(
)
A few months ago, JB, a 27-year-old financial analyst from the West Village, was facing a dilemma. Which of the two girlfriends he was “exclusively” dating should he wine and dine that night?
GF No. 1 — the conservative Upper East Side Ivy League grad who works in finance and whom he’d been dating for a year?
Or GF No. 2 — the quirky Park Slope hipster with a creative ad-agency gig, whom he’d been seeing for six months? Like many eligible Big Apple bachelors, JB — who asked that his full name not be used — is guilty of double-borough dating.
He calls the practice “fun and naughty.”
After selecting Miss Brooklyn as his dinner companion, he convinced Miss Manhattan he was going out with his buddies, while secretly squiring his Park Slope princess to a cozy LES restaurant. After canoodling his way to the hostess stand on the arm of his second girl, JB was seated for dinner — right next to his first lady.
“I never thought I’d get caught. It was humiliating because I couldn’t run or escape the situation.”
Indeed, one allure of double-borough dating is the belief, however erroneous, that courting women from distinct and distant neighborhoods will ensure the lucky ladies never cross paths.
CONSEQUENCES OF CITYWIDE DATING
Nick Nadel, a 33-year-old blogger for GuySpeak.com and MTV, had a similar experience — with ladies from two states.
In the month that his Brooklyn and Jersey relationships overlapped, he was careful.
“But then you take the Brooklyn hipster to a Ted Leo concert in Coney Island, and there’s the Jersey girl in the beer line,” Nadel sighs, his voice trailing off.
As for JB’s fateful restaurant face-off, both gals dumped him just as his appetizers arrived. NYC dating coach Yue Xu, 30, whom JB has enlisted since his dating accident, says these double-dating patterns are quite common in the city.
“New Yorkers love multitasking, and they love the thrill of balancing multiple girls or guys at the same time,” she says, adding, “It’s better to be honest.”
New York University sociology professor Kathleen Gerson, author of “The Unfinished Revolution: Coming of Age in a New Era of Gender, Work, and Family,” agrees.
“Big cities like New York make it a lot easier to live double or even quadruple lives,” she says.
And it’s not just men doing the double-crossing.
Last year, Upper West Side TV producer Kent, 35, was mystified by the eating habits of his East Village girlfriend, whom he was dating exclusively (or so he thought).
She’d order hearty portions on their dinner dates, then insist on taking all of the leftovers herself.
“Even if we had plans after dinner,” he recalls, “we would make an extra stop at her apartment to drop off the leftovers before going on to our next activities.”
Turns out his girlfriend had been stepping out on him — and feeding a young, broke artist living in a commune in Astoria.
“I’m from a small town in Indiana and there’s no way you could get away with this,” he says. “But in NYC, there’s a level of anonymity.”
Bravo’s “Millionaire Matchmaker” star Patti Stanger says dating multiple people in multiple neighborhoods is a useful strategy for singles — if they’re not promising monogamy. “I say date a pair and a spare until you become monogamous, otherwise you’re not going to have the competitive edge,” she says.
Musican and writer Amit Wehle, 34, simultaneously dated an Upper West Side gal and a downtown gal. “Why not?” he says. You don’t want to [go to the bathroom] where you eat, and in NYC you often don’t want to date where you date.”