Could You Go On 100 Dates In One Summer?

Dating can be exhausting; you have to find someone (often wading through a whole mess of online grossness in the process) to go out with, then go through the whole "getting to know you" process (which usually involves lots of mishaps and misunderstandings before it's over), and then after all that there's a pretty sizable chance you two just won't turn out to be a good fit. And yet one brave woman named Elise Moreno has decided that she's not just going to throw herself into dating, she's going to go on 100 dates in one summer. Wow!

Elise Moreno came up with this unorthodox idea after realizing that she had never really been single as an adult, instead just moving from one long-term relationship to another. So the recent college grad decided to throw herself into the dating scene and go on 100 dates this summer, with 100 different guys. That takes some dedication (and, of course, an OKCupid account).

So far though, the project seems to be going well. Moreno, who lives in San Francisco but is currently in Amsterdam, has so far gone out with 26 guys, some of whom are duds, but several of whom she's been keeping in touch with. And as a way of reflecting on the experience as well as keeping her on track with the project, she's also started a blog called 100 Dates of Summer, giving the rest of us a glimpse into what this whirlwind dating adventure has been like.

And it does seem to be an adventure! So far there's been a guy who wears bunny ears, a dating coach who commits just about every faux pax in the book, and what Moreno describes as "the stabbiest fingerbang of my life." And that date where neither of them realized it was a date.

Of course, it's not all hilarity. Some of her posts are some general soul searching. In one in particular she reflect how her "serial monogamy" was in some ways a response to growing up with an unsupportive, seemingly uncaring father. Moreno, who was overweight as a child, writes:

He [my father] told me that I was fat and boys would never marry a fat girl. This stung. It stung a lot and it’s never left me. Later on in life as an adult he revealed to me that when I was a kid he didn’t love me because of my weight. He apologized.

But even though Moreno writes that she knew her father, who died several months ago, loved her, the emotional scars still remain. When starting a new relationship, she says, her thought process would be something like “Finally, someone likes me. Better not screw this up.” The 100 Dates of Summer project is her way of breaking free of that pattern.

Let's just hope the experience keeps on getting better over the course of the next 74 dates. And that she doesn't run into any of these people.

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