Here’s a sentence we’ve both written in public, and it still makes us wince a little: “I’ve walked out of a date night to email a member to answer questions about LFGdating. Patrick has given face time to his computer during family holidays to do the same.”
We meant it as proof that members come first. We still mean that. But it’s holiday season, and we think the other half of the story deserves some airtime, because the people reading this blog are about to walk into rooms full of their own family, and a lot of you are bringing someone you care about.
What the laptop costs
When the two of us started LFGdating, the work was the whole deal. Casey was teaching school all day and then switching into “LFGdating creation mode until 11 or midnight.” Patrick was working across an ocean in Hawaii, and later he became the guy who’s up at 4:45 A.M. to work on the site before anything else. The site got built that way. We don’t regret that it got built.
What we’ve also said out loud, in Casey’s words, is that the daily grind is “borderline unhealthy and has, at times, led to disputes with our significant others.” That’s not a flex. That’s a note to self, and to anybody reading who has ever hidden a phone under a dinner table.
Being the person at the holiday gathering who is clearly somewhere else is a particular kind of lonely for everybody involved, including the person doing it. The people who love you can feel the absence even when you’re in the chair.
Why we’re telling you this in a post about dating
Because the thing we hope LFGdating does is help two people end up at the same table, and then actually be at the table. We call it a double bottom line: the first one is how many people are meeting and communicating every day. The best moment in this business is still the one where a paying member cancels because they met someone. That email feels, in Casey’s words, like “every great holiday wrapped up into one email notification.”
That email has never arrived with an instruction to keep checking our inbox through dinner. It means two people are off doing the thing the whole site exists for. Which should tell you something about how we think you should spend your holidays.
What we’d tell our younger selves (and you)
- Pick the table. If you’re with people you love, be with them. The notification can wait until you’ve stepped away.
- Tell your partner the truth about your hobby and your habits. Gamers know this one: you don’t hide the thing you love. But you also don’t let it quietly eat the room.
- If you brought someone, they came for you. Not for the first twenty minutes of you, then a screen. Introduce them. Ask the family to include them. Make the hand-off warm.
- Say when you need a minute. Taking a break to recharge is fine. Disappearing into a device and letting your partner explain your absence is not.
- Plan the gaming. If you want to play with your date, or play with a cousin, make that a decision, not a retreat.
A note on members
We do keep a 24-hour member response guarantee, and we do reply from personal email addresses, not a generic support queue. We’re not changing that, and we’re not going to pretend those two facts sit comfortably next to a quiet holiday. What we are going to do is keep trying to hold the line between “I can answer that” and “I can answer that right now, at the table.”
If you’ve ever emailed us and gotten a quick response, thank you for your patience on the days it takes the full 24 hours. We were probably eating pie with someone.
The small stuff counts more than the big stuff
Nobody remembers the holiday where you finished the perfect project. They remember whether you looked up when they told the story, whether you laughed at the joke they’ve been telling for twenty years, and whether the person you brought felt welcome. We’ve both learned this the slow way, mostly by getting it wrong and having someone we love tell us so.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not behind. You’re just at the part of the game where the best move is to put the controller, the laptop, or the phone down for a while and look around the room. The save file will be there when you get back.
What we hope for you this season
We hope you go to the thing. We hope you bring the person. We hope the family asks too many questions and your date handles it better than you expected. We hope somebody at the table asks about your game and actually listens to the answer.
And if you’re still looking for the person to bring next year, the LFGdating app is free to download, and signing up takes a few minutes. If you’re already on your way to someone’s family table, our complete guide to meeting the family has your back.
Stay Classy,
Casey and Pat
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