Multi Basket Methodology is, in simplified form, basically “keeping your options open”.  The way that this dating methodology works is that you are discouraged from “putting all your eggs in one” basket until there is an ACTUAL reason for you to do this.  Honestly, the putting all your eggs in one basket methodology is a very high schoolish type of mentality.  The whole “OH MY GOD SHE’S/HE’S SOO CUTE I HAVE SUCH A BIG CRUSH ON HER/HIM.”  Basically, when people do this, what they do is they go “all in” on one specific person BEFORE ANY interest is even ESTABLISHED!  That means before the hopeful romantic even TALKS to the person of their affection about whether or not there is a possibility, they start OBSESSING (Yes, stalking, facebook stalking, dreaming, hoping, praying, whatever) about the girl/guy as if they are already dating.

THE PROBLEM with this is that MOST of the times the fact that you are OBSESSING is the VERY principle by which you are probably NEVER going to get the person you set your affections on.  Guys and girls alike can sniff desperation, and usually run away from it quicker than you can say, “BUT, I LOVE YOU!!!!”

There are TWO problems with putting too much money in one stock.  The first problem is that if you even GET the girl/guy that you are hoping for, 9 out of 10 times the relationship will be lopsided.  You will not believe how many people I’ve talked to that say they are only in this relationship because the guy didn’t want to give up.  However, you can CLEARLY tell that they don’t actually LIKE the guy that much.  Honestly, if nothing else, that’s just SAD.  I mean…I realize that in most relationship, one person is going to like the other more…but when it’s THIS LOPSIDED, it’s just SAD for BOTH sides.  “Yea, I’m dating so and so, but she doesn’t actually love me, but WHO CARES CAUSE I GOT HER!”  I bet that’s what some of these guys who used the tree chopping method are thinking.  But wow.  Really?  You’ve also won a possible future affair or divorce.  CONGRATULATIONS.

The second reason why putting all your money in one stock can be a problem is because most of the times, YOU WILL FAIL.  Meaning, you will put all this money in one stock, and then you will quickly learn that the stock has NO ROMANTIC feelings for you whatsoever, and then you’re left with no money.  SUCKS TO BE YOU.

Therefore, the Multi Basket Methodology, to avoid such horrible outcomes, promotes the idea of developing “interest” in people instead of having “crushes” on them.  What is interest?  Interest is simply establishing “dateableness”.  What that means is, you keep your eye open for guys/girls that you believe you could connect with if you actually invested time into each other as people.  You NEVER fully commit to that “guy/girl” during this “interest” phase.  As a matter of fact, you have this same “interest” with a lot of different guys/girls, (however developing too much interest for too many guys/girls probably means you’re HELLA DESPRATE and as such you will probably fail even this methodology) and then from there, you throw out bait and see which fish gets hooked.  The Multi Basket Methodology banks on the principle that there are indeed plenty of fish in the sea, so you can afford to throw out a few lines and see who bites first.

So it would look something like this.  Guy X develops interest (not LIKES but just INTEREST) for Girl Y and Girl Z.  Guy X doesn’t commit himself fully to either, but simply talks to them and gets to know them better (not by much cause then you might start liking them).  Guy X throws out “interest” indicators, such as “hey, do you want to hang out, maybe grab some dinner sometime?”  One of the two girls “bites” the bait.  Girl Y says she would like to have dinner.  Guy X goes to dinner with Girl Y.  At dinner, Guy X expresses his interest for Girl Y.  Girl Y tells Guy X that she, as well, is “interested”.  Then, at this point, and THIS POINT ONLY, you start putting your eggs in this basket.  Not ALL at once, cause ultimately you don’t know if it’ll work yet.  You date each other, and find out if it MAKES SENSE.  You pray, ask God, everything is all good, and then you say “I do” at the alter, and now all your eggs are in one basket.  But it didn’t START that way.  It BECAME that way.

This is an effective strategy cause it protects your heart.  You don’t invest in a person until you know that the stock is ACTUALLY worth investing in.  People who invest too prematurely mostly end up screwed at the end.

However, in another scenario, if both Girl Y and Girl Z express interest, you can do what one of my friend’s did.  Take them on a date together (you stud), and see how they handle the situation.  watch them claw each other’s eyes out.  maybe throw some mud in  pool, bust out one piece swimming suits and let them go at it.  SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST BABY!

There are some people who often make SUCH A BIG DEAL about dating as if it were somehow automatically correlated to marriage.  However, the reality of the matter is, DATING does NOT mean that you are signing up to marry the person you are dating.  HONESTLY.  SCREW JOSHUA HARRIS (some guy who wrote a book called “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”).  All dating means is that you want to spend time with an individual to see if it makes sense on a completely platonic basis.  Meaning apart from the interest you have for each other, do you even make SENSE on a practical level?  Do you guys complement each other?  Is there something more than just puppy love that’ll keep you guys together in the long run?  Dating is so practical, and oftentimes SO necessary!  And yet, because of the Joshua Harris curse, we somehow loathe and fear dating.  That just frustrates me!

In this post, I’m going to cover some of my own real life experiences to articulate my point.   I dated a caucasian girl in second grade.  That’s right, as an asian man, I crossed the ethnic barrier.  I win.  Her name is Elizabeth.  I don’t remember her last name.  She was the first girl that I ever kissed, cause that girl ALWAYS wanted to kiss me.  I remember when we went out for recess, she would always want to sneak into a back corner and kiss.  Honestly, at that time, I was really like “WTF!?”.  It’s not like I even really understood why people kiss, or what to do with it.  She tried to stick her tongue down my mouth one time, and I had no idea why she wanted to do that.  Wow.  What a girl…I mean, she wanted to kiss.  So we would kiss.

But then she moved away to San Diego.  It was a really really sad day when that happened.  I bought her this little rose thing and gave it to her when she left.  I’ve ALWAYS wondered what happened to her.  What if she’s some super hot girl now, and we will meet in like…one more year, and she’s a super crazy christian and we see each other and we instantaneously FALL IN LOVE!?  IT CAN HAPPEN GUYS.  I BELIEVE.  PRAY FOR ME!  IT CAN HAPPEN!

But yea…that was my “childhood” crush.

Anyways, since most of you guys will probably not allow me to count my girlfriend in 2nd grade, let me cover the girls that I’ve actually dated apart from that, or at least three relationships that I feel like were important and that I learned a lot from.  I’m going to leave names out of this, just in case……

Let me start off by clarifying what dating is NOT.  During my second year of college, I developed probably the most significant relationship I’ve had with a female so far.  She was, in my head, everything that I thought I wanted.  So I committed basically ALL of myself to this girl even before we started “dating”.   She was the first girl that I ever really PURSUED diligently. I was going over to her place like all the time, talking to her on the phone till really late…looking back, it was pretty disgusting how much time I spent with her.  This reality was only compounded by the fact that I absolutely DID NOT go to any of my classes.  I think during my time of pursuing her, I went to more of her classes than my classes cause I would go to her classes and take notes for her…

Just kidding.  I’m not that pathetic.  Really.  All I did was write her essays, pluck her armpit hairs, and…basically wear the short leash with a misplaced sense of pride.  Hindsight Idiot.

But no seriously.  I pursued her like non-other.  Don’t forget that I TRULY BELIEVED that this relationship was from God.  I had “signs”.  I “thought” God spoke to me on numerous occassions that we were meant together.  So, finally, the week before valentine’s day, I asked her out.  I wanted to take her out on valentines, and OMG if you knew the things that I had planned for her.  I LITERALLY BROKE MY BANK to make the night happened.  I spent about 600 dollars, almost all my financial aid money.  Nothing like good ol’ loan money to make valentines day possible!  I had a four part plan for the night.

#1. I bought her two dozen roses and a stuffed animal.  Now, if you know anything about valentines day, ROSES ON VALENTINES DAY IS JUST STRAIGHT UP THE BIGGEST RIP OFF EVER.  I spent literally 150 Dollars on TWO DOZEN ROSES.  WTF!?  I had the roses all in the trunk of my car, with the stuffed animal on top.  I knew she would have to put her keyboard in my “trunk”, so I knew I could “surprise” her without much effort.  The scheme worked.  She opened the trunk to a pleasant surprise.  Who’s the man?

#2. Afterwards, I drove her to this restaurant called Moonshadows.  It was a restaurant in Malibu, the place where Mel Gibson got in trouble for his Jewish racial slurs.  Anyways, the awesome thing about Moonshadows is that it’s RIGHT next to the beach, so, because we got there early, we snuck onto the very private beaches of Malibu, and walked hand in hand while the sun was SETTING.  It seriously couldn’t have been more perfect…there was NO ONE ELSE around, the sun was setting BEAUTIFULLY, and we were kissing as the sun was going down.  EAT YOUR HEART OUT ROMANTIC SAPS!  It was a scene from a movie, no joke.

#3. After we ate dinner at Moonshadows, which cost me $200!!!  I had planned to take her go-karting.  I knew that she liked it, so I drove ALL the way back to Diamond Bar (because I had another plan after go-karting), and we basically raced each other on go-karts.  It was a fun ol’time, but the real reason why I was in diamond bar was because I had spent the entire morning planning the final part of the night.

#4. That morning, I had spent a couple hours making chocolate covered strawberries.  I made about two dozen of them.  I talked to my friend who is familiar with the area, and he told me that he knows a spot I could take her.  I recruited him to help me out with it.  It was this spot on the top of a “mountain” where you could literally see the entire city.  My friend did a really great job of setting it up, he put these candles in the huge shape of a heart, and laid out some blankets for us with my chocolate covered strawberries right dab in the middle.  The sky was VERY clear, and the night was seriously beautiful.  It was really funny cause I tried to take her up the hill on my back, but I couldn’t hack it, so half the way up I had to make her walk up with me holding her hand (cause she was blindfolded).  HAHAHA.  It was pretty funny in retrospect.  “Sorry babe, you’re too heavy, you’re going to have to walk.”

Anyways, we got to the top, and I took off the blindfold, and sure enough, she literally started tearing up.  Honestly, even I was impressed with myself.  The night couldn’t have gone more perfect.  KODAK moment x 100.

Literally, the next week after that (technically the second week that we were actually DATING), she told me that she loved me.  Both of us thought “this was it”.  As a matter of fact, I was convinced that she would be my wife.  We were talking about it VERY early in the relationship, the logistics of how we would get married.  I would pray about it often.  I really, really, really believed we would marry.

But we didn’t marry.  Obviously.  And so I sort of learned my lesson the hard way…I put too much stock, too early, into this person that I didn’t even really know yet.

And during the course of our relationship, especially near the end, it became more and more obvious than on a lot of practical levels, our relationship wasn’t going to work.  I wanted to be a minister, she wanted nothing to do with it.  I’, the kind of guy who likes to take care of my girlfriends, she’s the kind of girl that likes to be independent.  It really became difficult at the end cause I knew that I was demanding too much from her, and it strained the relationship.  But I learned my lesson.  You can’t invest too much at the start!  That’s why I think the whole idea of “courtship” is so retarded.  That’s basically an “all in” mentality RIGHT from the beginning.  But what if you guys just DON’T WORK?  Then you’re basically stuck to some retarded ideology that you’re supposed to MAKE it work because “God wants it that way.”  That’s dumb.  Date the girl/guy, and see if it works on a basic human level.

After this long relationship, there was this other girl from a club that I went to.  Because I had learned from the previous experience, I approached this relationship with a lot more care.  We never let the relationship progress to something that serious. Both of us were cautious, and both of us knew that we were just testing the waters to see if it worked.  I quickly learned that she is a prime example of why it’s important to date!  I mean, she’s a great girl, don’t get me wrong.  But we were just NOT GOING to happen.  There was ABSOLUTELY no way.  We were just two COMPLETELY different people, and it made absolutely no sense.  She was SUPER independent, didn’t want kids, and was a bit stubborn.  If you know anything about me, an intensely stubborn girl is just not going to mesh with my personality.

We “dated” for like 2 months, and trust me, I am sooo glad that we did.  If we hadn’t dated, there is NO way I would have known that we would not work.  Cause I honestly thought she was perfect for me before we started dating.  If I jumped into the relationship, and went “all in” too early, it could have been a disaster.

There were others, but the point that I want to make is that dating realllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyy helps in determining whether it makes sense or not on a practical level.  That’s ALL dating is.  Yes, I do realize that you invest some of your emotion into that person.  Yes, I do realize that breaking up sucks.  But honestly, it’s better than being in a marriage that you’re going to regret.

I talked to my friend Anita yesterday, and she was telling me a theory that a local Pastor, Jon Ngai promotes about “progressive peace”.  The idea of progressive peace is that when you start dating someone, you have this “progressive peace” that comes over you about the relationship.  I really like and embrace that idea.  But the key is, it takes dating to experience this “progressive peace”.  And you know what, sometimes it’ll be the opposite.  Sometimes, you’ll realize it doesn’t make sense.  And trust me, during those times, you’ll be pretty damned glad you didn’t kiss dating goodbye.

This is my friend’s story of how she got married.  I love it.

“My husband daniel and i met and went on a date because he was interested in me…he asked me out for coffee. simple as that.  I thought he was nice. I thought coffee sounded good. So i went. I became interested as we talked. We started dating…fell in love as we got to know each other..eventually got married.”  That simple.  Progressive peace in action.