Overview
In my synopsis on dating and empowering yourself in the dating realm, I categorised the five ways of meeting people for dating. This article examines the concept of social circle dating in depth.
Social circle dating is as old as our species. Since the dawn of time, people have dated others from existing friendship and social groups. Many relied exclusively on this to find romance and partners.
Yet like much of the modern dating world, social circle dating is more complex than it was in bygone eras. We’ll look at a modern take on dating from your social sphere and reveal the nuances that’ll help make this dating method work for you.
What is social circle dating?
Social circle dating refers to dating people from new and existing social groups. This runs the gamut: friendship groups, work colleagues, club members and more all offer potential avenues to meet people for dating.
Countless people throughout history have met, dated and wedded from their social circles. Social circle dating is just a modern term for this long-standing approach of starting a romance with someone in your social sphere. In fact, throughout much of our history, people in past societies only dated others they knew from existing groups. Dating initial strangers only became plausible later on when societies complexified and particularly as the world became more globalised.
Social circle dating then remains a time-tested approach to meeting likeminded others. Let’s assess some of the pros and cons of it.
Pros of social circle dating
Familiarity breeds connection
Unlike other mediums such as online dating, social circles are ‘warm’ since nobody is considered a stranger to each other, even brand new people to a group. The shared connections everyone has through either other members or the group’s ethos foster a sense of familiarity that other mediums don’t have right away.
The other aspect of group connection is that people in social groups tend to have a lot in common with each other. This is usually due to personality traits (acquaintances tend to have similar personalities) or purpose (hobby groups, work and other domains have underlying goals that brought you together in the first place).
Both these factors generate a higher level of trust among people who are interested in each other than they otherwise would have if initially meeting through other mediums. This can potentially make the leap from acquaintance to date smoother than if people are strangers to each other (although as we’ll see below, this isn’t always the case).
Farming vs Scouting
One of the distinguishing features of social circles is that you’ll see people again and again. In this sense, social circle dating takes place over a longer period of time. You’re cultivating trust and positive emotions with not only people you’re interested in but everyone.
In contrast, meeting people in ‘cold’ scenarios usually takes place over shorter periods of time or in single interactions. You’re unlikely to see that same person in a bar the same time next week.
We can view this dynamic through the analogy of ‘farming’ vs ‘scouting’.
Social circle dating is akin to farming—you’re nurturing the seeds of positivity and reputation in a group that may yield dating opportunities later down the line without you needing to go further afield.
In comparison, most other dating methods are like scouting. You need to continuously search for new opportunities ‘out there’ without any pre-established connections doing the legwork for you.
This isn’t to say that scouting is flawed. It’s important to diversify the ways you meet people and scouting is valuable in this regard. But building effective social circles means you can reap advantages in the future for lesser effort.
Cons of social circle dating
The dynamic of a group isn’t about romance
The trade-off of everyone in a group being ‘warm’ means that the likelihood of finding compatible people to date fluctuates dramatically depending on the group and context. The dynamics of most social circles are not based on connecting members romantically.
Compared to methods such as online dating or dating events, social circles such as friendship groups, hobbies or clubs will have members who are already taken or not interested in dating. Not everyone is going to be open or available to date and this must be respected.
What’s more, if you’re not careful you could ruin the vibe and trust of a social circle by trying to date someone out of context. Work romances provide a famous example of this risk. All is well if you find someone to date successfully for the long term but if you’re rejected or break up with someone from work, you risk creating tension that’s at odds with the job you’re doing.
A smaller pool of dating opportunities
In proper social circles there’s an upper ceiling to how many new people can realistically join and ingratiate themselves into the group with everyone else. There’s a psychological limit to how many people we can maintain quality connections with.
As I wrote in ‘Dating: How To Date Abroad And The 5 Ways To Empower Yourself In The Dating Market’:
“While there are exceptions, the majority of social circles are circles due to having an established core of people with strong connections meaning the circle exists because those people put time and energy into their bonds with each other. This makes ‘turnover’ of members less common and reduces new footfall into such groups which can narrow the number of new people you can meet per social circle.”
Essentially, there’ll always be a limit to how many people you can date from the ‘warm’ scenarios of social circles. In contrast, ‘cold’ methods such as night encounters or online dating offer greater numbers of people to meet since there’ll always be more single people outside of your total social circles than inside them.
You can offset this effect somewhat by joining more social circles or belonging to ones that are expanding. But you’ll always reach a limit eventually. If you’re looking for a special long-term partner, this might not matter as much. But if you’re looking to date from a wide pool of people, bear this in mind.
How do you create a social circle for dating?
Before we look into ways of using social circles for dating, it’s important to know that there are no guarantees that any person can date from their social circles. It’s arguable that there isn’t any easy method for dating people in the modern era but if you follow good processes from people who know what they’re talking about, you’re likely to end up dating compatible people from the other methods.
When it comes to social circle dating however, along with the cons mentioned above, so much is dependent on variables such as the types of circles you’re in, the members, and others that it’s impossible to make guarantees of success from person to person.
This is why there’s less information around on social circle dating than other types. Despite this, the following knowledge will teach you the nuances in dating from your social circles to give you the best chance of making it work for you.
There are three ways to operate social circles for dating: you can either create your own, join a new one or build on an existing one.
If you’re serious about getting opportunities to date through social circles then creating and joining new ones is your best bet in improving your odds.
Creating a social circle means you get to be involved in the formation of a group from the ground up. You have a large say in who joins and can be a de facto leader.
How do I go about building an entirely new social group full of people I don’t know I hear you ask?
The best way is to start a group or community around a particular theme of interest. You can then plan events around that theme that will create shared time and space among members.
There are all kinds of niches you can occupy with a group. If you’re a student, consider a university society. If you have a hobby with a lopsided demographic (e.g. male-heavy), consider branching out and creating a more inclusive version. If you’re an expat, consider an interest group based around your native language or culture.
However, the most common approach for social circle dating is to join a new social circle.
Joining a social circle has many advantages. For one, you don’t have to spend time waiting for a community to form, one already exists. Another is that you can see what the gender ratios of already established groups are beforehand so you can choose a group that’s likely to give more opportunities.
While there are certain social circles you don’t want to change purely for dating (e.g. your work circle), there are a plethora of other clubs, organisations and interest groups that you can join to expand the range of social opportunities you have. Focus on ones that are likely to have the types of people you’re interested in dating.
The other approach is to build on your existing social circle(s).
Note that most of the time, existing social circles come with some caveats that make meeting people for dating purposes more difficult:
– Established non-romantic intergroup dynamic: on average, you could be in an existing social circle for years, think about how long you’ve been in your job or main friendship groups for. This means that over such a period of time, your place in the group is already defined whether you realise it or not. Looking to date someone from it now can ruin the dynamic that you have within the group if not done tactfully.
– Gender-skewing: many existing social circles are heavily-skewed towards one gender. This is particularly the case for men whose friendship groups tend to be other men with few women than vice versa. Due to the lopsided ratios within such social circles, it can be harder to meet people of the opposite sex if that’s what you’re looking for.
Another drawback that doesn’t apply to every existing social circle is the concept of ‘oneitis’. This is when a person has an unhealthy infatuation with someone they know who they wish to be going out with. Often the infatuation is with somebody in a social circle of theirs. The term ‘oneitis’ comes from male dating spheres but regardless of the term used, anybody of any gender or sexuality can experience an unhealthy infatuation with one person.
Some people believe that they can win over their ‘one’ with some kind of ‘technique’ and that social circle dating might be the means to do so.
It’s important for me to write information that is best for my readers, information that can help them in their lives and if you’re one of those people seeking to win over a particular person with some magical approach, please understand that no such thing exists. Anyone claiming to offer such a method is a charlatan.
Yearning for one particular person is the opposite of dating empowerment. It usually leads to wasteful preoccupation with someone else and in the end, the vast majority of those with ‘oneitis’ never end up with the person. Part of the reason is because the fixation on the other person puts them off!
Instead it’s healthier to diversify the ways you date others instead of secretly hoping one particular person will come to like you. Creating and joining new social circles is more conducive to this mindset—they provide space for a person to meet others and see that there are plenty of datable people.
Whatever your approach to social circles, remember this important principle: be careful about joining a social circle purely with an agenda to find a date. The key to making social circle dating work for you is to find groups that you’re happy to hang out in as part of your social life whether or not you find a date during your time in them.
Most people are good at sniffing out people with agendas and if you approach a group dynamic solely with the intention of looking to date, you risk being that awkward person who doesn’t ‘get it’.
If instead you focus on having a good time in everyone’s company, you’ll make yourself a more attractive person.
Now that we’ve covered the different approaches to operating social circles, let’s look at tips you can use to meet dates through them.
Create buzz through your reputation
At the heart of your place in a social circle is your reputation.
Your reputation is the general consensus of the group’s opinion about you. While it pays in life to not care too much about what people think, not caring at all about a group that you’re part of is sociopathic. Having a sense of where you stand with others in a social circle is a healthy self-awareness.
The best way to increase your reputation in a group is to give value.
It’s vital that you aren’t supplicating or self-effacing when giving value. Trying to curry favour with others through fake ‘niceness’, tokens and gifts of ‘appreciation’ rather than through you personality is cringeworthy. The value you give should be one of positive emotions and a good vibe. It should come from a place of authenticity than from one needy for popularity. Any opportunities or physical value that you provide are supplementary to the value of you as a person to the group and not in spite of it.
If you provide value enough times over a period, your respect will amplify and you’ll become an integral part of the group. With enough momentum and collaborators in the social circle, you’ll form a buzz about you.
When you generate buzz about yourself, people are going to be more receptive in wanting to get to know you intimately. You then have a better chance of being able to spend separate time with a person you’re interested in (below) or even have them signal their interest towards you.
Reputation isn’t built straight away. Remember the concept of farming—if you plant the seeds of reputation now, they’ll germinate into buzzing advantages that you can sow later on.
Social paradigms
Most people are oblivious to the notion of social paradigms.
A social paradigm is a generalised default context within which two or more people interact with each other.
Social circles determine default contexts within which people behave towards each other in certain ways. A karaoke social club isn’t going to allow for a session of serious structured debates, that would be out of context.
We underestimate how patterned our ways of operating with others is until we have to operate with them in a different context.
Take your workplace for example. Chances are the colleagues you get on best with are the ones you’ve shared time outside work with. Maybe it was through seeing them let loose at the company Christmas party or maybe it was just through having lunch together outside the office.
In either of those scenarios, what happened was a transition from one social paradigm to the other. Instead of interacting with them under the single paradigm through which most colleagues fall under (working in the office), you’ve interacted with them in a different context. This creates a different dynamic to your working relationship, one that tends to strengthen the bond and trust between you.
The same concept applies to social circle dating. If you have enough rapport with someone in a group setting you’re interested in such as an event or party, the next step you can take is to change the social paradigm between the two of you. This can be as big as inviting them to a different hangout on another day or as simple as moving to a different place in the venue so the two of you can get to talk one-on-one.
In either case, the physical change in context, however small, builds a level of trust, intimacy and intrigue that you wouldn’t have had if you’d continued interacting with them in the standard group setting.
Pay heed to ratios
I’ve mentioned ratios at other points and I’ll mention them again, they’re that important.
If you’re a person looking to date people of the opposite sex, it should come as no surprise that relying on social circles that have a lopsided ratio towards your gender will yield less opportunities for dating on the whole.
A man might be a member of a large gaming guild full of other guys that provides him with a lot of opportunities to socialise. However, if there are too few women in the social circle relative to men, he’s going to find it difficult to date from it.
Similarly, a woman might love her female book club. But she’s very unlikely to meet any men from it unless someone in the group introduces her to a man outside of the group.
No one is saying you have to abandon existing social circles. But if you don’t have any social circles with more balanced ratios or even reverse lopsided ratios (more of the other sex) then you’re not making the law of averages work in your favour for this approach.
Diversify your social life to have groups with more balanced ratios, even if that means getting out of your comfort zone. At the very least, it’ll make you more comfortable and familiar interacting with the opposite sex which is unfortunately not a given in today’s world. But it also might lead to a fantastic relationship.
Avoiding the ‘friend zone’
The ‘friend zone’ is the now famous term for people whose affections for someone have been rejected by the person they’re interested in that they have to remain ‘friends’.
The friend zone is infamous due to the misunderstanding people have in the flow of romantic relationships. They believe that friendships can become romantic with just a bit more appreciation and pleasantries here and there.
This is rarely the case. The majority of the time, the precedent set at the beginning is what will remain weeks, months, or even years down the line in a social circle.
The truth is the best way to avoid the friend zone is to prevent yourself from getting into it in the first place.
This isn’t contradictory to the idea of ‘farming’ in a social circle. When joining a social circle, you can remain friendly with everyone without becoming ‘friended’.
The dynamic you want to have is one of good rapport and positive vibes but without explicitly establishing yourself as friends with the person you’re interested in.
This isn’t as conflicting as it seems. We have social situations where this happens all the time. Think of a work or friendship scenario where you enjoyed good rapport with a person from another department or a friend of a friend. You probably mingled with them as if you were a ‘friend’ since the overall group dynamic included actual friends yet at the end of the hangout, you weren’t considered friends.
Once you’ve cultivated enough buzz and interest, you can then change the social paradigm between the two of you by moving things forward. This way you convey romantic interest without ever once stepping foot into the friend zone paradigm.
What about getting out of an already established friend zone?
As stated, this is much harder and you should avoid over-relying on any one person in the hope that they change their mind (see ‘oneitis’ above). You’ll do yourself a favour by keeping your options open this early into the dating game.
This doesn’t mean it’s impossible. You need to think about how to move the platonic dynamic you have with the person to a romantic one. Nearly every single interaction we have with others on this planet is non-romantic, we do nothing out of the ordinary. Platonic then means doing what you’ve always done to get what you’ve always got.
To break out of a platonic relationship, someone in the dyad has to do something unconventional from the established dynamic between the two of you. They have to charge the relationship with romantic intent and have the person see them in a different light.
Counterintuitively, one of the best ways to do this is to spend more time away from the person. If you work on yourself and focus on other goals, you’ll build yourself into a more attractive person in general—someone who has values, passions and ambitions outside of any one person they’re interested in.
After a long period of time, when you re-enter that person’s life, your growth will have changed the dynamic between you. At this point, provided the other person sees you at least somewhat in a different light, it’s important you make your intentions known rather than resorting to the old platonic dynamic you had with them before.
Breaking out of the friend zone means taking a risk. The risk is that you reach a point of no return in the current relationship you have with the person you’re asking out, whatever that may be. But the outcome will either be a reciprocation of your interest or clarity that this person is not right for you even though you tried. Both of these are good outcomes in the sense that they allow you to move on with your dating life without staying in orbiter limbo.
Remember: the odds are stacked against ANYBODY getting out of the ‘friend zone’. That one example you heard of longtime friends becoming lovers is an exception, not the rule. Nothing beats diversifying your dating life through other social circles and even more, through other dating methods.
Summary
Social circle dating is a longstanding approach that people in the past, present and future use to find lovers and partners.
Dating from our social groups gives us the added confidence of familiarity with who we’re getting involved with, belonging to the same group acts as a ‘vetting’ process that builds trust. It also provides the potential of having others show interest in us over time (farming) instead of us needing to seek out others in single interactions (scouting).
This is not without its flaws. Dating from social circles is risky if it causes friction with other group members—the dynamic of most groups isn’t about dating. Moreover, the number limits to members in social circles lessen the amount of opportunities you have to meet different people of interest if you rely on this method alone.
There are three approaches to using social circles: create them, join them or build on existing ones. Whichever approach you take, ensure you’re happy to socialise in the group irrespective of whether you find dateable people or not. An attractive person is one who’s at ease with themself in the group setting.
There are some tips you can use to increase the chances of finding a date from your social circles. In line with the idea of ‘farming’, focus on creating a buzz about yourself in the circle via your reputation as a person who brings value and good vibes. Learn how to transition between different social paradigms. Put yourself in situations where the gender ratio works in your favour. Avoid the ‘dreaded ‘friend zone’, ideally by never getting into it in the first place.
Very few people know or supply information on social circle dating. It’s been around since the dawn of time and it’s here to stay. Use the knowledge above to make it work for your love life in an increasingly complex world.
