I would really recommend sharing your experiences with close friends. I probably took this too far because I would talk to anyone who would listen…but it was one of the biggest helps with dating that I found. People love to hear about dates, both the good and the bad. People enjoy hearing about other’s relationships (turn on the television sometime) and they love to offer advice. Be open to listening to all advice but be slower on the advice you decide to follow. In my opinion, we’re all lost to some degree when it comes to dating (this was clearest for me when girls giving me advice were baffled by the response of those I was dating). And it was always fun to hear what others thought would be the “best” move in a particular dating situation. Also, if you are able, share your experiences with both male and female friends. The difference in the advice was often surprising…although perhaps it shouldn’t have been! I found that frequently the best choice was somewhere in the middle of the advice offered by the guys and the girls.
For me, after I had been doing the multiple-dates-per-week for about a month, it was common for several people to stop by my desk at work to see how my weekend went. More often than not I had a funny story to tell them: either because I messed up big time and now found little else to do but laugh about it or sometimes because I met a crazy girl which made for even better stories. I was also gaining confidence because I was learning that I wasn’t the only person who thought dating was extremely confusing. It became clear that some people who stopped by weren’t there for a laugh or to offer advice: they were confused just like me. They were just curious to learn how another “blind man” was trying to find his way. Eventually, Jenny, a manager at work, devoted her whiteboard to the girls I was dating. She developed a ranking system for how much I liked a girl versus how much that girls seemed to like me. She was just having fun but it made me feel somehow successful in all my failure. In your search for that “someone”, don’t ignore all the people you already have. They will love trying to help you make sense of all the chaos.