Following a recent date which I went on with an actually very lovely guy, I got to talking with my friends about the most horrendous things a guy can do on a date. Together, we came up with this list of totally unforgivable activities which make a girl want to slit her throat once she’s got in. It’s not about being perfect in every way, it’s more about treating a girl like the babe she is and not hacking her off so much that she feels the need to send an essay text message afterwards, advising ways in which the first-date technique can be improved for future reference when dating other girls (because he sure as hell won’t be dating her again!) Hope you boys take my advice, and treat your ladies good!
1) DON’T under any circumstances go on a date if you would rather be elsewhere. If you are ill, it’s better to cancel. If your mind is pre-occupied with anything other than how beautiful she’s going to look, it’s better to be honest. If you don’t fancy her, it’s better not to agree to a date in the first place. If you have already eaten by the time you get to a dinner date, it’s better to lie and pretend you haven’t and eat like there’s no tomorrow. If you have made other plans for afterwards, it’s better to bugger them and realise how lucky you are to be with this girl instead. Otherwise, you will make her feel like she’s wasting your time, and there is nothing worse for a girl than spending days getting excited only to feel like a boring waste of space.
2) DON’T have plans for after the date. Even if your lovely lady is a good girl who wouldn’t dream of doing the dirty on the first date, at least have a free evening. She will be flattered that you are so attracted to her that you abandoned everything else in the hope that she might give in.
3) DON’T spend five minutes getting ready. And if you do, DON’T tell her. The odds are she’s been teasing, painting, applying, shaving, tanning, waxing, moisturising, washing, brushing, straightening, curling, pinning, cutting, shopping and antagonising for hours in preparation to see you. When you say that you’ve just got in from the gym and just about had time for a shower, or that you’ve been completing several hours of manual labour to the extent where you nearly thought you wouldn’t make it, it’s basically you saying, ‘I really don’t give one what you think about me. I don’t even know why I’m here.’4) DON’T wear a hoodie or crap shoes. Always over-dress, especially on a first date. You might feel like a loser hopping along to the cinema in a button down shirt and your shiniest shoes, but a girl would a thousand times over prefer that to a guy who makes her feel like she made too much effort. This is particularly applicable if you were really nicely dressed the first time you met her, or if she knows from Facebook pictures that you usually dress well. If you dress down, no matter what the reason, she will automatically assume that you have done it deliberately to sabotage the evening, and hence that you are not interested in her. CLICHE ALERT! : You don’t get a second chance at making a first impression.
5) DON’T go out for a cigarette unless she is a smoker too or it is an exceptionally long date. That is to say it is completely unacceptable to leave a girl at the dinner table after being with her for less than two hours. You may be gagging for one of your tar-filled death sticks, but they are disgusting enough as it is without tainting a short date with their intoxicating smell. If you do, you'll be left looking as lonely as the old guy in this picture...
6) DON’T walk too fast. Just a minor pet hate of mine. If it is an evening date, particularly for dinner, chances are she is wearing heels. She doesn’t want to fall off them, or get her stiletto stuck in a hole because she is running to keep up with you. Where is the fire? Why the rush? Hold her hand, put your arm around her, even link. Anything to show her that you are fine with walking at her speed.
7) DON’T let the amount of time the date lasts be shorter than the amount of time she probably spent getting ready. If I really like you, I find it necessary to spend about two hours getting ready. That is from start to finish, so in that time I would be curling my hair, taking a shower, brushing my teeth, painting my face, putting on the outfit etc. If I wanted to get really particular about it, I would also rant about shopping for four hours, taking a nap in advance so as to appear fresh, pouring yourself into your sexiest underwear and hence wrestling with all kinds of straps and attachments, getting waxed, spending hours on the phone to friends in advance, dreaming about how perfect the date would go in an ideal world and... well, I could go on forever, but like I said, I’m not going to rant about that...
8) DON’T pay if you spent the entire time acting like you would rather have done anything else than be with her. Now, I’m not some sort of feminist extremist; I love lingerie far too much to ever be involved in burning my bras. However, I would always take money out on a date with me, and I hope that any girl would. On the other hand, if I feel like I’ve been agreeable company and that the guy has enjoyed me, then I would let him pay... after having a bit of, ‘Are you sure? Oh thank you.’ BUT. And this is a big BUT. Do not try and settle the bill yourself if you clearly didn’t have a good time. I get that you might feel like you should because, ‘ME TARZAN YOU JANE’ but any self-respecting ‘Jane’ out there is not going to feel comfortable having a guy who she hardly knows sit there and begrudgingly part with money when he obviously will look on the spend as a waste. It is an insult. Be polite, offer to pay. But if you know (and you really should because if you don’t then you’re even more of a monster than you have been throughout the date) that she knows you aren’t interested for whatever reason, when she offers to pay and actually begins taking money out, let her do it. Just because you pay, doesn’t mean that a girl suddenly can’t be disappointed in you anymore and that you were a really generous, sweet, lovely guy. It makes you a chauvinistic pig. Personally, I would a thousand times over prefer to pay and have an amazing night, than have a guy pay when he probably sees you as a waste of money.
9) DON’T tell her she looks ‘Nice’. She’s probably looked in the mirror before leaving her place and thought, ‘Wow, all that effort was worth it... I look phenomenal.’ Then for you to come along and use the most non-descript, mediocre word in the history of the English language is an absolute joke. It’s better to say nothing.
10) DON’T tell her everything you’ve done for the past week and everything you’re going to do next week. This is especially applicable if you’ve had a conversation with her before, because the standard of your conversation that time was probably a massive deciding factor for her when she agreed to see you. Try and pick up where you left off, rather than going over the mundanities of your daily life.
11) DON’T point out the tiniest spot you have on your face as if you were really gutted, when you’re blatantly not interested in how she perceives you in the first place. This will confuse her. She’ll think, ‘Awhh bless him, he was self-conscious about a zit because he knew he was seeing me’ but then later when the rest of the date has been decidedly average she’ll be thinking, ‘He could have had a million zits on his face and he wouldn’t have been any less attractive to me than he is right now.’ Also, boys pointing out spots often lead to embarrassing bouts of verbal diarrhoea which somehow lead to her confessing just how many inches of foundation she has applied in order to leave the house feeling remotely human. Not good.
12) DON’T let a massive text message-encouraged build-up occur if you know the date is going to be lack-lustre. She’ll feel a thousand times more let down if you spend the days leading up to the date texting her telling her you can only imagine how hot she’ll look, or how you can’t wait to kiss her again, before acting majorly disinterested throughout the date.
13) DON’T make a big deal about it if she doesn’t finish her food. Portion sizes are way too big in restaurants, especially if a girl has any plan regarding getting ‘FREAKAY’ following what was supposed to be a successful date. We are littler than you. Hence we don’t eat as much. Usually. If you start reprimanding her about not finishing her food, she’ll feel like she’s at dinner with some tight-arse elderly relative who doesn’t want to pay for uneaten food. For all you know, she really enjoyed it! She’s just ‘full’.
14) DON’T assume that just because she didn’t eat all of her main she’s not interested in dessert. I often save room for dessert deliberately, because it is my favourite course. Having said that, if you’ve spent the entire date banging on about how you’re in a rush to get the car back, or go out for a drink with your mate, she’s probably going to feel so bad about wasting your time that she will skip desert and make a rather pointed comment about having a chocolate bar when she gets in.
15) DON’T and this is a massive thing, DON’T, DON’T, DON’T lean in for a kiss on the cheek if the date has been terrible. If she’s not all over you like cheese on a cheese-burger by the end of it, laughing and smiling, touching your arm, looking you in the eye, then why on God’s Earth do you think she wants a kiss on the cheek? She probably feels like you are only doing it because you think you should, and that you really don’t want to. That is one of the most degrading ends to a terrible date; feeling like you have to let some guy kiss you on the cheek because he paid for your dinner, even though he doesn’t even deserve so much as to be around you for another minute longer. Again, this is particularly relevant if you have shared some sort of passionate clinch before because if she wasn’t as self-assured as she really should be, she will probably spend the next couple of weeks worrying about what she did wrong that made you so repulsed by her that you couldn’t even summon the energy or will to pretend to be after more.
As for the girls out there, put it all down to experience. If you shared a nice time with him in the past, it might actually serve you well to eradicate all memory of this mess from your brain and imagine some unfortunate tragedy which would have prevented you from seeing him again... perhaps he got deported, or sent to war, or found out he was gay all along. The odds are that he wasn’t a bad guy; he’s just got bigger fish to fry right now... surely if he was never interested he wouldn’t have taken you out in the first place. Hold out hope for that apology text explicitly describing some ridiculous reason as to why his behaviour should be forgiven, and if it is good enough, give him another chance, but only if he tries really hard to earn it, because if not, you are worlds too good for him in the first place. Until then, have pity on him. Poor guy screwed up an awesome opportunity epically and is so wrapped up in himself that he doesn’t even realise what he’s missing. Shame. Shame. Shame.
Have heart readers! We will one day have our Happily Ever After J
gabriellasofia
