The first date doesn’t always go smoothly, but if you put in a little effort into preparation, the likelihood of a fiasco is close to zero. Before you rush off to meet, figure out a few things.
1. What will you talk about?
A date is not an endless chat where, in extreme cases, you switch to emoji and save the conversation. After an unsuccessful message, you can refer to autocorrect, to the fact that a cat sat on the keyboard or that your younger sister stole your smartphone. When you meet, such excuses do not work, and from time to time the conversation is interrupted.
Prepare yourself so that the silence does not drag on:
1. Find common ground. Choose topics that interest you. As a rule, we communicate with friends or colleagues in a certain manner, on certain topics, and rarely leave our comfort zone. Communication with a stranger, especially if he is nice, is a different matter. Here you need a balance between formal and more or less friendly communication.
You probably didn’t know this, but try to name five interesting (pay attention to this word) topics that you are ready to talk about with a stranger. If you can’t, take a closer look at their profile on social networks or in a dating app: there will probably be a detail in the cloud of interests that you didn’t notice. For example: “Your profile says you were traveling to Europe, tell us what kind of trip it was.” This is what interests look like in Badoo – it’s immediately clear what to chat about and what might bring you together.
2. Think about what you want to know. A first date is always a bit of an interview, and it’s okay to ask a few neutral questions that will help you get to know the person better: “I love TV series, and you? Have you seen anything interesting lately?”, “By the way, I snowboard, it’s so beautiful on the mountain top! Do you ride anything?” Talk about yourself and ask questions, this will help you find common ground with your new acquaintance.
2. What you won’t talk about
It happens that at the first meeting there is no awkward silence, and it seems as if you have known each other for a thousand years. Even if this pleasant feeling has appeared, you should not get carried away and tell everything at once. In order not to miss the choice of topic, remember one main rule:
Don’t whine about problems.
We are looking for new friends and acquaintances to make life brighter and more intense, and perhaps your interlocutor will become a person who will support you in a difficult situation, but not at the first meeting! Give positive emotions, and you will be answered in the same way.
Well, if something goes wrong, don’t panic and make a poker face, carefully close the topics you don’t want to talk about.
Useful phrases for such a case:
- I’m not in the mood to talk about it.
- I need to think, I can’t formulate my opinion right now.
- This is too personal.
- This is an unpleasant topic for me, better tell me how you usually spend your weekends.
3. Who is hiding behind the photo?
The world does not stand still, and from year to year everything around us becomes more technological, including communications. A huge number of messengers and social networks have made communication as simple as possible, but have created new barriers. For example, how do you know if a person in a photo is real?
Today, the list of social networks that care about user safety is small. But those companies that have already thought about high-tech security systems surprise with a variety of functions. For example, the dating service Badoo confirms the user’s identity using photo verification in one minute.
That is, stealing a photo of a model from a photo bank and passing it off as your own is not an option; 5,000 moderators around the world monitor this.
Meet those who have verified their profile (this is visible by the mark at the top of the photo), and on a date you will see the same person as in the photo (only without Photoshop).
And this is not the only way to confirm someone’s identity. The app has a brilliant feature called video chat. To make sure that the person you are talking to is the one you expect to see, offer to chat via video call.
This way you can not only verify the user’s identity, but also communicate with people from different countries, learn a foreign language by chatting with native speakers, and talk even if you are far from each other.
In this case, you won’t have to provide your personal phone number, as is the case in messengers, or other private information that social networks show. In addition, communication in a video chat is impossible if one of the partners does not want to enter into correspondence or even simply did not respond to the first message.
Now the risk of disappointment at the first meeting is significantly reduced, since with video chat users can find out whether the interlocutor smiles as warmly in life as in the photo in the profile, whether butterflies flutter in the stomach at the sound of his voice, and, most importantly, feel from the very beginning whether a spark has run between them.
4. Where will you go?
Choose a place where you have something to discuss during or after the visit. This could be a photo exhibition, a restaurant or a cafe with an unusual concept. Many advise avoiding clubs and other noisy places, because during the first meeting you need to get to know each other better and definitely talk. This is right if you like a cozy atmosphere and long conversations.
But why turn your first meeting into an interview? If you like noisy places, you love dancing, or there’s a great band playing somewhere, don’t limit the program to a cup of coffee in the park, invite your new acquaintance to join you at a party or concert!
Perhaps the lyrics of a song by your favorite band will replace all the standard phrases and prepared answers.
Meet interesting people, prepare for the first meeting, then life will be filled with unforgettable moments!
