First dates are for finding out if they like chocolate or vanilla (maybe even in bed.) Second and third dates are when you hint at your portfolio or if you are mother to your second cousin’s child. Get past that and you can starting talking numbers. After you’re married you find out they can’t dance…
If you ask it as “what is your 5 year plan” then yes, it’s going to sound awkward and intrusive but it’s a perfectly valid area of conversation if brought up subtly and organically.
For example, it’s pretty normal for me on dates to talk about whether the person imagines that they’ll live in the same place in the foreseeable future or whether they want to move somewhere else, if they have any desire to go back to school, if they see themselves in the same job in a year’s time and what hobbies they’re trying to get into or improve.
If I have a genuine interest in a woman I appreciate a woman who wants to know where I am comming from and wants to know where I am heading and is able to tell me where she is comming from and plans on heading. I have never experienced a shortage of women willing to engage in sex and romance for the sake of getting thier rent paid. I don’t blame them either really.
If I was in that scenario, I’d just admit that I’m making it all up as I go along.
I actually have a 3 year 5 year and 10 year plan. Doesn’t mean I want to share it on the first date.
My thought would be that I have a 3, 5 and 10 minute plan.
In 3 minutes I will finish this drink and pay the bill.
In 5 minutes I’ll be in my car.
In 10 minutes I’ll have fogotten about this date.
Why does your lack of ability equal to someone else being delusional? I have always had short and long term goals and have met most of them. Of course things change and the goals have changed accordingly. I certainly didn’t plan to get divorced for example. It’s not like I have everything written down with bullet points but I have a plan for my career and for future retirement and what I need to do to get there. So far it’s worked out great.
To be asked that on a date would be a bit weird but it wouldn’t even crack the top ten of weird dating shit that I’ve experienced.
If someone asks me about my 5 year plan, my immediate impulse would be to say that it’s to increase steel production to support the Glorious Worker’s Revolution.
Maybe the OP’s video link isn’t an encouragment for women’s avarice, just some pointers for a society with deplorable conversation skills.
I’d be wary of any woman who asked them. It’s a date, not a job interview.
I just bring last year’s tax returns, a resume, 3 references and my lawyer. It saves time.
It depends on the approach. As someone stated above, if it’s organic, fun, and casually executed, it’s fine. At most, I’d be fine with “the next year or five”, but I wouldn’t stress 20 unless it’s really appropriate. There should be no right or wrong answer.
If it’s robotic and awkward (like the woman in the video…), then we’re just prolonging an already dead conversation, making the question cliche and uninteresting. In that case, it’s as good as talking about the weather, tossing in some filler comments, then parting ways.
It is not so much that it is encouraging women’s avarice, I think, as that it is assuming it, and as pointers they are terrible, as most of the responses in this thread clearly indicate (unless the woman really were a conscious and deliberate gold-digger trying to eliminate poor prospects as quickly as possible).
No wonder those women are single; they do not know how to talk to a man. (Or each other probably.:D) I have never asked a man how much he earns or his life plan.
IMHO, talk of 3-, 5-, and 10-year plans is silly before you know and like each other well enough to think you might still be seeing each other six months from now.
i would inform her of my plans for world domination. in 10 years i would expect to be a total world dictator. at 3 and 5 years it would just be a country or a contient.
Or an open invitation to be as dark as possible.
"Have you ever skinned a man, Lauren? While he was still breathing and squirming?
It’s a remarkably difficult job, dancing that line between agony and death, but I find I have developed a sort of… finesse for it."
I’ve been asked even more awkward questions when speed-dating. I try to make my answers as entertaining for me as possible. This is my idea of helpfulness; if my sense of humor turns you off, it’s best that we both learn this ASAP, yes?
So, my response to the five-year plan question would probably be “Collectivize the peasants and modernize my industrial base.”
I also enjoy feigning recognition at speed-dating. Everyone wears a name-tag with their first name and a number, so I’m inclined to say things like “Hey! Laura 69784! I knew a Jimmy 69784 in college - great guy, used to run a theremin jam session on the Quad every Thursday. Are you two related?”
It’s probably for the best that I enjoy being single.
I would appreciate the forthrightness and long-term planning capability of someone like that and the courage to ask it on the first date.
It is, and I wouldn’t be surprised if my girlfriend and I talked had a conversation like this on one of our first dates. It’s the kind of thing she’d want to talk about, anyway. It doesn’t have to do anything with evaluation or money or anything that serious; it can be a way of asking what about your broader plans and goals. Everybody says it’s boring to talk about your job, people say it’s in poor taste to talk about politics, and talking about the weather is boring, so why not talk about your hopes and dreams and things? Then again she and I were both open to something long-term and not everybody wants to approach a first date from that perspective.
I do like this answer.