First and Second Date Activities

It would likely be hard to put together a list of such dates over the course of my life, since--even though I have never dated a lot--twenty years is a long time, and it's likely I've forgotten a date or two in doing this assessment. There's also the whole question of whether the activity was a date in the first place. I've tried hard, in the past couple of years, to ensure that what I'm doing is being read as a date so that I don't end up accidentally in the friend zone (unfortunately, so far, it hasn't done much good).

So here's what I did on memorable/remembered first dates:

Or to break it down another way by activities involved:

Here's what I did on memorable/remembered second dates:

Or to break it down a different way by activities involved:

It looks like dinner is the clear winner for first dates, and it is often a feature of second dates. Why does lunch play so small a role? I think it's that going to lunch, for me, is simply too rushed. Even if the idea is to keep a first date short so as not to prolong discomfort, because I rarely live close to where my dates live, lunch is hard to come by.

In fact, a number of my first dates involved things, stretching into longer hours, that most people would reserve for later dates, scared as they are that the first date will go badly. I've generally known the women somewhat by the time we go on the first date, I suppose, which may be one reason I haven't always felt compelled to keep the date short just in case, though I have on the two most recent dates I've gone on. Even when I don't know the gal that well, if I'm out on a date with her, it almost always seems to go fairly well--I'm entertaining and nonthreatening and only a little weird (and not in a creepy kind of way). After all, the date is about getting to know someone, and that for me is fun, even if it's not a match.

Another thing: dinner and a movie--looking back at that, those were mostly dates when I was far younger. I would no longer choose that as an option--I want to spend my date talking. After age twenty-one, it's easier to extend a night at a bar somewhere, which allows for more interaction than a movie would.