Are you in the Orange County 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 Orange County.

Many cities sharing one county group

Orange County isn’t one city. It is a run of separate ones, each with its own downtown, and people cross between them constantly. The main group, “Are We Dating The Same Guy? | Orange County OC / Irvine / Huntington Beach,” has about 60,000 members and pulls those places together, from Irvine and Newport Beach to Anaheim and Fullerton in the north.

Because the group is organized by county rather than by city, a woman in Costa Mesa and a woman in Anaheim can easily be looking at the same post. Dating apps work the same way. Your profile doesn’t stop at a city line, and neither does the group.

Beach towns and inland suburbs

There is a real difference between the coast and the inland cities. Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach have a weekend crowd that comes from all over the county. Irvine and the inland suburbs are more planned and residential, with many people who commute to office parks during the day and head toward the water at night. Costa Mesa sits in between, and plenty of first dates happen there.

That mix means the woman who posts about a man may live in a different city from him and have no friends in common. The group gives her a way to ask around without going through anyone she knows.

UC Irvine, Chapman and Cal State Fullerton

The county has a large student population. UC Irvine is in the middle of Irvine, Chapman University is in the city of Orange, and Cal State Fullerton is in the north of the county. Graduates often stay in the area and keep dating within the circles they knew as students, which can keep older posts in front of people who still remember them.

The pull from Los Angeles and Long Beach

Long Beach sits just over the county line, and Los Angeles is close enough that many people date across both. Groups covering Los Angeles and Long Beach overlap with the Orange County ones more than the map suggests. South County, from Mission Viejo down to San Clemente, has its own groups and its own dating scene as well.

For an Orange County search, we start with the main OC group and then go through the groups a post about you could reasonably spill into: Los Angeles and Long Beach, South Orange County, and the California-wide groups. We search using the photos you send as well as your name. If you have spent time dating in San Diego, the Inland Empire or anywhere else, note it with your order and we’ll cover it.

A specific answer to a specific question

A worry that keeps coming back usually has a simple question underneath it. The report answers that question, showing what was found and where, or telling you clearly that nothing turned up.