Get Past the First Date

Typolicious
A guy I met in a bar in college took me out for a few casual drinks on our first date. I was nervous but he seemed really nice. As the wine and the conversation flowed, we decided to move on to another bar. He turned to get his coat off the back of his chair and I noticed that he had a long strip of hair reaching down the back of his neck. He saw me notice and stroked it. Plain faced, he said "I wanted to make a good impression, so I got my sister to straighten my hair."

Although I put up with the rest of the night, my mind was made up and I never returned his phone call the next day.

So why was I so fussy? Why did I reject a perfectly intelligent, good looking and funny guy? The reason why, is that I found something that I thought was a bit weird, turned it into a huge deal and probably gave up a very good thing. Girls are idealists. We expect every aspect of a man to be our perfect match on a first date.




I would never classify myself as shallow. I like my guys to be thinkers and I like to laugh. There is one common thing in every female, however. The first date is a time when every detail, every action and every point of conversation is logged and assessed to a point of obsession. Through no obvious fault of their own, many guys lose out to the fickle nature of a woman when they have done as little as wear white socks with black trousers.

It's a common phenomenon that you will hear from any girl. A Brad Pitt face and body double could be rejected because he wore shoes with a pointed toe. A man with the best sense of humor could lose out because he slurped his beer.

"It is a tragic and laughable idea to dismiss
someone on such a superficial level, but it happens everywhere, everyday."

Ask any woman who has been on a blind date. Mutual friends who see the guy and girl as a wonderful match may have hooked them up. Immediately, the woman has grand preconceptions of her perfect man turning up at to meet her. The face has already been created in her mind, the progress of the night, the flowing conversation and the dancing and the intimate gazes are anticipated with excitement.

First dates are more often a lot more hard work than you would think. They can be very awkward. Conversations can have excruciating pauses. Both guy and girl can be too tentative to speak, or may babble on like a broken record. These things do not fit the ideology of a first date, and often they do not lead onto a second date. As a woman, I can admit that we lack persistence to see the beauty in things we do not immediately like. On the successful occasion that a woman can overcome her objections and go for the second date, suddenly a bit of hair straightening can be seen as funny, or those weird shoes come second to a beautiful smile.

To summarize: girls are fussy when it comes to meeting new a guy. If you can recognize this and handle it well (refer to it, joke about it) then you'll likely get another chance to prove how great you really are, despite the coffee stains on your shirt.


Get Past the First Date
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