How To Stop Wasting Time And Money On Dating
Dating gets to be expensive when you constantly spend money on dinner and a movie. Your date may welcome the free meal and entertainment, but it's going to get frustrating in short order for you. Avoid giving away free food and entertainment by treating your date like an interview.
What To Do
Don't treat the date like a literal interview. In other words, don't pepper your date with questions in rapid-fire form. Rather, arrange the date so that you end up going somewhere quaint, but inexpensive - a coffee shop perhaps. Coffeehouses are great places to sit and talk. Make it clear that you'd like to meet and that you don't want to put any pressure on her by buying her dinner or lunch or anything like that. This way, she'll expect to pay for her own food and drinks.
Keep the date short. You don't need to drag the date on for hours. In fact, this could be a bad thing even if you're having a great time with her. By keeping the date short, you get to assess whether you want to see her again. A 30 minute date should give you enough information about her to know whether you want to see her again.
Don't think too far into the future. All you're looking for is that next date. If you only spend 30 minutes with her, then you haven't wasted much time if there's just no chemistry between the two of you. If there is chemistry, then you'll have something to look forward to on your next date.
By agreeing ahead of time that you're "going dutch," you save yourself money. If your date won't meet with you unless you're paying, then you've just saved yourself from a gold-digger.
Consideration
Before meeting with your potential date, have a firm idea of what you want from this person. It's always a good idea to keep a list (at home, of course) of what you want out of a relationship. Make a list of "essentials," "negotiables," and "deal-breakers." Ruthlessly analyze this list for a week or two to make sure that you have listed all of your desired personality traits, character traits, values, and other wants. Make sure that your deal-breakers are real deal-breakers and that your negotiables are really negotiable. This makes dating more of a "paint-by-numbers" thing.
You can gently, and casually "dig" for deal-breakers. When you find them, you know that the person is not for you regardless of other traits you might find appealing. It takes the frustration out of dating, and saves you a lot of time and money. Most people won't do this one simple thing, but it makes dating really, really easy and fun. Also, regardless of what happens, you win.
Comments (6)
To me this article sounds more like a description of a second date after a speed dating where the two have never met before. Or maybe they met on a dating site and decided to meet the same afternoon. If so, you have to live somewhere near by, and that is not always how it is, just like one of the comments read above.
And expensive? If it just a meeting, it is a question of a cup of coffee and a chat, and that doesn't cost much. If it, however, is a question of first physical meeting after one has come to know each other, money shouldn't really be an object. And if we like each other, why should we NOT spend time together?
To me, the whole article sounds a bit strange.
I could write a lot more on the issue of overanalyzing things or guidance for the socially inept, but I'd rather hear from people who have tried this advice and came out successfully at the end.