Are you in the Kansas City group?

“Are We Dating The Same Guy” is a network of private Facebook groups, each one tied to a city or region. Women join the group for where they live, post a photo or a screenshot of a man they’ve met or matched with, and ask whether anyone else knows him. Here is how that works in Kansas City.

A metro with a state line down the middle

Kansas City sits on both sides of the line between Kansas and Missouri. Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas are separate cities, and State Line Road runs between Missouri neighborhoods and the Johnson County suburbs. People here cross that line constantly for work, dinner and dates, often without noticing.

The main group, “Are We Dating The Same Guy? | Kansas City / Topeka,” has about 92,000 members and covers both sides. It doesn’t matter much whether you live in Overland Park or Lee’s Summit. If you date in the metro, you are within reach of the same group.

Johnson County, Lee’s Summit and the suburbs

Much of the metro lives in the suburbs. Overland Park and Olathe make up a large part of Johnson County on the Kansas side, and Lee’s Summit is one of the bigger suburbs on the Missouri side. Driving is the norm, and app radius settings easily stretch across both states. A man in Olathe and a woman in Lee’s Summit can match, meet halfway and never share a friend.

That is part of why the group gets used the way it does. When two people have no one in common, a group of women from across the metro is the nearest thing to asking around.

The Plaza, the Crossroads and Westport

Evenings out tend to center on a few areas. The Country Club Plaza is a familiar place for dinner and a walk. The Crossroads has galleries, restaurants and a busy monthly art night. Westport has bars that stay lively late into the night. The streetcar runs through downtown and makes it easy to move between neighborhoods without the car. Game days fill the stadiums on the east side of the city, and plenty of plans get made around them, which is another way people from opposite ends of the metro end up meeting.

Topeka and how far the search goes

The group’s name reaches out to Topeka, a drive west along the interstate. Some men date between the two, and some move from one to the other for work. For a Kansas City check, we look first at the main Kansas City and Topeka group, then at the groups someone posting about you would also be likely to use: Johnson County and the Kansas suburbs, Lee’s Summit and the Missouri suburbs, and the statewide groups on both sides. Your photos are what we search with first, followed by the names you give us. Lived in Wichita, St. Louis or Columbia before this? Put it in your order and we will search there too.

A plain answer, in writing

You don’t need to keep checking or asking friends what they’ve heard. A written report sets out what is there, or confirms that nothing is, and lets you get back to normal.