My Advice? Always Get His Last Name.
My friend Jill has been casually seeing a man for over a year and a half. She doesn’t know his last name. She refuses to ask him for it, has inspected his incoming magazines and attempted to peek at his driver’s license to no avail, and I find this so oddly mysterious.
Why is getting a full name important when dating, aside from making sure at least one good friend has it scribbled somewhere in case you go missing? In the least creepy terms I can muster, it’s for spywork. I need to know a man’s last name before I’ll go on a first date so I can do the appropriate research: Facebook perusing, peeping his LinkedIn (log out first so he doesn’t know it’s you!), Googling for news articles and mentions, searching for photos on the internet, and finding anything else I can about him including his birthday, household members, voter status, and party affiliation. Sometimes I’ll even do a Google Earth flyover of his public address if I am really curious.
Before you get defensive and bent out of shape, please continue with an open mind. This is important.
Some may refer to this as “stalking” but stalking presumes bad intentions. I’m void of those. I see name-Googling as appropriate research to ensure dating safety. If I can’t find anything about a man online, and he is totally absent from social media, that’s a red flag. If he pops up in one…
