Are you in the Washington DC 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 Washington DC.

One group for three jurisdictions

The DC group is really a DMV group, and its name says so. Its members, about 89,000 of them, live across the District, the Maryland suburbs and Northern Virginia, which mirrors how people here actually date. A man in Arlington can match with a woman in Silver Spring, meet her for a drink on U Street and cross two state lines in one evening without thinking about it. The group follows that pattern rather than any city boundary.

A city full of people on a timeline

Washington has an unusually transient population. People arrive for a government job, a contractor role, an internship on the Hill or a graduate program, and many expect to stay two to four years before moving on. That shapes dating here. Profiles turn over quickly, people date with a move somewhere in the back of their minds, and a woman unsure about someone she met may know little about him beyond his job title and the neighborhood he mentioned.

It also means the people in a post don’t always stay put, but the post does. A man can leave for a new job in another city while a post about him sits in the group, picking up comments from members who joined after he left. Moving away from the DMV doesn’t take a post with you.

The Metro map and the dating map

Much of DC dating runs along the Metro. The Red Line connects Rockville and Bethesda with Dupont Circle and Silver Spring. The Orange and Silver lines run out through Arlington toward Fairfax County and Tysons, and the Green and Yellow lines reach Navy Yard and Alexandria. First dates often land at a stop somewhere in the middle, which is part of why posts here so often come from women who live a long way from the man they’re asking about. Capitol Hill, Logan Circle and Columbia Heights all draw from the same wide pool.

Where we look for you

We start with the main DC / DMV group and then move through the other groups that overlap with it: the groups covering Northern Virginia, the ones covering the Maryland suburbs, and the backup DC group of about 10,000 members, which some women use alongside the main one. If you lived somewhere else before Washington, or you date in Baltimore or Richmond on weekends, add those places on the order form and we’ll include them.

A clear answer either way

Checking is rarely idle curiosity. Something prompted it: a date who seemed to know more than she should, an offhand remark from a coworker, a move coming up and a wish to leave nothing uncertain behind. A written answer tells you where you stand, and if nothing turns up, you can set the question down instead of carrying it with you.