Are you in the Seattle 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 Seattle.

The group you can’t find

The main Seattle group doesn’t show up in Facebook search, so most men never even see that it exists. What does show up are smaller groups: one labeled as a backup for Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia, and another covering Seattle, Tacoma, Puyallup and Olympia. Women may belong to the main group, one of these or several, and a post in one won’t necessarily appear in the others.

For a man trying to find out where he stands, that means looking in a single group isn’t really a check. The picture only becomes clear when the groups are searched together.

A city of new arrivals

Seattle’s tech workforce has brought a lot of people to the city from elsewhere, and many of them arrive without a local circle of friends. Apps become the main way to meet anyone, so first dates are often with someone who shares no mutual friends at all. When a woman wants to know more about a man she met that way, a group is one of the few places she can ask.

Capitol Hill, Ballard and Fremont are common places for those dates, and people cross the bridges and hills of the city to reach them. South Lake Union and the area around downtown are full of offices, and many people who work there live in nearby neighborhoods and date close to home.

The Eastside and down I-5

Across Lake Washington, Bellevue, Redmond and Kirkland have large workforces and social lives of their own. Many people there date in Seattle, and many Seattle residents date on the Eastside, so the two overlap more than the lake suggests. South along I-5, Tacoma and Olympia are close enough for regular dates, which is why they appear in the groups’ names. Puyallup, southeast of Tacoma, has its own place in one group’s name, which shows how far south the scene reaches.

How we search for a Seattle man

We start with the main group and then search the surrounding groups where your matches are likely to be members, including the backup and smaller Seattle-area groups, the groups covering Tacoma and Olympia, the Eastside groups and the Washington-wide ones. If you moved here from Portland, the Bay Area or anywhere else, tell us on the order form and we’ll add those groups too.

Knowing where you stand

A scene spread across several groups is hard to be sure about on your own. A check across all of them gives you one clear answer, whichever way it goes, and lets you stop wondering. If nothing turns up, that is a real answer. If something does, you will know what it says and which group it is in.