First Date Tips - A Guide to Your First Date Together

Dating can be tough and first dates can be painful. So what are you to do? Here is a list of dating tips to start the year out right!

Meet your date out and drive yourself. If you want to bail out early, you won’t be trapped. Also, when you have your own car. If things work out, you won’t have any worries about inviting your date in or not. This helps protect you from your own impulses, because what’s worse then “will he respect me in the morning?” is “How much will I hate myself when I wake up?”. Also when you have your own car, no need to worry about safety, your date does not know where you live. This protects you from a date turned bad turning in to a stalking nightmare.
Keep the date simple. You’re nervous enough without making a big show, plus you don’t want to lock yourself in to an evening you won’t enjoy.
Men, end the date first. You will make yourself stand out.
Women, don’t wear anything low cut or short. It sounds like an old cliche but your first date knows very little about the woman you are. He will take you at face value and you don’t want to give the wrong impression.

A friend of mine went out for dinner on a blind date. She is a very conservative women, who really likes to take her time in relationships. All of us who know her know this about her. Her date didn’t. She went out on the date wearing a sexy low cut cocktail dress. They went to dinner, had a wonderful evening, and when he walked her to her door, he pounced on her! She was of course surprised and upset, but her date didn’t know her, he just took her at face value.

Wear clothing that you are comfortable and confident in. First dates are uncomfortable enough without a tight belt biting you around the waist.
Men, be specific about where you are going. This will make the date more comfortable, and will prevent her from wearing a cocktail dress when you are taking her bowling.
Ask about your date. Each of us knows we are the most interesting subject But the most interesting conversationalists are people who ask about others. Great light topics are work, hobbies, sports, kids (if they have any).
Easy on the perfume. You want to knock his socks off, but you don’t want to knock him out!
Don’t forget to use mouthwash before you go out.
Don’t order sloppy food. If you are not paying for what you order, try to stay in the middle of the menu.
Keep the conversation light! Don’t talk or ask about old boyfriends, girlfriends, or ex-spouse. This is a first date, not a therapy session.
Find out about your dates eating habits before you plan the evening. Make sure you choose a place where they will be able to find something to eat.
Be attentive! There is nothing worse then a date peering over your shoulder making you feel as if they are looking for something better.
If you are not paying be considerate of what you order. Try to stay in the middle of the menu.
And last, but not least, have fun and be yourself!

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Expanding Your Perfect Criteria

I recently received a letter from a man who said he had been searching online for the perfect woman for him for a full year and hadn’t been able to find her until one day a woman contacted him. They were both amazed that they had so much in common, including the year-long online search. Curious as to why neither of them had come up in either of their searches until now, they compared notes on their search criterion.

What they discovered was that she had only found him when she increased the age range that she desired to include men slightly younger than her (he was a year younger). They then discovered that he had never found her in his searches because she was half an inch shorter than his height search criteria. They had missed each other by half an inch and a year!

If your online search hasnt yielded the results that you want, reconsider your criteria and expand it in the areas that arent set in stone. This is actually a good reminder in general. Often we get caught in deciding, in advance what our type is and rather than using that description to help us find our match, we use it to eliminate a lot of great possibilities. Take the time to think through how you consciously or unconsciously would finish this sentence, I only date people who or My type is

While having a clear picture of what you want is a great way to recognize him or her, it is wise to go back and look at your type criteria to see if it is really important to you, or just some conjured up image in your head. Do you imagine yourself with a blond? What if the perfect woman for you is brunette? Do you imagine yourself with someone tall? What if the guy with the best personality is just a bit shorter than your fantasy man?

I receive complaints from men and women that say they are still active and vital for their age, but are eliminated by someones arbitrary search criteria that automatically rules them out. In addition, sometimes a persons height to weight ratio looks far more attractive and proportionate in person than it sounds on paper.

Determine which of your criteria are really important to youperhaps religion, location, children and which ones aren’t quite as important perhaps weight, height or age, and expand the boundaries of your search for better results!

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Where to Go on a First Date

Where do you want to meet? Oh, I don’t care, where do YOU want to go? Oh, anywhere you decide would be fine with me. No, no, its up to you? Does this sound familiar? If someone doesn’t make up his or her mind soon, about the only good thing that will come out of this scenario is that you’ll be able to use your senior citizen discount coupon no matter where you decide to go!

I constantly get asked the question, Where should I go on my first Internet date? My first response is usually, Not where your ex-fiance hangs out! Besides that, I suggest to go wherever you would go on ANY first date. Initially, its best to meet at a centrally located place, and you also want to avoid having your date pick you up at your place for the first few dates. So if you’re the type of person that just has to know what kind of car hes driving, just ask, you’ll have to find out later.

As a side note, make sure that wherever you do decide to go, keep dating safety in mind before and during the date. Remember, this person really is just a stranger and while most people have good intentions, you don’t want to find yourself caught up in a bad situation.

Coffee shops seem to be popular places to meet for the first time. Why? Because a cup of coffee is fairly inexpensive, and, if you meet at 2:00 in the afternoon, you have the perfect excuse of having to go back to work if your date isn’t, well, the purdiest thang in the world.

I personally feel going to a coffee shop in the middle of the afternoon just doesn’t have that date like atmosphere. To me it feels more like a business meeting. The one and only time I ever met a guy there I felt like I was being interrogated. (I think he was an undercover cop, especially when he scarfed downed four jelly-filled donuts.) Anyhow, meeting for lunch or early evening appetizers might be a little cozier. (Guys, you may want to skip meeting your date at Hooters or at the Gentlemen’s Club for the first date. You know, just a thought.)

If you’re not into eating, (or if payday hasn’t arrived yet) choose an activity that you both enjoy, such as bowling, darts, or maybe an art museum. Again a public place is always a safe bet, unlike a suggestion this one date of mine made. I met this guy one evening and after we had some appetizers, he wanted to know if I wanted to go for a nice moonlit walk in the woods in the middle of nowhere at 11:00 at night. No thanks, Mr. Bundy. I’d rather roller skate naked down Main Street at rush hour than to truck up in the woods with someone I don’t even know what their last name is.

So you have my permission to tell anyone who suggests something that stupid to go take a hike (alone!)

Treat the first date like any other date. Don’t set yourself up for a bad date by having an escape plan, or by having your buddy call twenty minutes into your date. Talk about sabotaging your evening! Lighten up. Enjoy the get together, even if she/he isn’t going to be walking down that isle with you.

The bottom line is, have a good time, enjoy yourself, let a friend know where you’re going, and be home by ten!

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How to Write Online Personals that Get You Noticed

This personals writing workshop will help you focus on creating an ad that will attract as many of the right responses as possible.

After all, isn’t that why you want to use a dating site - to meet people that you will connect with?

The workshop is divided into five parts:

Getting started - congratulations, you got started
Who you are - writing appealing personal ads
Who you want -the single women or men you’d like to meet
Your headline - getting singles’ attention
Summing it all up. Hey, at least read this.

Ok, now you know what’s ahead. Let’s dive right in:

How to Write Online Personals - First Steps

When you sign up for many of the major dating services, you are asked at the beginning to fill out a profile “sheet” which includes space to write your ad.

What do you say?

Well, you can say anything, and everything… but good personals, the ones that are going to get a lot more responses are the ones that usually spell out, in no uncertain terms:

Who YOU are, and

Who you want

And that is the gist of it - the basic idea: you want to tell those eligible singles out there what you are about, and you want do so honestly. Then, you want to say exactly what kind of man or woman you are looking for.

Hey, you are doing this for you, so why not ask for things you like?

Before you start writing personals, do this little exercise: grab a piece of paper, and make two lists.

The first list should be of things that you feel like any singles ought to know about you before they get in touch with you. The other, a list of qualities that you are looking for in a potential mate.

Just write a list of points at first, don’t write a book. We’ll look at the best way to put those points into beautiful prose in the next few pages.

Who You Are

Great personal ads describe exactly who you are

Hello. If you did not get here from part one of this personals workshop, we are discussing how writing better personal ads will help you attract more singles.

In this section, we’ll look at what you should say about you, to give the men or women that’ll be responding a better idea about who you are, and whether or not they might like to get to know you better.

First of all - did you make the list of things that you think other singles should know about you?

If not, here are some examples of points usually mentioned in good personal ads:

Your career
Your main interests outside of work
Your goals in life
How you like to spend your free time
Children (have?want?dislike?)
General personality traits (outgoing, introverted, etc.)
Are you a partier or a homebody
How you feel about relationships

Yes, yes, some of them may seem a little cheesy, but they are just supposed to be examples to get you thinking about what to say. Only you can know the true depths of the madness that possesses you. Er, the qualities that make you attractive to others.

Seriously, single men and women will really want to know these things about you, because there are just so many choices out there, that there is no reason to waste one’s time with incompatible matches.

One thing that you should include in your personal ads is some quality, or trait that is unique to you: a personality quirk, some specific life experience that has made you who you are, or anything that makes you stand out from all those other singles out there who are, in effect, your competition.

So write about yourself and make it sound good, but also make it something that comes from you. Don’t just write an ad.

Keep this in mind: the better dating services will ask you a number of questions, the answers to which will later appear in your profile. This means that you probably won’t have to talk about many minute details in your personal statement, but rather convey a more general idea of who you are.

To be really successful, this kind of writing will require a little more introspection then just stating whether or not you are a smoker or a morning person. (Although those two are probably hugely important.)

Who You Want to Date

You will also want to talk about the man or woman that you seek.

Often, weaving a brief paragraph about yourself, together with a somewhat detailed description of who you are looking for, will get you the best responses. But we’ll talk about on the next page.

Be specific about the single women or men you want

If you did not get here from part one if this personals workshop, we are discussing how writing a better personal ad will help you attract and meet single women or men that you can really connect with.

We’ve gotten to the part where you tell those men or women out there what you are looking for in a partner.

This can be a little tricky, because often expectations, either overly inflated or not specific enough can send the wrong message. We’ll get to the number one mistake that guys make in a minute, but first, some examples of things you can reasonably ask about:

Age range (no-brainer)
Children (have?want?dislike?)
Basic personality traits
General disposition towards fellow human beings
Geographical location (if it matters)
Willingness to move
Physical characteristics (be realistic here, and don’t create a negative impression by asking for overly superficial qualities.)

As you can see, you’ll be asking about things similar to what you described about yourself, though perhaps not quite as detailed. But remember:

The best prospects who will answer your personal ad, are the ones who will “see” themselves in it - in your description of who you are looking for.

That is why it is often better to be specific: you’ll be writing to fewer singles, yes, but the single women or men that respond will be much more likely to possess the qualities that you are looking for.

Basically, you are polling a huge sample of people, and you are asking them: do you see yourself in this description? If you say, “I want a man” lots of men will answer (and we do mean LOTS.)

But if you say: “I want a 33-38 year old agnostic man from South Jersey who loves the outdoors and is comfortable with large breed dogs” then you will get him, or both of them, to answer your ad, because he will say that’s me! when he sees your ad.

So that’s the key. Now, one last thing:

Guys: DO NOT be obnoxious, and say things like “I want to meet single women with a perfect body” or anything along the lines of “I prefer round butts”. There is a place for that, and it’s called adult personals.

If you are looking for a serious relationship, based on more than the most superficial qualities, you cannot be superficial in your personal ad. Actually, you can’t even think that way, let alone write it. Nothing turns single women off faster than a sleazy man.

Your Headline

Attract more singles with the right headline because it’s the 2nd thing people see (after your picture).

If you didn’t get here from part one of this personals workshop we are talking about how writing better personals will help you meet singles that you’ll really connect with.

In this section, you’ll read about headlines, and how writing a better one will attract more attention to your personal ads, and therefore to you (more singles will want to meet you.)

Look:

The personals’ headline is what catches your eye

That’s pretty obvious isn’t it? And it’s also very important. You have to get those singles’ attention before you can tell them more about yourself. Otherwise, the rest of your personal is meaningless.

But what do you say in your headline?

Here we have to make a confession: the two of us who created this guide are terrible headline writers. We just can’t do it. We tried, and tried, and all that we could come up with is “The personal’s headline is what catches your eye”.

Well, maybe that’s not such a bad example. After all it did get the main point across…

And that’s what you want to do: get your main point across.

Remember how you are supposed to include something that is unique about you in your personal ads? Well, include it in your headlines too.

Just a couple of words (don’t write a paragraph) about you, and what makes you interesting.

So, a headline like Single man looking for his best match, although entirely reasonable, will not get much traction. Seriously, are there any singles out there trying online dating who are not looking for their best match?

The point is to stand out from the crowd, to get noticed by those singles who will be most likely to appeal to you, and who will find you interesting enough to establish contact. Incidentally, elsewhere on this site we also talk about how best to contact singles. But that’s later.

Summing it All Up

In this last section, we’ll try to put together all the dating advice you might have missed in the previous few pages.

Let’s start with what your ad should say about you:

You want to be honest
Mention something that is unique about you
List anything important you think they should know
Give some basic information about your station in life

The idea is to attract singles who will like you for who you are. So don’t hide anything, and talk about those qualities you feel are important.

And do the same when explaining what kind of man or woman you’d like to meet:

Ask about things that you want in a partner
Be as specific as possible
Mention anything that might be a no-no (smoking, children, location restrictions)
Do not be superficial about physical characteristics

In the end, the people who are most likely to answer your ad are the ones who see themselves in your description of your ideal partner.

And to get their attention, you must write a good headline:

Make it catchy, but descriptive
Mention the unique quality that you also discuss in the main part of your personal ad

The trick, if we can call it that, is to have your headline stand out from the crowd.

Also (this is so obvious we didn’t mention it before): check you grammr also your speling!

Do not make a bad first impression with your writing - you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot right from the start…

…and everything that you’ve learned here will be wasted. And you’ve learned enough to starting writing great personals!

But it’s not all you should know about online dating: in fact, all the action takes place once you contact that men or woman who catches your eye, and start chatting, or talking, or whatever you want to call it. What do you say then? We discuss this in the article about contacting singles.