Friends and Lovers

Rachel, my roommate and close friend since childhood, had recently joined JDate, the Jewish Internet dating site. Within a week, she was off to meet a man in Harvard Square. I, too, had been dating men I met through the site for a few months. When she came home from her first date, she sat down in a living room chair and told me: We were dating the same man. Or at least, in one week, we had both been out with the same man.

Right now, as I figure it from posted profiles, there are approximately 1,000 men in my age range using JDate in the Boston area. While that number is hardly enormous, it should be plenty large enough to avoid overlap with my roommate. After all, if we were both at a party with 1,000 single men, it would seem unfathomable that we might walk away with the same phone number. At a party, it would be easy to avoid a guy my friend had been flirting with. But online, where a computer program does the matching, how can we stay away from our friends' love interests? And to be fair, if I'm e-mailing with a handful of guys, why shouldn't my friend get to know the same men?

While I don't believe in the stereotype of women that says we're competitive daters, I was nervous when Rachel signed up for JDate, and I wanted to avoid any situation that might make either of us uncomfortable. So we had come up with Rule No. 1: Never refer to a potential date by name. This way, we figured, we could avoid the feeling that we might be jockeying for the same man's attention. I had followed the rule, but Rachel figured out this guy's identity from my post-date report. Luckily, this time the man did not interest either of us - catastrophe avoided. But that might not always be the case - we hoped - which was how we came to Rule No. 2: Reveal his name as soon as you know you're interested.

In spite of seemingly long odds, it made some sense that we had gone out with the same man. Search over a few days or weeks on any Internet dating site, and some profiles show up repeatedly. Plus, it stands to reason that two friends with years of shared experiences and interests would gravitate toward some of the same men.

A few months later, Rachel told me about a guy she had met on JDate and liked. After three dates, though, things fizzled out between them. My memory is hazy on the point, but she may have even been interested enough to mention his name to me, per Rule No. 2. The name never crossed my mind, however, when I met, through mutual friends, a man I liked immediately. The next morning, I started to tell her about him. I mentioned his hometown, which wasn't far from where one of her ex-boyfriends had grown up, and told her where he had gone to college. She looked up from where she was sitting on the kitchen floor, pulling a pan out of a low cabinet, and asked, stung, "What's his name?"

We both froze, realizing what had happened. I remembered her telling me that when he had visited our apartment, he commented on a poster of mine. I thought at the time that it sounded as if he and I had shared interests. That turned out to be true, and after the awkward moment in the kitchen, we dated for more than a year. Eventually, I asked Rachel why she hadn't thought to set us up in the first place. "Cynthia," she told me, "I don't think of you when I'm out on my dates." Fair point. But then it occurred to me - why not think of each other? What better way to meet guys?

Three years later, we're both single again and dating men we meet online. She lives upstairs now, instead of in the same apartment. With experience, we've realized that though the same people might look good to both of us on a computer screen, in the real world, we end up attracted to very different men. So our dating rules have changed. When we're in the e-mail flirting stage, we still don't share names. But as soon as we've scheduled a date, we do.

And then there is our newest and best rule: We look out for each other. When she came back from a recent date and flopped into my living room chair, I asked her, "How was it?"

"Well," she said, laughing, "it was fun. But I think you two would be a better match."

Cynthia Graber is a freelance writer in Cambridge. E-mail comments to coupling@globe.com.