DATING ADVICE
Date Stacking Is the Secret to Work-Life Balance
. . . or so they say.
Like many trends nowadays, date stacking started going viral on Tiktok with one woman sharing her strategy of scheduling multiple dates in one day to make the most out of her Friday night. She allotted one hour for each, allowing her to meet up with three guys for what had to be a very productive evening.
Insane or genius? Despite some incredibly awkward mishaps, TikTok user Paretay says she doesn’t regret a thing.
With how fast paced the world’s become and how busier everyone keeps getting, it’s no surprise that people come up with things like date stacking. After all, if you want to be successful while also having a little love in your life, you might just have to come up with crazy ideas, too.
The Advantage: Ultimate Efficiency
If you’re either a modern woman with modern sensibilities or a busy man with far too much on his plate, then date stacking will definitely pique your interest.
More than being able to create a spreadsheet for your love affairs, it can also help your social life flourish without having to sacrifice your professional goals. Gone are the days when you had to choose between being in love but unaccomplished and being a lonely career person.
When you have the option of organizing dates back to back, you can also make sure you’re not settling for anything less than what you want and deserve. With date stacking, you don’t need to pretend you like Mister Eight PM Who Hates Animals because there’s still a chance Mister Ten-Thirty with Blue Eyes owns and loves cats as much as you do.
The Disadvantage: You Can’t Schedule Love
Unfortunately, there are still some things even the most foolproof dating system can’t do: control emotions.
In fact, with date stacking, you may just end up being so fixated on planning and taking advantage of your free time that you’ll have no energy left to enjoy the actual dates themselves. Being able to meet one lovely lady every day for one week isn’t so exciting if you’re too tired or too distracted to give any of them the attention they deserve.
You just can’t force yourself to feel something just because you’re on the clock.
Date stacking may get you to meet with more people, but if you only prioritize time management and forget actually finding someone special — which is the whole point of the entire thing, by the way — then it’s all for nothing.
Beyond exploring more options, there are still things you need to take care of if you truly want to find a good partner: you still need to show genuine interest, assess your attraction and compatibility, and make a good first impression.
Final Thoughts
In the end, date stacking sounds appealing because you get to maximize the limited time you have for romance. It’s a bit like speed dating in that way, except you get to do all the planning, which means you have more control. If your goal is to treat love like a race where the person with the most dinners planned in a month gets the award for World’s Most Desirable, then perhaps this trend is perfect for you.
The trade-off, however, is that you may start treating it as dating for its own sake instead of a means to an end. Worse, it can even backfire and make you exhausted before you even get close to reaping the rewards.
And that’s just for those with stellar organizational skills, who know what they want and how to get it. What about the others who aren’t so skilled at making spreadsheets?
At some point, something’s got to give.
With date stacking, maybe that something should be the part of stacking that will only take away from dating. If you can find a way to date several people in a short time without getting bogged down with all the planning, maybe that sweet spot is the one you’re really looking for.
Either way, there always has to be a balance, one that you need to find before you wind up nodding off while in the middle of a lovely date with Miss Just Might Be the One.
