The Pros and Cons of Speed Dating

Speed Dating is a new concept of meeting people that is taking the dating public by storm. Now if you’re interested in trying out this kind of meet and greet, you should know a little about it so that you can determine if this is right for you.

First of all, what is Speed Dating? This is an event set up by organizers in a restaurant-type setting that charge participants a small fee to attend. Each person then has exactly 8 minutes (sometimes less) to sit at a table and chat with other participants. When the time’s up, the participants move onto the next table and so on. Once everyone has had a chance to meet all the other prospective partners, they will then fill out a form and basically give a score to each of the persons that they met during the event. After the session, the organizers will then examine the forms and see if there are any matches among the participants of the event. If they find that two persons are mutually interested in each other their phone numbers will then be handed out, whether they end up dating each other is for them to decide.

Now what are the advantages of Speed Dating you might ask? There are a lot of them. The first is easy access to other single people. Most of the time, people are too busy with work to even bother to go out dating other single people. And sometimes, they just don’t know which places to go to meet other people that may be interested in pursuing a relationship. This is why Speed Dating, which arranges the meeting place, provides the accessibility that a lot of single people find attractive.

Another endearing quality of Speed Dating is efficiency. Each "date" only lasts for approximately 8 minutes; this is why first impressions are important. A person can usually find out in that brief period of time if there is chemistry between them. For most people this is infinitely better than wasting an entire evening on a date with someone and in the end not knowing if you’re right for each other. This is taken care of by Speed Dating by using these mini-dates of theirs as the deciding element for people whether they want to go on a "real" date with someone.

And in this kind of dating, there is a very small chance of face-to-face rejection. This is because the persons involved do not know who are interested with whom until the very end of the Speed Dating session. This is a great help for people who have low self-esteem since it helps to soften the blow of rejection quite significantly.

Speed Dating also offers a safe environment for people to meet others. Rather than the uncertainty of going out on a blind date with a person whom you hardly know, a Speed Dating session puts you in a group of people in a single safe location. And there are no exchanges of personal information, at least until the very end, so they can feel secure that nothing can harm them while they are there.

And lastly, in Speed Dating, each participant is sure that the others are all single and looking for other people to mingle with. This is very different from, say a bar scene, where someone only follows their gut instinct on who among the people in there is single. A person barely has enough information to go with to determine if a person that they seem to like is in a relationship already, or worse married.

Now if there are pros in Speed Dating there are absolutely cons to it as well.

One disadvantage is the short time frame a person has to meet potential partners. One has to do everything they can in that 8 minutes to give a very good impression to the person they are in front of. Some people say it’s risky to base your future on that first impression. And this can pose quite a problem for people who are painfully shy, and needs some time to really open up to others.

One more disadvantage is that because of the short amount of time given, most judgments carried out are based mainly on looks. A person can only get so much information in a window of 8 minutes so they base other people’s attractiveness on their looks alone. This puts more emphasis on the physical rather than the inner qualities of people.

Now after hearing what Speed Dating is all about, why not give it a try? Who knows? In just 8 minutes you just might find your soul mate.