A Man’s Starter Guide to Get a First Date
She’s Got Some Deal Breakers for You to Navigate
Cringeworthy, right?
First dates can feel like you misspoke on Twitter.
But before you close your dating profile and go back to the bros, here are five insights below that deserve a hard look before asking a woman out on a first date.
Women are capable and successful. They are also complicated.
But you already knew that.
Like you, women have a dating qualification list of what they want in a relationship partner.
Women’s lists are epic though.
In theory, if you meet 80 percent of her qualifications of what she wants in a man, along with a picture that’s not butt-ugly, you get a first date.
For women, creating their man-qualities list is a rite of passage. First, she buys a marked-down journal with a whimsical cover from the only bookstore in town.
Then she settles in with a glass of wine and dreams of her ideal man. If he had these qualities, her life would be perfect.
Once her list is complete, she places the journal in the back of a boudoir drawer never to be found . . . unless a deep cleaning occurs because she can’t find the bra that goes with her special occasion LBD.
Little black dress, men.
She intended to write other things in the pretty journal, but frankly, writing a list of what she needs in a man wore her out from using a HEAVY stroke and g o u g i n g her pen into the journal’s pages.
Why? Because she started thinking of the last jerk she stupidly called a boyfriend. Her long-held pain finally surged out.
She feels better now.
Insight 1: No diggin’ up bones.
Don’t, during any conversation leading up to a first date, ask about her past relationships. Let them stay buried. Stay in the present with her.
It’s not relevant anyway. Does she need to know about your first sexual experience?
Not really.
Let’s get back to her journal. She knew she’d forget where she put it, but no problem, because she taped her man-qualities list — with the artistry of a kidnapper cutting messages from a magazine for a ransom letter — on a three-poster vision board thumbtacked onto a wall in her home.
Orange neon highlighter circles identify her deal breakers. That is the intel you need to focus on, men, her deal breakers.
You think you need to be bringing what she wants in a man. Uh-uh.
If you talk about, look like, or even smell like you’re are capable of one of her deal breakers, count yourself DRT.
Dead right there.
Although you probably aren’t getting into her home the first date to see aforesaid vision board — unless you are the male model she clipped out from O Magazine to put on her vision board — you need to know the deal breakers before you ask her out.
Just imagine the edge you’ll have, right?
Insight 2: Learn her deal breakers without breaking and entering into her home.
Your video game can wait; you have homework.
Her deal breakers are listed back at the online dating site. Go there and log in.
Find her picture. Use the scroll function. Down there, below her picture, women write words in what’s called a profile. Start reading.
You: But, a picture’s worth a thousand words.
Yes, but women like to read the run-on sentence you wrote about your favorite sports/hobbies. She didn’t want to write her profile, but because she reads men’s profiles, she assumed you’d read hers.
She will weave her deal breakers throughout the profile. Get ready to mine for gold.
Even if she paid $300 to have a professional attention-grabbing dating profile created, she will tweak the copy to include her deal breakers. Yes, the profile writer told her not to do that, but she’s an independent woman.
To avoid a smack down in Starbucks on the first date, she has gone to the trouble of stating what she won’t put up with. Consequently, she’s hoping you’ll not do any of them.
Hey, even you dislike confrontation.
Some of her deal breakers . . .
-I enjoy working out, and you do too, in order to maintain a 6-pack that turns me on.
-I like eating healthy and junk food grosses me out — and you do too. You enjoy shopping at Whole Foods. Only. Or Trader Joe’s if Whole Foods is closed due to an Amazon upgrade.
-You won’t screw me over by dating and living together and then act like you’re shocked that I want to marry you.
-You are NOT a mama’s boy. You love your mother, but you put me first because you’re a grown man and your girlfriend comes first. The order: Me, our relationship, you, our children, and then your mother.
-You hate narcissists and players just as much as me and you’ll always be into me and me alone.
-I like going out and don’t want to be stuck at home on a Saturday night with you half asleep begging, “C’mon babe, let’s just stay home and watch movies and you make us some tacos.” I’m a catch and you like to squire me around town. (Oh, squire means to escort.)
-You desire me, but you won’t just have sex and disappear. You’ll build up our connection and then sex is an act of honoring me and us. And it makes you more committed. A lot more.
Now interspersed between her deal breakers are things she likes to do such as travel or hang with friends/family. She’ll mention that she’s a foodie and she volunteers at charities. This is profile-proof she’s a good person.
Oh, hold on. One more deal breaker from her:
-It goes without saying that you are monogamous. You are not a dog. Because if you are found out to be a dog, I’d break up and move on in half a heartbeat and you don’t want to know what would happen to your car.
Now that you know her list of you-do-that-you’re-out items, do your best not to run.
You ask, “Why bother? She sounds scary.”
But what if she’s the one?
Although she might not sound promising at all, she could be your diamond in the rough.
So go ahead; call her for a date.
Insight 3: There’s a time and place for everything.
Don’t step into a deal breaker.
During the lead up to — or on the first date — do not reek of one of her deal breakers. Don’t say, “Once I was dating an amazing woman. If I hadn’t of been so stupid and had an affair with her boss, I’d be married to her.”
Keep your honesty in the past. If you say these two sentences, thus violating TWO of her deal breakers, get ready for the Starbucks smackdown.
Remember, a woman dating wants to have fun, not participate in a therapy session.
Insight 4: Don’t whine.
Don’t bring up the last woman who walked in that first date, asked if you were Steve, and when you said “Yes,” said she had to go to the restroom and never returned.
And don’t rehash in your mind the woman who texted throughout your entire first date and then unceremoniously said, “I gotta go. Bye.” Yes, you never heard from her, but you didn’t want her, anyway. Don’t mention her.
Totally erase from your memory the woman who yelled at you in the restaurant for pulling her chair out before she sat. She wasn’t for you either.
Insight 5: Be the man, Bro.
Your job is to show up 100 percent confident and in man mode.
If you’re the man, she’ll like it.
Go in confident. Pull out her chair. Lead the conversation. Yes, you’ve been scarred in dating. But man up.
Lean in. Engage her. And don’t confuse being a man, leading, or confidence with arrogance.
Be nice but not a wimp.
Remember men, the tougher the woman is on the outside, the bigger a mush she is on the inside.
Be kind and a leader.
If she’s meltable, she’ll melt. Maybe for you.
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