Dating – What Not To Say, Part 2
I got called out in the comments of my post yesterday. I have no idea who this person is but he/she made a good point. They called me out for phoning it in, even comparing what I wrote to something you’d see on msn.com. Point made.
From my experience here are more details about what not to do on first dates.
1. Surgery/Health. I’m on this first date with a rather attractive woman. The first thing she talks about is how a recent surgery damaged the nerves in part of her mouth. It was not a big deal to me but she kept talking about it. Honestly I would not have even noticed her mouth had she not mentioned it. Then she did something that another date called me out on a few months prior. She never asked about me.
2. Talking only about yourself. Not that I expected her to interview me, but she did not ask me much at all about me. I had a date a few months earlier with a great woman. We had a fun first date, I thought, and so I called to ask her out again. She said she was surprised because all I did on the date was talk about myself. I did not ask her anything about her and what was going on in her life. Her Akido style of calling me out impressed me. From that moment on I made sure I asked lots of questions of my dates. I never intended the date to be all about me but that was her impression and that is not what I wanted. I truly wanted to get to know her.
We do not live the same day over and over again. We learn as we go. We do not get to know that our date hates white chocolate or nuts. Stay focused on your date. Get to know them and ask a lot of open-ended, probing questions.
Once, as a wee lad, I dated this girl. Err – she wanted to hang out all the time and I figured that she seemed nice enough and would give it a shot. We hung out a few times over the course of two weeks and she constantly compared me to her ex boyfriend. Ugh. It was never negative but it was clear that she had some issues with her sense of security and painfully obvious she was still hung up on him.
Unfortunately her emotional maturity really shined through when I told her that I wasn’t really interested and that maybe we shouldn’t hang out anymore. She flipped, calling me names and making 5th grade insults. It was sad, really.
I recently saw a picture of her on Facebook. I haven’t spoken to her in 5 years but from the looks of things she got back with her ex, gained about 50 pounds, and had a kid. That’s a handful of redemption. (Yea, I look for justice in the most selfish way, I know)
Ya know, I don’t have much advice on this one. Other than the above I have actually dated pretty normal people!