Are you in the Minneapolis 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 Minneapolis.

Two downtowns, one group

The Twin Cities are two cities sharing one metro area, and the group reflects that. It is named for Minneapolis, St. Paul and the Twin Cities together, and has about 34,000 members. A woman living near downtown St. Paul and another in Uptown or Northeast Minneapolis read the same feed, even if they would rarely cross paths otherwise.

Dates often happen in one downtown or the other, or somewhere in between, and people tend to keep separate friend circles on each side of the river. When a woman wants to know about a man she has just met, the group is often the quickest place to ask. Light rail runs between the two downtowns, which makes a date on the other side easy to arrange.

The suburbs and the wider metro

Much of the metro lives outside both cities. Edina, Bloomington and Maple Grove are each a short drive from a downtown, and people there often date in the city on weekends while keeping their social lives local. So a suburban man can appear in the main Twin Cities group, and a post can also be shared into groups covering the outer suburbs.

The University of Minnesota adds students, graduate students and staff to the dating pool, and many of them stay in the area after they finish. That keeps the metro’s dating scene younger and busier than its size might suggest.

Winter and the apps

Long winters change how people meet. When it stays cold for months, fewer people meet by chance on a patio or a walk around the lakes, and more dating moves onto apps. App dating means more first dates with strangers, and a stranger is exactly who a woman tends to check on in the group. A post written in the dark months can still be in the group well into summer.

Where we look for a Twin Cities man

We start with the main group and then search the surrounding groups where your matches are likely to be members: the groups covering St. Paul and the east metro, the outer suburbs, and Minnesota as a whole. If you have lived in Rochester, Duluth or across the border in Wisconsin, note it on the order form and we’ll cover it too. Men who grew up in greater Minnesota and moved to the Twin Cities for work often have history in both places.

A definite answer

A check doesn’t change what is or isn’t there. It just means you know. For many men that is the relief, because the question stops following you from one week to the next. And if something is there, you will know what it says and where it sits, rather than imagining the worst.