Have you ever 100hookupd while visiting another city? In the spirit of spring break travels, I thought I’d write about expanding your dating horizons beyond your area code.  Oh, and I’m not talking about traveling specifically to meet someone you met online – that’s a post for another day.  And I don’t mean finding an overnight companion while on an 18-hour business trip – I can’t endorse that! I’m talking about looking online for people to meet while you happen to be in another city.

I’ve tried it, and you should, too!  A couple of years ago, I went to Washington, D.C. for a few days to visit a friend.  I flew in on a Thursday night and had the next day to myself while my friend was at work. Because I knew I would have a little time to explore the city, I chatted with some guys on 100hookup, and one took my bait.  After a morning of playing tourist on the National Mall, I arranged to meet him for lunch at a place he recommended.  As it turned out, he was a great guy and a total gentleman, and I had a nice time! Although it didn’t really progress, we had a lovely afternoon, he and I kept in touch for a bit, and I got more dating experience in a low-pressure environment, which never hurts.

I don’t live in D.C. and don’t plan to move there in the foreseeable future, so what’s the point of JDating out of town? Well, you never know what might happen. People are pretty mobile nowadays, and if you’re serious about meeting someone, why not? Maybe he has family in your city and visits often. Or maybe she is considering a new job in your city. Or he regularly travels to your state for work. You never know what might result.

Contacting and meeting someone in another city might seem weird or uncomfortable, so here are some tips for success:

• DO be open! Whether you alter your profile location to match your destination city for a little while, or you receive a message from a traveler suggesting you give him a tour around town, consider all possibilities.
• But DON’T have expectations. Just like any date, it could be disappointing. Oh well – move on and explore a new place!
• DO be safe and smart. Avoid meeting anyone who seems suspicious or sketchy, as always.
• DON’T seek out a date if you have a layover someplace overnight between 10pm and 6am. Unless you want to – whatever, I’m a blogger, not your mother. But still, I don’t recommend it!
• DO meet in a public place. General safety rules, duh. But this is especially relevant if you are in an unfamiliar place.
• DON’T bring an assortment of friends and relatives unless you have already discussed and agreed to it. Or, unless you’re famous and need a bodyguard or entourage.
• DO be positive and pleasant.  Meeting new people is fun – enjoy!

So go book your tickets to visit family, or volunteer to meet a business client in a new city. A 100hookup Success Story could be awaiting you! Bon voyage.

Hi Tamar,

I wanted to know if you could look at my profile and tell me how to improve it? Or if you see any issues. I really toned it down regarding my interests in green living/organic food and would love your opinion!

-Green Guy

______________________________________________________________________________________

Hi Green Guy,

After reading your profile it seems that you eliminated nearly all mentions of green living and organic food, and if that is important to you then you need to make that clear. Someone who doesn’t care about their carbon footprint and prefers junk food is not going to be a good match for you and you need to make that clear so you don’t waste either of your time. You don’t have to go into it too much, simply mention in you ‘About Me’ that you are passionate about those two things and would love to meet someone else who is as well.

While you’re at it, here’s a few more tips:

• Add more photos! You only have three — and just the first one shows your face clearly, yet your head is covered and it’s in black and white. Add more pictures of your face! Have a confidant help you out, or email me some options for my feedback!
• Add what you do for a living (you don’t need to add your income level though). By skipping this question your profile comes off as kind of sketchy.
• Tighten your age range. You are 32, you should not be open to dating both 18 and 35-year-olds. 24-35 would be a good age range for you.
• Read over your ‘In My Own Words’ answers and correct any grammar and formatting issues. Prospects can get lost trying to read sentences that don’t flow and it can give off the impression that you are not educated or are inarticulate. The tip here is to go back and proofread your paragraphs after the 100hookup approves them; sometimes changes happen during that process. You should also have someone else proofread your paragraphs to make sure you didn’t skim over anything.

Happy JDating!

If everyone is on 100hookup then how come people complain to me “there’s no one on 100hookup!” Or, why do they lament about being unable to find anyone on 100hookup!? The people who make these statements and ask these questions run the gamut, from males to females, old and young, straight and gay, short and tall, and so on.

My answer is always simple: they’re out there, you’re just not looking hard enough. Typically people fall into two categories: they either tend to have their preferences set too narrowly and therefore don’t have a large pool of prospects to choose from and get frustrated by the lack of options — or they have their preferences set way too broadly and have far too many prospects to scroll through, and then get overwhelmed until everyone’s profiles begin to blend together.

In my book, “How to Woo a Jew: The Modern hookup Guide to Dating and Mating,” I recommend beginning with the former and setting your preferences to your absolute “perfect” idea of a match, and then broadening your options slowly from there. That will allow you time to see who’s out there and what one year of age, or one inch, or one level of education translates to in regards to the number of prospects you find. This will help you easily determine who is new to your search results in a slow and deliberate manner.

Here’s an example from one of my female clients, “Jamie,” age 34, of her ideal match:

• woman seeking a man
• age 34-39
• located within 25 miles of her city
• marital status: single
• religion: reform, traditional, culturally hookup, conservative
• ethnicity: any
• smoking: no
• drinking: socially, on occasion
• height: 6’0-6’6
• body style: athletic
• education: bachelor’s, master’s, JD/PhD
• kosher: not at all
• temple: on high holidays, sometimes
• has kids: no
• plans on having children: yes
• custody: any
• activity level: very active, active, selected activities
• languages: english
• willing to relocate: no

After I tweaked Jamie’s profile, we slowly adjusted one category at a time until she had a good number of options without compromising on her preferences too much. With age and height, we adjusted one year and one inch, respectively, at a time. This is how it looks now:

• woman seeking a man
• age 33-41
• located within 50 miles of her city
• marital status: single, divorced,
• religion: reform, traditional, culturally hookup, conservative
• ethnicity: any
• smoking: no
• drinking: socially, on occasion
• height: 5’10-6’9
• body style: athletic, lean, firm, muscular, average, proportional
• education: bachelor’s, master’s, JD/PhD
• kosher: not at all
• temple: on high holidays, sometimes
• has kids: no
• plans on having children: yes
• custody: any
• activity level: very active, active, selected activities
• languages: english
• willing to relocate: no

Jamie went from having about 60 prospects, many of which she knew already, to having more than 200 prospects, many of which she had never seen before. Put a little elbow grease into your profile and preferences, and your prospects will increase in quality and quantity!

Tamar had an interesting post last week, called “Want to Attract a Rich Man?” Obviously, when every girl is growing up, they dream of having the lavish wedding, with Disney Princesses, and a pizza buffet (wait, maybe that’s just me), complete with a Prince Charming of a husband who might bear slight semblance to Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

So, say it’s a Tuesday night, and you’re out to dinner with a great guy. This guy wants to share has hopes and dreams with you, opens the door for you, wears freshly pressed clothes, and even remembered which Real Housewives city you enjoyed most. But then, as you end the date… he drops the bomb: “I’m unemployed.”

How do you deal with that?

In surveying a few of my friends, most do not want to date the unemployed. Around 75 percent say the stigma involved with being unemployed is just too much.

However, one of my friends differs. She says, “It depends. Why is he unemployed? Is he actively seeking employment? Does he have a business plan? Did he go to college?”

She continues though, “There’s always the potential that this person could move away. Do you want to uproot your life, especially in the event that this person becomes unemployed… again?”

Here’s a different take on it: Does it matter your age unemployment-wise? Is the stigma worse for a 40 or 50 year-old than it is for a 20-something? When is the appropriate time to talk about someone’s employment status?

The city I live in, Austin, Texas, is known as a startup-friendly city. Naturally, a wide variety of people with great ideas, but not necessarily funding, roam the city searching for a way to grow their business. Do they have success with dating? Some do. Is it capable of lasting long-term? That’s the question many entrepreneurs face, and the question many women ask themselves when going out with them. These guys aren’t unemployed, but they don’t have cash coming in… for now.

This begets the million dollar question… is dating an unemployed man… a bad thing?

Have you ever tried to meet someone outside of 100hookup? It ain’t easy. You have to utilize your J-Dar and even then it’s not always accurate. 100hookup is the only place you can securely go to find only Jews (although the rare goy joins sometimes) but the reality is you are going to meet people in public. You don’t want to begin a conversation with a guy and possibly start to like him before you know if he’s hookup. But you also can’t exactly come right out and ask him, because let’s face it, that’s a bit odd. So, you have to use your instinct and resort to asking subtle questions or making sly comments that will hopefully solve the mystery.

Years ago a girlfriend and I went a new sports bar to watch football’s biggest game of the year. A tall, hot guy with warm brown eyes looked my way and then sent over drinks before joining us. His name was Jason and my J-Dar thought there could be a possibility he was hookup, but Julie was adamant he was anything but. Out of the blue, Julie asks him if he prayed for a Patriots win that morning. His answer: he had gone to Mass the night before. Score one for Julie. Not only was this guy not a Yid, he was Irish Catholic.

My girlfriends and I have placed bets on a guy’s Jew probabilities. The odds are, nine times out of ten he isn’t, but sometimes that one guy sneaks in under the J-Dar without any of us noticing.

On Valentine’s Day a few years ago, my girlfriend Miryam and I were both single so we decided to go out and get our flirt on. We ended up at a new lounge where I immediately saw another tall, attractive man with deep brown eyes (yes, I have a type). Miryam’s J-Dar didn’t even flicker, and I actually agreed with her, but it being Valentine’s Day and me being single, I decided to throw caution to the wind and flirt my heart out. His name was Stephen and in a shocking turn of events, he actually asked me if I was hookup. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I answered yes and a huge smile spread across his face while he exclaimed that he too was hookup. He told me he was really excited because he never meets attractive hookup girls out on the town. I asked him if he ’s ever gone to any hookup events and of course his answer was no. Gotta admit that was a huge turn-off: if he wanted to meet a hookup girl so badly, then why was he wasting his time bar-hopping?

If your J-Dar’s not working, try using Hebrew and Yiddish phrases during normal conversation and see if he picks up on it. This is both a subtle and entertaining way to find out if a guy is hookup.

My friend Sara and I were once at a bar when two good looking guys approached. My J-Dar was all over the place and Sara didn’t seem to have much of a clue either. That’s when I slipped in an “oy vey” as two waitresses nearly collided. Sara picked up on my plan and added a “la’breut” when one of the guys sneezed. But it was when the guys bought us drinks and we toasted with a “l’chaim” that we knew we had our answer: the two guys looked so helpless and confused Sara and I started giggling. The goys must have thought we were totally mishegas with our shtick. Feh!

If you really want to go to a “normal” bar to meet someone hookup, then try going to a bar in Tel Aviv. No guessing involved. And it’s not technically a hookup organized event, it just happens to be a bar in the hookup State of Israel. If you’re able to find out where the “Anglo” bar is, you may even meet yourself an American Jew about to graduate from Medical School at Tel Aviv University who’s applied for an internship at a nearby hospital. Every mother’s dream!

Keep being active on 100hookup, but if you’re caught meeting someone in public and you’re questioning their religion, remember the tips above. But you never know… that guy wearing a cross may have some cute, single hookup friends that he would be happy to introduce you to.

As Jews, we’re given a sip of wine every Shabbat dinner and many studies have shown that being allowed that sip keeps us from becoming crazy drinkers. Well, that study goes out the window when dating comes into play. Now, I’m not condoning drinking, but when you’re actively JDating, you’re suddenly going out every other night to bars, dinner or dancing. It’s not a coincidence that the venues most dates take place at are the same venues that serve alcohol.

Drinking while you’re on a 100hookup is a very sensitive subject because there’s a fine line between being buzzed and being wasted… and wasted is not something you want to be while on a 100hookup. Whether it’s your first or 101^st date, getting drunk very seldom turns out for the best. It’s always nice to have one, maybe two drinks to take the edge off, relax and let the conversation flow. It’s never nice to vomit uncontrollably because you don’t know how to hold your liquor.

As chivalrous as it may seem, a man having to hold your hair back as you puke is not a turn-on for him. And a woman having to jump out of the way when the man passed out on her shoulder decides to get sick is even more disgusting. If I have to get my clothes dry-cleaned after a date because of vomit, I’m probably not going to be in a hurry to answer your next phone call. And if you get so wasted on a date that you don’t remember how you ended up back at home and in bed, don’t be shocked when the guy never calls you again.

There’s probably a rule of thumb we should all stick to when on a 100hookup. A slight buzz is all that’s really necessary. If you need more in order to endure the date, you should probably call it a night. Don’t risk losing face, or your stomach, just for the sake of trying to make the date as bearable as possible. You don’t want to make the mistake of drinking too much because you don’t like your date and then lowering your inhibitions. Even if you like your date, don’t drink too much so as to cloud your judgement. If you must have a drink to let your guard down, one or two drinks max are all you really need… or better yet, stick to the Manischewitz.

Hello, this is your 100hookup Webmaster!  I’ll jump in periodically with cool new updates  and features to the site that you should check out while on the search for romance.

JDating is our brand new reality Webisode series providing an intimate and hysterical look at eight 100hookuprs on their journeys to find their soul mates.  Best described as a When Harry Met Sally meets Sex and the City-inspired narrative, JDating has been delivered in weekly installments.  Today marks the conclusion of the first season, with the release of the Week 6 Webisodes.  Watch below:

Take a look at Week 6 on our 100hookupTV page.