, and early on, several male-female pairs take shape.

The first order of business is finding common ground. Turns out that several in the group attended Philadelphia's monthly First Friday event, and the conversation turns to the topic of Old City galleries and bars. Nervous hands rotate beer glasses. After about 20 minutes of scrounging about for familiar topics, the group settles into an easy rhythm of conversation punctuated with laughter.

While group dating is meant to be laid-back, there are obvious pressure points. Consider the tension that builds when two guys are interested in the same woman, or vice versa. "We've been friends since high school. One of us will back off," Lopiccolo says. "We don't let girls get in the way of our friendship."

Sometimes, the dynamics are not for every personality. Chris Chimicles, a banker, is in his early 30s. He calls group dating an alternative vetting process. However, he says, "not everyone is comfortable in the group setting."

Eli Finkel, a social psychologist at Northwestern University, says group social dynamics are immensely complicated. "Everyone could hit it off, or get upset. There are a bunch of different ways it could go. There are opportunities for an alpha male to emerge."

But no one can deny that being in a group can be comforting. For instance, in a one-on-one setting, there is no socially acceptable way to walk out on a dud. Instead, Monique Crawford of Philadelphia had to make sure she was text-messaged mid-date so she could tell her sorry suitor that a girlfriend was stranded.

"It was the rudest thing," she said. "I was on my cell phone nonstop. I wanted the night to end early." She eventually began going on group dates, and as a result is now in a committed relationship.

Philadelphia attorney Oliver Griffin, a frequent group dater, prefers the comfort of numbers as a prelude to single dates. A potential pair are "likely to have spent hours in each other's presence and have plenty of things to talk about, including the last set of group dates."

As with every kind of dating, finding a romantic partner is still hard to do, so sharing it with others eases the burden.

"At the end of the day, you are still heading out with a bunch of your friends," Finkel said. "That can't be bad."