In order to do well on a first date, not only should you do certain things right, but it’s just as important not making the very common first date mistakes that sabotage your opportunity to develop attraction and have chemistry with the woman you are out with and who you find attractive and interesting.
Below, is a list of ten typical first date mistakes that many guys make on which almost uniformly turn women off and sabotage men’s ability to develop and interesting, romantic interaction with women. Make sure you become aware and well familiar with the following points, so that you don’t make the same mistakes and make the most out of your first date with the women you meet.
First Date Mistake No. 1 – Talking Too Much
This is one of the most common and deadly first date mistakes that both sexes are guilty of on a first date. Excessive chattiness literally kills attraction and interest. Use your words sparingly on your first date and don’t engage in a 10 minute monologue, leaving your date listen for too long and let her mind wonder away while sitting across from you and pretending to listen. No matter how interesting your story is, if it’s too long, it won’t be that interesting to her.
First Date Mistake No. 2 – Not Escalating Promptly
This is another common first date mistake. Sitting across the table from a woman for three hours and talking is not a date. It’s an interview, so if you don’t get paid for it, you might as well do something else. You must, must, must not stay at the same venue where you met and sat down. That spot where you meet and have coffee / snack must be the starting place. From there, you should go somewhere together (such as a walk in the park) where you could stand / sit close to each other and have opportunity to “accidentally” bump into each other and casually, lightly and innocently touch each other on arms / shoulders, etc… In the absence of those cues, your date will turn into a stiff experience that neither you nor your date will want to repeat.
First Date Mistake No. 3 – Not Making Eye Contact
Keeping your eyes on the walls / table the road while talking to your date is a sure way to turn her off. Keeping your eyes on your company is an obvious matter of social courtesy and an essential element for building attraction. Surely you shouldn’t stare in a woman’s eyes – especially the one you have never been out before, but making sure that your eyes meet periodically is absolutely necessary to keeping the attention of both of you on each other.
First Date Mistake No. 4 – Walking on Eggshells and Acting Too Formal and Uptight
Having a dry, formal conversation with a woman on a date, as if you were talking to an uptight co-worker, is a major turn-off and is a sure way to come across as a boring guy, especially if the girl you are out on a date with is the type who likes and can appreciate sarcasm and dark humor (I consider those women to be the best type). Make sure you don’t play safe and don’t “walk on eggshells” on your first date and that your conversation has a playful / teasing / sarcastic undertone throughout. Surely, you should not be funny all the time because that will make you come across as goofy or a clown, but mixing sharing serious thoughts with witty / clever humor is a recipe for creating attraction. Remember, what makes a date a date as opposed to a friendly meeting is FLIRTING. Flirting means being playful, teasing each other, and being sarcastic. Banter is where sexual attraction and romantic interest begin and grow from. And if a woman can’t handle this kind of interaction, she must not be smart enough and interesting enough for you to enjoy your company and you are better off finding that out as early as possible, so that both of you don’t waste your time with each other.
First Date Mistake No. 5- Being Too Generous With Compliments
It’s a good idea to compliment a woman once or twice during your first date. Any more compliments than that, and you will come across as corny and not genuine. Then, the value and the impact of your compliments will diminish and your kind words become meaningless. Remember, a compliment has impact and value when it is well deserved because then it communicates to the recipient of that compliment that whatever good things you have to say about someone are not meaningless flattery out of desire to be liked and accepted but your sincere opinion.
First Date Mistake No. 6 – Agreeing with Everything She Says
To do well on your first date, you must be INTERESTING to the woman you are out with. Nodding at every single thing she and repeating “oh, yes, exactly, totally, I completely agree” is a sure way to bore a woman to death. Think about it – if a woman wanted someone to agree with everything she says, she would just… talk to herself. While you shouldn’t be overly argumentative and just argue for the sake of arguing, you should not hesitate to provide your own, personal, unique prospective on the things you both are talking about.
First Date Mistake No. 7 – Discussing Your and Her Recent Dating Experiences
Once you discuss the “process” of dating, relationships, or of making her interested and attracted to you, you are very likely to end up in a friend zone – a situation you surely want to avoid. Why does talking about your / hers dating life is such a turn-off and puts you straight into a friend zone? Because that’s what friends do – they talk about their relationships with each other, spilling their guts and views on dating and the opposite sex. Save those topics of conversation until … your 10th date or so. If she brings it up, give a very general vague response and switch the topic. For instance, your response to “How often do you date?” should be “I don’t know” / “I don’t really keep count” with a playful smile and talk about something else immediately.
First Date Mistake No. 8 – Spending Too Much Money
Remember – first date is just that – a first date. Its purpose is for the two of you to spend time together and FIND OUT whether you like each other. The last thing you should be doing is SHOWING how much you like a woman before you even get to know her. Nothing will make you come across as more desperate, needy and otherwise unattractive than buying a woman’s attention with an expensive dinner, theater show, etc… Save those great activities until later – until you know that you both like each other.
First Date Mistake No. 9 – Making Your First Date Last Longer Than Three Hours
There is a temptation to spend a long time together on a first date if you really like each other. However, you must resist that temptation. You don’t want to “satiate” your interest in each other and it’s a much better idea to keep the first date shorter (not longer than 2-3 hours) and want to see each other again than being tired of each other at the end of that date.
First Date Mistake No. 10 – Not Knowing How to Lose With Grace
Too many guys become rude assholes once they see that a woman they are out with is not interested in them. Like in sports, a sign of a true champion is not only knowing how to be happy when you score, but also be able to handle rejection or lack of interest in a classy manner. You must learn how to “lose” on your first date with a girl who is not interested in you, even if you are very much interested in seeing her again. Handling rejection or lack of interest with dignity, not taking it personally and moving on is part of becoming and being a confident, attractive man. Many guys start acting like assholes when they realize that they don’t have a chance to attract a woman. They start saying rude things to a woman and even insult her. Don’t be that guy! Treat women who are not attracted to you with respect. After all, you can’t and shouldn’t be liked by all women just like you don’t like every single woman you meet. So, accept it as a normal fact of life and act accordingly.
Number 10 – She was not interested in the first place – but certainly enjoyed the free dinner. Gee, these “rules” sound just wonderful!
The last date I went on was okay until later on he told me I was uptight and held back. He was the one who had difficulty conversating.. I came to the conclusion that he was irritated that I didn’t let him get me drunk and so he was retaliating. What an ass
This is 100% right, and it is common sense. How hard is this to figure out for many men? Even cultlured and educated men in their 40's do this!
@ Wendy. Indeed. Guys with life and dating experience have no excuse whatsoever to make any of these mistakes. I just hope that this article serves as some kind of reminder to them.
I am a woman and I totally disagree with 2. I can assure you that if on a date with me a man searches too quickly for physical contact, there won't be a second date!!! It conveys the following – negative – messages: he is desperate for physical contact with a woman and any woman will do; he tries to have physical contact with whatever woman he is dating so whatever he does with me physically, he will do it with other women; he is not at all interested in my personality but sees me as an attractive body; he is unable to control his hormones.
Physical closeness goes together with emotional closeness and you first have to build up that emotional closeness! Maybe this works for those people who are just looking for a superficial physical affair but I am looking for a long-term serious relationship and therefore I really want to know who a man is as a person before getting physical with him.
I agree with most of this but also why oh why is it that particularly women usually put so much pressure on the first date. Men get it that if there is no "mutual" attraction and both don't have much to talk about that's obvious. But so many women put too much emphases on how the first date needs to be so "perfect" and I think these days it actually scares men off. Men I think more so now days are terrified of the first date cause so many women have this " fantasy" of a first date thinking it needs to be "perfect". What if the roles were reversed? Guaranteed women would be all huffy, pi**y, crabby, bi*chy about oh men want us to be "perfect", flawless. This is how so many women perceive the first date as they think it should be "flawless". Gawd, talk about pressure!!!! We men are not effin robots, were not going to know exactly what the eff to say, the conversation is not going to be "perfect", were certainly not going to ride off into the sunset. So many single women need to take a chill pill on the first date, lower those expectations. If we men stumble on the conversation give us a effin break, so many single women need to go into the first date expecting that it won't be "perfect", he's going to be naturally nervous even though he may not show it, your also going to be nervous. Then after the first date so many single women need to quit it with the constantly throw him to the curb cause it wasn't oh so "perfect". That's exactly why so many women these days are constantly single and usually banging their heads against the wall cause 1: they have way way to high of expectations and 2: they put way to much emphasis on the first date and then so many single women are like oh whoops he didn't do this and this and this right so just automatically just right him off, no second date just nothing more. For eff sakes, dating takes effin TIME, MORE THEN ONE EFFIN DATE!!!! It seems like so many single women don't get the whole just hanging out, get to know each other over time, like hang out 2, 3 weeks, and just chill with each other and then go from there something like that.
M… You just described many men too! It goes both ways. Too much pressure for the first date is a nasty side effect of online dating in particular. People don’t have much else to go on when deciding if they like someone when they meet this way that the pressure is there to decide quickly if this person will be worth your time. A sad state of affairs I know. Confidence, perserverence, and even self-reflection will get us all there. Good luck to you sir!
Excellent advice as usual. However I must disagree with getting physical on the first date. I have never done so and have been married and had around 14 or 15 girlfriends, all of whom I was physically intimate with.
I am more the slow seduction type, and the women I tend to be attracted to are also, and, although usually hot in the sack, are slow to ignite.
I feel that on a first date you are really trying to find out if there's enough interest to continue to date. I have zero problems with approaching (perhaps I do have an issue with sometimes zeroing in on someone not exactly my type, LOL!), I am not afraid of physical contact (far from it), I just feel it's a little premature at that point.
Your comments on my comment would be most welcome.
Hi, Walter. Thanks for your kind words and thoughts. I guess my comment would be that the pace at which you are “moving in” depends so much on the girl, her background and her expectations, and the mutual level of attraction between the two of you. There is just not strict rule about this, except that perhaps moderation – making the right move at the right time, might be they in this aspect as it is in many others.