When two friends date for 40 days

MANILA, Philippines – One hopeless romantic.

One serial dater.

Two good friends.

Forty days.

Can polar opposites meet halfway, change each other, and find love after dating exclusively for 40 days?

This is the premise of Forty Days of Dating, a personal project of Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman.

Jessica is the other half of the renowned New York-based design firm Sagmeister & Walsh, while Timothy is a former in-house Apple art director and now an independent graphic designer.

Jessica is the hopeless romantic. She easily falls for a guy and believes in finding the right one.

Tim is a commitment-phobe. He used to date 3 girls at the same time.

The rules: See each other every day for 40 days, go on dates thrice a week, see a therapist once a week, go on one weekend trip together, exclusivity. They separately answer a daily questionnaire for posting on Forty Days of Dating, the blog site they developed in just two days.

Their answers to the questionnaire are posted side-by-side. Readers go through each of the 40 days through two different lenses, getting to compare which detail of each day one glosses over, or which both consider the day’s highlight.

Each day, you get a look at how their minds work, you get to know each of them better, and at times see glimpses of yourself in both.

They invited 80 of their friends – including Stefan Sagmeister, Jessica Hische, Mikey Burton, Olimpia Zagnoli, and Filipino art director Patrick Cabral – to create typographic pieces that tell the story of each day.

But the site isn’t just a design project. It’s a social experiment.

The couple’s relationship habits and fears are well-reflected, and they resonate as you read the daily entries. The knickknacks they have kept from their dates make you feel as if you were part of the experiment.

“Our individual stories, issues, and approaches aren’t much different from a lot of folks. We’re happy that people are connecting so much to it,” Tim said.

The two met through the design community and have been friends for over 4 years, but the relationship has always been platonic.

They say, however, that there was certainly a healthy curiosity and an attraction before they started. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have agreed to do the project together.

They were both nervous about the project the night before Forty Days started. Tim tried distracting himself by going on a date. Jessica was conflicted because of her crazy schedule, and feared losing a great friend in Tim.

Though they never set expectations with each other, it was quite evident since the start of the project that Jessica wanted more from Tim, who was unsure of his intentions at the time.

“I also kind of hoped that’d it’d all work out for the best and we’d end up together in the end,” Jessica said.

Distractions and drama

The project proved to be a challenge and their relationship went downhill several times because of their individual differences.

Jessica was easily swayed by her friends, who were not very supportive of the project because they thought it wasn’t healthy given her recurring headaches and insomnia. One of them even asked Tim to end the project.

Tim, meanwhile, was insecure of his past, and fears hurting Jessica’s feelings if he starts opening up and getting intimate with her.

Their therapy sessions brought up questions neither of them were ready to talk about so quickly. But in the end, the therapy became the anchor for the whole project. It allowed them to have a safe place to talk about how they were really feeling and discover why they were falling into the same old habits.

Going viral

As designers, Jessica and Tim were well-known in the design community before they started, and the project gained them even more fans and followers all over the world.

Jessica is not sure yet if it’s a good thing that people who have randomly stumbled upon the project now associate them with it more than the creative work that they’ve done in the past.

“Now people have started recognizing us on the street, which is quite overwhelming and shocking. We are so happy that the overall response and feedback has been positive,” Jessica said in an interview with Rappler.

Despite having to essentially sacrifice their personal lives, Tim says the project has been incredibly rewarding because it went beyond design.

“I’ve always been intact with my relationship issues, and I’m fascinated with human habits and the things that make us tick when it comes to interpersonal relationships. Being a designer became a vessel for how to tell our story,” Tim said.

Happy ending?

They say it could be considered successful if they came out of it as more aware individuals, regardless if they feel in love or not.

For Jessica, the biggest lesson she learned from the project is to take care of herself. “You need to be happy and healthy so you can truly care for another person.”

As Forty Days comes to a close, its followers wonder if the two did end up together, as Jessica initially hoped. For now, all we can do is wait as their story unfolds. The experiment has been over for a few months but the two have kept quiet about what’s next for them.

The Wrap reports though that they have signed with Hollywood talent agency CAA and “are now fielding interest from both film and television producers looking to use their story as the basis for a movie or TV series.” – Rappler.com