Are you in the Boston 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 Boston.

A metro that resets every September

Boston runs on an academic calendar. With Harvard and MIT in Cambridge and a long list of colleges and universities across the city itself, the end of every summer brings a wave of arrivals and a wave of departures. Leases turn over, apartments in Allston, Brighton and Somerville change hands, and the dating apps fill with new profiles in the space of a few weeks.

That turnover keeps the Boston / Cambridge group, with about 44,000 members, busy. Women who have just moved to the area may join to get a sense of who they’re matching with, and a man who has dated here for years can suddenly find himself in front of a whole new set of people.

Cambridge, Somerville and the neighborhoods between

A lot of dating here runs along the Red Line, from Davis and Porter through Harvard and Central and into downtown, then across to Back Bay and the South End. The Seaport draws a younger professional crowd, and Fenway, Jamaica Plain and Charlestown each have a scene of their own. Because the city is compact and the T reaches most of it, a first date can bring together two people from very different parts of town who have nobody in common. When something feels off afterward, the group is often the quickest way for her to ask.

Commuter rail towns and the two shores

Beyond the city, the commuter rail spreads the dating pool much wider. The North Shore, from Salem and Beverly up toward Newburyport, and the South Shore, from Quincy down through Hingham toward Plymouth, are full of people who work in Boston and date there. Further out, Worcester and the Brockton and Taunton area have smaller groups of their own, and women in those places sometimes belong to both their local group and the Boston one.

How we search a Boston check

We start with the main Boston / Cambridge group and then cover the other groups where your matches are likely to be members: the groups on the North and South Shore, the ones covering Worcester County and the Brockton and Taunton area, and the Massachusetts-wide groups. If you went to school somewhere else, or you spend time in Providence or New Hampshire, put that on the order form and we’ll include it.

An answer instead of a hunch

Some men here check before a move, a new job or a relationship getting serious. Others noticed a promising match go quiet for no clear reason, or a date mentioned that her roommate “had heard of him,” and started to wonder. Either way, a hunch is hard to shake on its own. A written answer settles it, and if there’s nothing there, you’ll know that rather than having to assume it.