Brush your teeth, wear deodorant, but not too much cologne. And relax, you’ll be fine. It’s not like you’re meeting her for the first time or something.
lie back, close your eyes, and think of the Queen…
With cologne, remember this phrase: spray, delay, then walk away.
I recommend getting Axe or Tag, they have pheremones which women react to quite nicely. I just got my DH some and I love it. But use the rule above, one spray though.
Try to keep cool, make sure your clothes are immaculately clean and pressed, clean shaven (where you have unwanted facial hair - check nostrils and ears for strays! 
), tell her how beautiful she looks, kiss her on the cheek when you pick her up, and try to keep the conversation flowing like you are still friends. Let her initiate any conversation about the state of your relationship, the ball is in her court now. Just let things happen naturally and above all else - have a great time! Please give us details tomorrow!!
Why would your Designated Hitter need cologne?
Or like me, about baseball.
I disagree with the advice about cologne; your best bet is none. Unless you and she have discussed this and you’re sure about her taste in cologne, you don’t want to take a chance on wearing some god-awful stench (in her opinion). Axe and Tag make me want to retch. I hate most men’s colognes (and women’s too, for that matter). See my point?
The way I see it is that you have obviously known her for a long time … do what you always have done. If you do something you never do, like if you wear cologne even though you never do it, she’ll know because she knows you. You don’t really have to impress, she knows who you are and likes who you are. Just enjoy.
I don’t agree. They’ve been friends for a long time. He needs to change some things, for example give her flowers, to insure that the relationship moves away from Friends Only, and into lover status.
Small things that say: “It’s different now” should be a help.
Well everyone, “it’s different now”. I unfortunately didn’t have time to do the flower thing. An unexpected errand after work ate up much of the time I had dedicated to that task. We still did the nice dinner, followed by a nice walk along the river (with a free jazz concert going on, as a lucky coincidence), followed by the carriage ride.
It was a lovely, fantastic evening. It was basically how we’ve always acted, except both of us were just a little nervous about it all. I opened doors and was a gentleman, but couldn’t 100% supress the smart-ass and cynical comments I make in her presence. We kept talking about our “hot date”, and talked pretty openly about who we’ve told and their reactions to the news (since everyone we know has been trying to get us together forever now).
The carriage ride had been going on for about 4 seconds before she initiated the “so, now that you’ve had 6 months to think about where you see us, WHERE DO YOU SEE US?” talk. I told her I was hesitant to do anything because I didn’t want to ruin a good thing. She was my best friend, and I didn’t want to ruin that. She agreed. I told her I thought it would be weird to jump right into a boyfriend/girlfriend role out of an awkward “where in the fuck do we stand” role. She agreed. The end result: we’re “dating” and “playing it by ear”. I’m not 100% sure what that entails, but it sounds good to me. We had a nice, sweet kiss goodnight. No nookie, but that wasn’t a surprise. We won’t be sleeping together for a while, which is kind of both of our decisions from past relationships. We’re takin’ ‘er easy and goin’ slow, but we’ve successfully moved from “I’m so fucking confused, what should I do?” to “dating” in just a few days, thanks to fellow Dopers. I’m eternally grateful for all comments and advice and private emails I’ve received from my issue. It worked out as good as I could have hoped. Thanks again.
Congratulations! You’ve got her pursuing you. And, you’re the one pulling out the “I don’t want to ruin the friendship” line, whereas “Let’s just be friends” is often the girl’s rain-on-the-parade response to a too-strong (or just unwelcome) come-on.
Stay challenging. Avoid blabbering or declarations of undying anything.
Steady on.
That right there will be the biggest challange, not letting your mouth jump in and say the first thing you might be feeling.
Dang, first thing when I got on this morning was say to myself, “well, lets check out wasson’s date…”
Yep I concur… take it easy… no over the top love declarations… but don’t be stingy about praise or liking her.
No nookie ! Darn... I want my SMDB money back... ;) I hope the kissing was passionate and good though. Your BF and GF now... so the passion must be there.You’re CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC! I’m so happy for you!
(My husband and I were cautiously optimistic when we started dating. )
I’ve got to disagree with people who say keep your thoughts about her private. Don’t scare her (I had a guy tell me he loved me on the second date, sheesh! Never saw him again) but definitely tell her how you are feeling and how you think about her. To me, keeping your feelings private and trying to find out how she feels first is a lot like playing games, and I never advocate that in a relationship. What’s wrong with being confident and telling her that you really like her, that thinking about her makes you happy, etc?
In my opinion, keeping your feelings private got you into this mess. You spent six months keeping your feelings private and obsessing and agonizing. Tell her how you feel, be completely open. However, don’t tell her that she is your soul-mate, you love her, you want to spend your life with her unless you are COMPLETELY sure that’s absolutely true. Be honest but don’t be silly about it.
I think people reccommend that you not disclose feelings because they think she’ll hurt you in some way. Have you thought that she perhaps has things she hasn’t discussed? It would be wonderful if you came out and told her everything, and started the conversation that led to her telling YOU everything she’s been feeling. Don’t you want to know that?
Not really. It’s based on the fact that dating is (whether we like it or not) a marketplace in which multiple “buyers” and “sellers” attempt to maximize advantage. Sorry if that’s not “romantic,” but it’s an apt description.
The overager buyer rarely achieves the best results in market transactions. Rather, he weakens his position.
There is in the marketplace a substantial surplus of male desire for attractive young females. Attractive young females instinctively know this (or, soon learn it – remember, wasson’s inamorata has already reported having multiple stalkerish-guys, which is to say thwarted admirers). Attractive young women may (not illogically) assume, without being told, that it is the default state for men to desire them.
Ergo, I conclude that there is a substantially greater risk of wasson losing an opportunity by lumping himself in with the rest of the “desperate buyer”/overager stalker crowd, than of losing an opportunity by not professing that which is not hard for her to figure out, i.e., she’s attractive and he (like many other men) wants her.
It is not unnotable that wasson’s two biggest advances with his girl before yesterday came not when he was professing his admiration for her, but from when she found herself in a state of confusion and ambiguity – viz., when she was drunk and had diminished impulse-control, and when she heard about him smooching another gal, freaked out that maybe he wasn’t mooning away after her 24/7, and thus more or less pursued him.
I know, I know, none of this is “romantic,” but IME it is how the system works.
“Attraction isn’t a choice.” - key words of, without a doubt, my favorite dating guru, David DeAngelo
Wasson, if you go on a date with this girl, you interact with this girl long enough, and she loses her attraction to you, there’s nothing you can do about it. On the other hand, if you interact with this girl long enough, and she becomes (more) interested and attracted to you, there’s nothing that she can do about it.
The reason I mention this is because, like you said, you two have spent time discussing your feelings with each other and where this is going a few times. That’s all well and good, but discussing your feelings about her doesn’t affect her level of attraction for you. In fact, being vague about your feelings (while it may seem dishonest and “the wrong thing” to do) will make you seem more interesting and like more of a challenge.
This is a good idea, but only after about 10 romantic dates.
I agree with most of Huerta88 and disagree with most of Elysian. She already has a good idea that you have a pretty positive opinion about her. Focusing on being funny and interesting, rather than on talking about both of your feelings, should then serve to amplify that attraction that you both obviously have right now and make the date funner for the both of you.
Good call on opening the doors and being a gentleman. Was she laughing or seeming to enjoy your smart-ass and cynical comments? If so, keep doing it.
Not sugar-coating your words, but being nice to her through your actions, is a fundamentally good idea.
Huerta, I couldn’t disagree with you more. Buyer/seller? NOT an apt description at all. NOT how the “system” works. I’ll bet you are a proponent of the “ladder theory” as well. Complete crap. Trying to break down human interactions into set economic rules is doing a disservice to those “sellers” and yourself.
Here’s a little illustrative anecdote for you: there once was a computer game, way back, where the object of the game was to get the girl to remove all of her clothes. To do this you had to click in all the right places, in a certain progression. If you did all of this right, the girl would be naked. If you clicked in the wrong place, the girl would shriek, “I’m not that kind of girl!” and quickly replace all of her clothes.
These “theories” that lonely young men have cooked up over the years remind me of this game. There is the goal: to get the girl. There is the progression: do everything right, in the correct order, and the girl will fall at your feet. Whether it is to have more money or at least pretend like you do (ladder theory) or pretend to be more aloof at the right times then her “stalkers” (your own theory), there are certain concrete steps to be taken to win the girl.
These games treat the girl like an object. A great, wanted and needed object, to be sure, but more along the lines of the cheese at the end of the maze. wasson’s girl is certainly not an object. She has already made it clear that she likes him, unlike all of those “stalkers.” wasson has a choice. He can tell her his feelings about the time that she told him she loved him, or he can decide to play a game and wait until she is completely under his thumb before declaring that he felt any emotion at any time. At this point, in your game theory, he will have won the prize.
Why is there a prize? Why is there a game? Why can’t he tell her everything he’s feeling, and get her honest response in return?
Engineer, I’m not saying that he should spend hours with his ladylove and tell her every twitch of his emotions. I’m saying that should the subject come up, he should be honest and forthcoming. I was speaking in response to a few posters who said to play it cool and not let on that wasson liked this girl in any way.
Elysian, you’re absolutley right.
Game playing is for kids. Maybe this thread is, too.
Elysian nails the correct approach for this situation, IMHO.
Totally incorrect, IMHO. We’re talking about a girl here, not an exercize in a sophmore statistics class.
It’s funny. What I was actually doing when I was literally a sophomore was going through an “exercise” in how to approach women – it’s just that the exercise there was based on received wisdom (much of which I’ve seen echoed here) on how to win women over. This “received wisdom” took the form of believing stuff I saw in romantic movies, listening to what my mom said, etc. “Be tender and romantic,” “Do nice things for her,” “Take her out dancing and for long walks on the beach,” “Be a nice guy.” I am sure you and Elysian would have heartily approved of whatever approach I was trying to take.
Didn’t work. More importantly (and I think you’re missing out on this), this model of “appropriate, non-game-playing” romance you purport to defend is, in fact, a “system” in its own right. It’s just one that we’ve been led to believe is the “right” system. Specifically, it’s the system that (mostly female) relationship “experts” favor (not least, I suspect, because it’s consistent with the Cinderella fantasy of being courted by Fabio that many women, even modernized ones, still have an attraction for).
Here’s how I know it’s a “system” – I HATED IT! Yes! I don’t like expressing my feelings or talking about the relationship, I detest dancing, and I feel like a complete phony when I try to be “tender.” So – I felt as artificial following the “normal” system as you suggest people would feel following my alternate approach. One of my first wake-up calls was when I realized: I’ve been led to treat women very differently from how I treat my friends – but isn’t friendship the basis for a romantic relationship?
Equally important, were the handful of relationships I forged through the Elysian method (as I’ll call it for shorthand, not trying to put words in your mouth) good for me or the woman? Not really. They ended up vaguely dissatisfied and usually wandered off.
My current approach feels more natural. I don’t have any complicated schemata for how to approach women, as you seem to suggest – indeed, by treating women, even women in whom I could be interested, as Just Other People, or maybe the way I’d treat my younger sister (to whom I do not routinely give single red roses, whom I do not frequently take on moonlit carriage rides, with whom I never dance, and with whom I enjoy an affectionate, somewhat sarcastic, but not-freighted-with-Romeo-and-Juliet-level declarations of undying passion, relationship), I remove a lot of the torturous, anxiety-filled tension that I usually experienced following the Elysian model for How To Date.
Being non-commital, not plunging into copious declarations of my feelings, making it clear that I have other options and am not seeking to go ring shopping with her on the first few dates – what you’re missing is that these have far less to do with manipulating her than they do with forcing myself not to take any one date, any one potential girlfriend, too seriously, at first – and despite their long Platonic friendship, wasson and his ladyfriend are only in the very early stages of a (completely different type of relationship). Though women don’t always recognize the depth of male emotional tendencies, men do have to guard affirmatively against an inclination to become stuck on the notion that a girl they’ve dated once (or even never) is the one – this tendency is (for me) heightened by the fact that lots of men hate the dating process and would like to get it over with. So, my suggestions about holding back and keeping emotional reserve really are directed at wasson (or at me), to keep ourselves from making fools of ourselves or overcommitting to something that might (we hope), but very well might not, go somewhere or last forever. That these reminders to maintain emotional reserve and avoid florid pronuciamentos may also in practice turn out to have the effect of making women respond more favorably (because they don’t view you as an over-eager buyer) is as much a nice side effect as anything.
Main thing is, my advice to the brotha was grounded not in theory or schemes, but in what has worked, facts on the ground, and what has not – for me. One woman, with whom I’d just about had to bite my tongue every time I saw her to keep from blurting out “do you know how cute you are?” ended up chasing after me (not something that’s happened a lot to me, certainly not in the past) after we e-mailed back and forth for months in what she called “infuriatingly ambiguous fashion” (I really was ambiguous, because we were in different cities and I didn’t really know if I wanted to mess with that whole hassle). Guess what she told me after I ‘reluctantly’ overcame my hesitations? “You drove me crazy because I could never figure out if you were interested in me, and I thought you just wanted to hang out with me as a sidekick, but I liked that you weren’t like all the other guys who just tell me how great I am.” Verbatim – and, she ended up much happier, for much longer, with me than any of the handful of gfs I got using “your” way.
Look, I didn’t make women the way they are (and if you don’t believe that women and men are different, and react to different romantic approaches in different, hardwired fashion, I can’t do anything to help that). I only know what has worked for me, made dating less stressful and fraught with the tension of Grand Romanctic Expectations, and what I suspect might work for wasson and any other young grasshoppers in his shoes (which, and this is not a slam at all, none of the female posters are).