Are there people who offer their services as a kind of “Dating Coach” in exactly the following way: By going out on a date with you, then writing up feedback for you afterwards?
I can see there are people called dating coaches in various places online but I’m wondering about whether there are people who take this specific approach. If so I’d be interested in looking at websites and finding out how they advertise and things.
From the OP title – I had no idea that you were asking about a professional service, or some new trend in dating. I’m relieved it’s the former.
Also, I’m not sure how beneficial this would be. Your behavior on a real date is likely to be entirely different from your behavior with a … consultant/employee.
It sounds cruel unless the person being critiqued is extremely thick-skinned.
I do see how it could be useful, though- what if your first dates were always flops, nobody ever called you back, and you honest-to-god couldn’t see the problem? And what if the problem were something fixable or something you could improve upon?
Say, what if you were a guy who constantly interrupted your date and didn’t even realize that you did this ALL THE TIME? Or what if you were one of those people who think that soap has “chemicals” in it and that your natural odor was much more pleasing? It might actually make a world of difference if someone gently broke it to you that there are specific reasons that you’re off-putting on a date. And an actual date would be unlikely to tell you that you smell, but a person being paid could tell you because they’re just doing their job.
The problem is that outside of reality shows, most of the time the reason there was never a second date is usually some variation of “just not that into you”. It might not be something you can or even want to fix.
This.
And to what end?
I wouldn’t suggest anyone change anything about themselves to please another person - that would be “pretending” to be someone you are not!
The best thing in life is to be yourself and have someone else accept you for the person you are. Faults and all.
Or as I say… A friend is someone who knows all about you and still likes you.
Yeah, and also, there’s the slight problem of women being individual humans with individual tastes and opinions. I suppose a dating consultant might be able to tip a client off about something like bad breath or a tendency to monopolize the conversation, but most of the time, one person’s feedback isn’t going to be particularly useful in terms of figuring out how to make yourself attractive to a completely different person. It isn’t like a job interview where there are a lot of more-or-less-universal dos and don’ts.
The most basic stuff isn’t really ‘dating related’ IMO - if you have bad hygiene or can’t handle basic conversation that’s really more of a therapy issue than something a ‘dating coach’ can fix with a quick report. Not monopolizing conversation is something you could get tips on, but I’m not sure how real of a feel you’d get for it from an artificial date with a ‘coach’ - if I know there’s no chance of this leading anywhere, I’m going to be both less interested in talking about me and less interested in hearing about her life, so she’s not really going to get a sample of what I’m like on a date.
And then there’s the issue of different social groups (and individuals) being wildly different - a lot of ‘conventional wisdom’ doesn’t apply to various subcultures or is actively counterproductive. I remember a thread on here about ‘why don’t geeks get the girl’ where someone made a comment like “I mean, what kind of girl is going to want to go out with a dork who dresses up like a character and goes to conventions?” but had no real response when I pointed out that cosplay is a hobby that’s about 60% female. If you’re a geek on a date with a female cosplay enthusiast who regularly goes to SF conventions, following the ‘conventional wisdom’ that you should not talk about anything but sports, career, and drinking (or whatever it is) is going to pretty much guarantee a lack of interest.