What does tradition tell us is the best first date: Dinner, the cinema, or perhaps turning up with flowers and then doing whatever the lady wants to do (the man will be paying of course)? All three of these are TERRIBLE ideas! Let me deal with them separately…

Don’t go for dinner:

These kind of dates used to be my worst nightmare; what a pressurised situation! You’re sitting opposite each other and the whole focus is on the conversation the two of you must have. You’re sitting in the same spot for up to two hours, so once the limited chat about the surrounding decor has worn off, you really have to be on your conversational best to keep the interaction interesting. Not to mention that sitting opposite each other restricts almost completely any touch or physical escalation that should be happening between the two of you to progress the relationship to that of a sexual one.

Getting takeaway food or grabbing a bite to eat if you’re both hungry is fine but setting up a formal ‘dinner date’ is boring, unoriginal and pressurised… You’re likely to get a high percentage of women turning this sort of date down at first because of this.

Don’t go to the cinema:

The whole point of a date is to ‘get to know each other better’; well what a great way to do that: sitting next to each other in silence for a couple of hours! The movie may well be a great film and can get you laughing but all that will happen is that both parties will return home, tell their friends they had a great time at the cinema and then realise that they don’t know anything more about their ‘date’ than before heading out. Also, once again, any touching in this environment will come across as forced, cliché and awkward.

Don’t buy loads of gifts and pay for everything:

You’ve turned up at her house in your car, donning an uncomfortable combo of ‘smart casual’ wear, carrying a lovely bouquet of flowers. You then whisk her off on a date of her choice: This is called SUPPLICATING and is a terrible role to get yourself in. Whilst she will love telling her friends about the romantic date she had, she won’t be ticking off many attraction boxes in her subconscious mind. You’ve shown yourself to be needy in terms of needing her approval. You’re effectively trying to buy her affection with all the gifts and lack of authority. You’re also, ironically, doing the exact date that a load of other ‘lucky’ guys have tried and exact replicas of dates that are described in her pop-youth magazines. Also, you’ve blown all your big guns on this one special occasion: what do you do for your second date?

The ACTUAL perfect first date:

For starters, I only refer to it as a date for the ease of understanding. In my mind we are just ‘hanging out’ like I would with any other friend. Thinking this way will relax you a lot more and take a lot of the pressure off of ‘will I impress’ etc.

The less emphasis on the activity the better in my mind as that will also alleviate the pressure from her too. Therefore, my personal favourite first date and one that I have been adopting for years is a nice bar as close to my place as possible. This is a really casual scenario where you can sit down and get to know each other, whilst making it really playful and fun in the way you interact. The reason I suggest it being near your house is mainly so you can go back there easily if things start getting sexual.

Planning the date out:

If it is an evening event, make sure that it is a night she won’t be busy. Early Sunday evening used to be my ‘date evening’ as people generally don’t have big plans on a Sunday, as well as everyone being relaxed from the weekend.

If this works for you, to set up the date simply say you have some free time Sunday evening and that they can join you for a drink if they like. You want it to sound like a no-pressure situation where it’s no big deal if they can’t join you. To alleviate further pressure you could even say something along the lines of, “We can’t make it a late one as I have work in the morning”. If they can’t make it, don’t act upset in any way and simply ask something along the lines of, “what’s your upcoming schedule like and we’ll see what we can arrange”. Obviously, if they agree, simple set a time and place to meet… Take control of the situation.

An informal drink is not the only option and I often get told by students that they want to do fun, exciting dates, and that’s great too. As long as it doesn’t seem like you’ve put too much effort and expectation on the date at this early stage. I have a friend who used to have free entry to the local ‘Laser Quest’ (I think it’s called ‘laser tag’ in some places) and he would always take dates there. These dates were always lots of fun and really original, so they would go down a storm.

Should I kiss on the first date?

This is a common question I get asked. If you worry about this then it will show that it is a big deal, which it shouldn’t be. Kissing is merely comfort building.

The reason that such a big deal is put on kissing on a first date is because the traditional cliché scenario is: guy and girl have a lovely first date and connect really well; they’ve been laughing and sharing stories all evening. The guy, being a gentleman of course, offers to walk the lady home (something I would recommend doing by the way) and then at the doorstep there is a big awkward “soooo… I guess we should say goodnight then!” There’s this big pressure on both parties as to whether they should kiss goodnight… but they haven’t even held hands yet or barely touched each other (this is a first date and he is a ‘gentleman’ of course).

That is one hell of a jump to go from not having touched each other to suddenly having a romantic embrace. Yes it can work, but what is a better solution? Well, avoid there being that big gap in the first place by constantly physically escalating. That means from when you first meet each other, lightly touch each other as you’re joking around, pull them in for hugs, push them around a bit (in a friendly, teasing way of course) and hold their hand every now and then. Now when it comes time to have your first kiss together (which doesn’t necessarily have to be at the end of the date, in fact, the earlier the better), it won’t be so awkward as you have naturally progressed to that level of intimacy.

As everyone well knows, modern culture has determined that the male has to make the majority of the moves with regards to dating. So although this article may seem like it is geared towards men, I would love to see more women start to take control of these situations and implement these sorts of ideas too.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to e-mail me at sam@sparklife.info or leave a comment below.

Much love,

Sam

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1. Movies to watch on a date

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 3:32 pm by Samuel McCrohan and is filed under Dating.
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