Ahh, a first date. So much goes into the making.
If you’re part of the online dating scene, you know the protocol:
1. Contact them online
2. Wait for response
3. Get their response, and then make them wait extra time to hear a response because we’re “very busy”
4. Determine whether or not there is enough in common to look past their love for cats, quoting Scarface (which never gets old), and that their favorite food is corned beef and cabbage.
5. Finally, you decide to go out and meet them. Take the leap. The plunge. The final nail in the “will you be the one I can stand for more than one date” coffin.
Meeting a new prospect is always intimidating. You have no idea who you’re really going to meet. Sure, their pictures look respectable and you may click a thousand percent on the phone or via text, but that doesn’t mean that in person things will be so easy.
If all goes well, you both click. It’s an evening full of laughter and easy conversation, drinks and happiness and puppies, kittens and ponies.
If it so happens you two meet, you know within the first five minutes whether things are going to work out or not. We’re all relatively smart, we can feel it. Sometimes we sit through the entire date, let the person tell us about their occasional coke habit, let them call you chubby because “HEY, I AM TOO!” and really let themselves make an ass of themselves.
So you drink, eat, conversate, then leave. If it’s been a day or so and you don’t hear anything and don’t feel compelled to chat with them…the point is pretty much moot. It didn’t work out in real life. If you two could have a total text relationship, holy shit, you two would rock the face off relationships. However, sadly, you cannot solely exist in an online realm.
What really chaps my ass, is when two days later, you get “The letdown chat.” It’s that moment where the other person just wants to say hi, they had a great time, but…
1. I’ve been hurt too much lately to get into something new
2. I think we’d make better friends
3. You kiss like my grandfather ( those were very confusing times)
4. If you want to keep it casual, just sex and stuff, I could swing that…but emotional investment? Naaaah
5. I just generally don’t like your face…that’s it. Really.
People are putting way too much pressure on the first time. Just like most “firsts” in your relationship, they may not rock right off the bat. If the person you weren’t really vibing with is sending texts, asking “when am I going to see you next?” etc., THEN I could understand “the letdown chat.” When there is no communication for several days, and YOU bring it up? Well, then you’re just the worst kind of person.
Problems with “the letdown chat:”
1. It never starts off with a, “What did you think? Were you into it?”
That could save so much time and embarrassment. If you didn’t like me, solid chance that I felt similarly. Why not ask before you arrogantly give me one of your famous talks?
2. It’s choc full of backhanded compliments
“No it’s just, you have an amazing personality…and if this were a few months ago and I felt like dating a lagoon creature, I’d be ALL about this.”
“It’s really that I’m not ready. I’m not over my ex, but I thought I’d try a dating site and see other people in the meantime. If I WAS up for dating, trust me, it’d be you.”
“Your warm embrace and short arms remind me of a t-rex, and t-rex’s are MY FAVORITE dinosaur!”
“I’d totally tear you a part…but that’s all I can handle right now. That cool?”
Maybe stop for a second and consider…was I the only one feeling this? Perhaps they weren’t really vibing with me either. BUT NO, how could they NOT vibe with me? For all I am all that is awesome.
“The letdown chat” should be done on mutual grounds. It shouldn’t be brought up out of nowhere, all cavalier and such, and it shouldn’t be based on assuming that the one you’re letting down will in fact feel…let down.
If we don’t speak for two days, don’t feel compelled to let me know how sorry you are it won’t work out. Chances are, I feel similarly and will not be lying in my bathtub later with a jug o’wine, listening to Dido and trying to not put the razor to my wrist. Just because your mother says you’re perfect, doesn’t always mean it’s true 😉
I Give It A Yikes! 