What Makes for a Bad First Date?
I had a reader recently contact me, a little confused as to why a girl who'd seemed to like him had turned down the first date idea he'd proposed and counter-offered that they go golfing instead. His idea had been for the two of them to go swimming at the pool that she worked at, where he met her.
This is one of those things that, on the surface, in the moment where you're trying to think of date ideas, it seems like a great one: should be easy for her (she works there, so she's already there and doesn't have to go anywhere), safe to assume she likes it (she wouldn't work at a pool if she didn't like swimming), and it's fun.
But in fact, on further reflection, this is ends up being one of the great many bad first date ideas a man could have, and on top of that it's a very easy dating mistake to make. The reasons why this and many other first date ideas make for bad first dates are a little cloudy and a little hard to see until you're trained to look for them.
Today, I'm going to break out what those factors are that differentiate a good first date from a bad first date, and help you make sure you only ever have great dates (or, at least, great date ideas!) going forward.
You can thank me later -- when all your dates are awesome.

Breaking up with a girl is quite often one of the toughest things you'll do. It involves cleaving yourself from someone else you've likely grown quite close to, and have quite possibly been with for a long time and shared a lot of experiences with.
In the post on
I'm a reasonably well-traveled fellow. I've lived on two continents and ventured around on four, with time spent in between on islands in the Pacific and the Atlantic. When you travel a lot, one of the first quandaries you come across is this: how do you get foreign girls who don't speak English?
Who would've thought scientists'd ever get around to proving something like this?
Wouldn't it be great to have the girl you want green-eyed with envy and madly
I've always been a big fan of games. I invented games to play on the schoolyard with my classmates in first and second grade; I played Atari games and Nintendo games and games on the computer. Games are quite often a lot of fun.
An emotional connection is one of those fleeting, powerful things that can seem all too rare and all too outside one's control. It can seem like it's just chance when you happen upon one -- as if but by the grace of God it came into being.
The other day I was walking down the street with a friend of mine when I happened to see a couple walking toward us. The man in that couple then lifted his arm up and wrapped it around the girl's shoulders; immediately though, she reached up and removed his hand from her shoulders, and a sheepish grin spread across his face. When he noticed that I'd been watching, he then hung his head a little lower.
"I'm sorry!"