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The “First Date” Mistake: For Singles Only
Posted by TheBlackCritic • 1/08/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: blind dates, dating advice, dating tips, love and relationships, Romance
After a few post on relationships at our site, we began getting emails from people requesting a more step-by-step type guide to the methods I had posted on previously concerning relationships. We responded with a detailed post called The "First Date" Mistake:
theblackcritic.com/?p=1181
Our goal was to deal directly with the single people who rely too heavily on shallow romantic preferences and broken selection processes to choose dating partners.
For all the single people here, especially women who have found themselves saying things like "good men are hard to find," I would like for you to check out the post, and based on your personal experiences, and the experiences of people you know, if the fairly detailed step-by-step guide to reducing the damage of shallow preferences could potentially help.
Feel free to add any suggestions you may have, as this post is the result of 7 guys and 3 women banging out a solution collectively. Your thoughts are appreciated, even if you disagree with the methods explained in the post.
If your goal is to ultimately reach the destination of true love and happiness, then we are on the same team, even if we choose to take different paths. Thank you.
theblackcritic.com/?p=1181
User Comments
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Interesting breakdown. You almost lost me when you got to the "getting to you know you" bit, but after reading a bit further I understood where you were coming from much better.
Using hindsight as to how my husband and I met, evolved, and finally married - I'd have to actually say that you haven't given half-bad advice. Although there is nothing wrong with wasting a little bit of time - there's something to be said about learning from dating experiences. And of course, that it is OK to just have fun sometimes.
I would actually take your advice, and only add this prerequisite:
It's OK to have fun, and it's OK to be serious, but you shouldn't decide to desire a very serious relationship (with any one person) until you've gone past the "familiar" stage, and actually come to understand the person, and then decide if a more serious relationship is possible.-
I have a working theory that I haven't articulated until now--so don't hold me to it--that maybe folks truly need to "sow all their wild oaks" well before they ever consider hopping into a serious relationship. I remember telling my great aunt, as sixteen, that I was in love. Her response: "boy, what do you know about love." Looking back on it now, I didn't know anything.
Yet, seems like far too many are rushing to get married before they have learned themselves--or their partners. They speak of love, getting married at 18, 19, but were they much like I was, a boy who really didn't know anything about love?
Maybe the wise man or woman who thought up the whole, "sow your wild oaks" advice are on to something. I'm still working it out in my head, attempting to imagine how practical it is.
So I take your point completely about it being OK to have fun. I think I'm just starting to see a lot of examples of people who never get past the "familiar" stage, they seem stuck there, so much so, they start confusing it with actually knowing the person. -
I'm on the same page, actually. Although I think that a serious relationship need not focus on knowledge of love, but maturity and responsibility.
I dated wildly up until I decided to get serious, and I think that getting that out of my system early on was a really good idea (for me). There came a point, and a person where I could actually get serious.
It only took a decade of "getting beyond the familiar" to do it, but hey, it worked
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@ The black critic, you better warn the ladies if you are going to "sow your wild oaks" you could hurt someone.
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