4 Tips To Follow For Any First Date

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This one is for all you saps taking a guy or gal out on a first date, especially on Valentine’s day. Making reservations and bringing flowers or chocolates only gets you through the first five minutes, but this will hopefully help you sort out the rest of your date/potential relationship. Remember to keep your expectations low, and your mind always open.

1. Be open minded to all possibilities.

Don’t go into a first date assuming that you’re going to find your soulmate. It takes time to really get to know someone and decide if you want to be with them. Sometimes they end up being just a good friend and sometimes they end up being someone you can’t stand to be around for more than five minutes. The point is, you need to take time to figure out what category this person falls under. Ask all the important questions and then ask the silly ones. What are their goals in life? How many kids do they want to have? Would they choose Play-Doh over moon sand?

2. Don’t force something that isn’t meant to be.

If it doesn’t happen naturally, odds are it shouldn’t be happening at all. I’ve had experiences with guys who were nice and seemingly flawless on a first date, but I had no connection with them, and for that reason I couldn’t push the issue. Just because you find someone who has a plethora of great qualities doesn’t mean that they are the one for you. And you should never feel bad or guilty about not having feelings for someone, especially if you gave it a try.

3. Don’t kiss on the first date.

This goes back to #1—if you don’t know each other, throwing intimacy into the mix is just going to make both parties confused. You’re just getting to know one another, but now you’ve bypassed friendship and gone into some intimate-but-not-quite-dating zone. This is one major dating issue of our generation—nobody wants to feel confused or insecure in a relationship, but neither party wants to ask the other to define the relationship either. So you end up in this awkward purgatory for an unforeseen amount of time until you have a falling out or you decide to really date or just be friends, and the only way any of these things can happen is if you…

4. EXPRESS YOUR FEELINGS!

I know this seems like a really nuanced idea, but it can take you where you want to go. Not only does this apply to serious dating but also to the whole ~hook up~ dating scene we have nowadays. The other person is never going to know what you want if you don’t tell them. Sometimes telling the truth is difficult and the fear of rejection is strong, but keeping things bottled up is worse. If you start a relationship by being super secretive and never sharing your emotions with the other party, the relationship is not going to last very long.

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