Who can relate? It’s Saturday night and you’ve been planning all week for your first date with the new guy in your life. You’ve shopped, found your outfit, planned your getting-ready efforts down to a tee and have slow-walked through every scenario of this impending date with your girlfriends. Bottom-line, you’re dead excited. Your hopes are up and you are on top of your world. Until he picks you up and its 15 minutes into dinner and you realize it’s a total dud.
Your charming, witty self deflates like a week-old balloon. Another first date, come and gone, followed by a lengthy debrief into the wee hours with said girlfriends. The first causality of your dating experience? Your sense of humour.
Here’s the good news. The dating game doesn’t have to be a bad amusement park ride that leaves you feeling nauseous and wondering why you agreed to the ride in the first place. But it takes practice and effort and of course, the inevitable, change of attitude. Let’s be clear, first dates are tough, awkward and downright inhumane for both parties. Nevertheless, here’s a list of dos and don’ts to help you not only survive the experience but enjoy the process along the way:
Do hope for the best but be realistic.
We’ve all sat across from the guy we like and tried to recall what he just said as we momentarily ˜checked out’ to imagine up what our kids would look like and whether they would play in Little League. Do yourself a favour and stay in the moment. Enjoy the first date for what it is “ an opportunity to get to know someone outside your immediate circle. Keep the dreaming of future possibilities to a limit until you know him and vice versa.
Do stay open and don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
Date. In the truest sense of the word. Meet people and a lot of them. It will keep you moving forward when you’re disappointed by one first date experience and more importantly, it will keep you hopeful.
Don’t be anything but yourself.
If you’re a sporty, athletic gal who gets excited about a new pair of runners, don’t find yourself decked out in four inch heels with a new set of acrylic nails on the night of your date. You’ll feel uncomfortable (not in the good way) and it will show.
Don’t keep telling your date how awkward you feel or that you don’t know what to say.
Guaranteed he will be feeling the exact same way and to keep pointing it out will throw a spotlight on the obvious. It’s like having your stall door accidently kicked open in a public bathroom. There’s just no recovery.
Bottom-line, follow these parameters and whether the first date turns into a one-hit wonder or a long-term sojourn from singledom, your witty self will remain in tact with the addition of a few more good stories in your arsenal.
