So. I’m shy, quiet, easily flustered etc. etc. insert whatever other excuses for why I have next to no dating experience, you get the point. Ideally, I would like to remedy this before spending months of my life going out on one date then sitting at home baffling over “Why didn’t she ever get back to me?”
Assuming I didn’t somehow chase her off with some mysterious innocuous-question-that-wasn’t-really-innocuous, I might get a chance to go out with a really interesting-sounding girl soon. We share a lot of interests, she seems fun and a bit geeky, and she’s even the type who uses full sentences and proper words in her e-mails. In other words, just my type.
I know it’s lame to have to ask, but oh well; what sorts of thing should I do/make sure not to do? We’ll probably be meeting at a nearby mall then getting something there to eat and maybe seeing a movie. Something simple and relaxed.
Silly answers aren’t going to get me all drama-queeny, no worries, but I would kinda like a bit of advice too so don’t be too harsh?
And since I guess it might help a bit, I’m 19 and female.
This is what I like to call a “low information environment”. With nothing else to go on, people form their opinions from the opinions of others. It’s why advertising seems so stupid in theory but is quite effective in reality. What this means to you is that if she’s to form an opinion of you, your attitude about yourself will have a great deal of influence in that. If you say “I am Xish” and act like you like that about yourself, she’ll like it too (because she has nothing else to go on).
That, my friend, is what we call confidence. It’s 99% of what gets people to like you. Get control of that and the rest is pie.
Ask open-ended questions. People love to talk about themselves and will walk away from the conversation thinking you’re an excellent conversationalist when all you did was listen.
I do my best to be friendly and outgoing and all of that, I really do. I can laugh and hold a conversation and have fun with others; it isn’t like I’m sitting silent and not making eye contact unless forced. I managed to get past that long ago, thankfully.
She seems to like me well enough from the conversations we’ve had, but with my track record what it is I still wonder, you know?
I have that tendency naturally; I find it much more interesting to learn things about someone than to ramble on about myself. This may be in part a learned behaviour, because my train of thought jumps around enough that I tend to confuse anyone who doesn’t know me well if I’m not curbing it. I can bite my tongue rather than sending the conversation in five different directions before going back to something from an hour ago, mind you; I just think it rather than saying it.
Quoted for truth. If you were a heterosexual, it’d be easier to stereotype the way you should talk/listen (via my linguistics/sociology background). Assuming she’s the average girl, she talks to find an emotional connection, so give her that. She wants empathy. Men OTOH expect to find judgments in their conversational partner. We’re always devils-advocating each other.
I have no idea what you or this girl is like, but I thought you could appreciate the generalization for what it’s worth in this particular instance.
I appreciate the suggestion. So basically be interested in what she has to say (which I am; like I said, similar interests), keep the conversation going and ask things about her, everything that I was going to do naturally? Hmm. This makes me wonder what on earth I keep doing wrong, then
You might find it helpful to get involved with Toastmasters. It’s a club for adults developing communication and public speaking skills. Meeting new people and building confidence will help you out in dating and in other parts of life. Just the regular practice (once a week or every other week) making small talk with relative strangers can make a big difference. Find a club near you at www.toastmasters.org
Dating the wrong girls, most likely :-P. The key to successful dating, usually*, is finding someone who wants to date a slightly-more-presentable version of yourself. All you should need to do for a successful first date is be yourself, ask open ended questions to get them talking (important in cases of mutual shyness), and make sure you find a common interest that can be the basis of a second date (making it easy for either of you to message the other saying “hey, still want to see that movie/concert/snaking eating dwarf?”). If you have to be too artificial to make the other person happy you probably don’t want to be dating them. I know, not the most reassuring advice to a 19 year old geek with a, presumably, limited dating pool.
Be interested and interesting. Oh, and be OMG HAWT!!!, that never hurts.
*self improvement is a wonderful thing, but lets assume for the moment that you are not in desperate need of it. If you’re concerned you might be, ask your best and most honest RL friends what they think.
If she’s a little geeky, and you’re a little geeky, maybe invite her over for the return of Battlestar Galactica on Jan 16? Turn her on to the webisodes airing weekly on SciFi.com so you’ll have something to talk about on your first date?
I’m actually in the process of getting into a group for similar issues on the recommendation of my therapist. Thank you very much for the link, however; it’s very much appreciated.
Heh, probably. I’ve been trying to find someone who I can get along with and have a good conversation with, and I actually have been finding online dating (my last resort) to be quite useful in that regard. If someone gets back to me and we can’t even keep a conversation going over IM for ten minutes, it’s a pretty good chance we won’t be able to keep talking for hours on a date.
I’ve got some measure of optimism here, because she’s interested in things like languages and criminology. I want to go back to school to study the former, and she’s attending for the latter (which has always fascinated me).
I’ll certainly be trying my best for the first two, but sadly OMG HAWT!!!, as you put it, is a bit out of my range. And I’ve been working on self-improvement for a long time; if I hadn’t, I would never have gotten to this point. But that’s a long story that nobody wants to hear
I’m a tad restless, as she’s said she’ll be elsewhere for the holidays and as such out of touch until she gets home. It’s hard for me to curb the worry that for whatever reason she won’t be getting back to me afterwards, because that’s always been the case so far.
Ugh, edit time ran out while I was adding this. Sorry for the double-post.
I’ve never actually seen that show, to be honest. So I’d have to catch up myself before I could watch new episodes…if she gets back to me we’ll probably be having our date before the year’s out, but assuming that goes well I’ll have to see what I/she thinks of BSG
