Date Number

x is the unknown

are you suggesting dinner

or shall we make a meal of it

Don't know what it's like to be dating at age 25-30 now.

Here's how it is at 60.

First Date: Meet, drinks, talk, (hopefully laughs) and agreement for:
Second Date: Meet, drink, dinner, walk, late night dessert somewhere, more talking,laughs, good night embrace and brief kiss.

Third Date: Pick up at her place, snack at the movie, walk somewhere close for dinner and a drink, share conversation, dissect movie, laughs, take a long walk past shop windows, kiss while waiting for the Don't Walk Sign to change.

Fourth Date: Go to her place to pick her up, find that she has ordered dinner in and NetFlixed the two movies you mentioned you hadn't seen yet. There is wine.

Fifth Date: Um. Omelette's for breakfast. She is wearing just your long sleeved shirt, you are wearing the Japanese silk robe that was thrown over the cushy white bedroom chair.

Your head is swimming, not as deep as when you were 22 and having a Sunday morning coming down, but still swirly enough to know this could be real.
You try not to say that love is wasted on the young, but
Joe(it's always on your mind.)Nation

I find it annoying that most people write the date with the most-significant digits to the right. Call me a contrarian....

Answer his personal ad, long phone call. Four hours goes by in a flash.

Second long phone call. Another four hours.

Third call -- I want to meet you earlier than we planned, he says. Agreed.

Actual date. Dinner somewhere Italian. There was a nice Caesar salad with a creamy dressing. The remainder of the date is a pleasant, wonderful fog.

Date does not leave until three or four days later, dropped off at his home, via car. Car ride home filled with optimistic thoughts.

Call Mom, mention "someone" has been met.

Marry three and a half years later.

I like you're style.

T
K
Oh maybe I'll be so lucky...

yeah, pretty accurate if you throw in a bubblebath.

I've mentioned this before but I've basically never done a normal date that would involve norm-ish stuff. Most relationships started with ill-defined hanging-out (maybe there was interest, maybe not, lots of platonic friendships in the vicinity) and at some organic point, evolved. I think the shortest meet-to-kiss interval was E.G., and that was maybe three weeks, but with a lot of ill-defined hanging out (and living in the same house, seeing each other multiple times a day and usually incidentally) during that time.

It's all so complicated in the United States. Why is there a need for rules
on what to do on the first date, the second and so on? If there is chemistry
between you and your date, then the first night will be already significant -
if it leads to more intimacy or not is usually up to the girl, the guys always will
try though and in my dating days (long gone) it was expected of the guy to
at least try.

Rules or not, I'm just curious about what people do.

T
K
O

Hmm. The more pressing question is- where are all the men whom I would want to go on a date with?
**** knows, Germany maybe.

This would be a prerequisite to me being able to answer the post properly. I don't really think people 'date' much here in England, but I have been on one actual date that you would definitely call a 'date' and not just casual hanging out with other people around- we went for drinks, and then for dinner, and then for more drinks, and then he kissed me and it was awkward and a bit 'mechanical' and we went home.
Ironically, apart from one other boy and my two best friends, thats the only person I've ever possibly 'connected' with- he was amazing- oxford graduate etc. we had loads to talk about. But he was smaller than me and i couldn't envisage having sex with him so I ignored all his subsequent texts, which makes me shallow I guess. But I'm quite tall, and he was all birdy and scrawny which i hadn't realised when I'd met him when he was sitting down and wearing a big coat.

Anyway. Joe, I loved your post. Being 60 sounds better than being 20. Well it sounds more sincere anyway.

I remember us talking about this difference when I visited. You asked your roommate "what do we call people who are dating?" She replied that they were just shagging.

T
K
O

Queenie, dating in Germany is a piece of cake, very laid back and unconventional - compared to the United States anyways.

Diest, I feel for you, but even my 14 year old daughter says that all those
rules are for the immature.

whoa..

dates vary.

My best date, long ago -

a guy in chemistry class walked from class with me one day and asked me out. My contact lens immediately went mideye, which involved me groping, digging, licking, and putting it back, and then staring at him. I said yes.

I don't remember what the first date was. Maybe seeing Ray Charles at the Shrine, or that guy with the lute, Julian Bream, at Royce Hall. Later the trip to hike, little did I know, and the necking in the car. He wrote me poems in chem class. He got a high A, I got a low D, not that I was familiar with Ds and I got some high A's too. But in that class that year, such a difference.

I died and went to heaven on further dates and came back down when he left because I was catholic, though on the denouement route from all that. He married the woman after me from a family he knew before me. That made sense, I say objectively, re their interests.

I thank him even now (well, not in person, but in my mind) for the joy.

Social dating norms? What?

T
K
O

Thanks, PentQueen.

My two best friends in the world are single women, neither of which are interested in me, but we hang out together whenever they are not seeing one of a series of men. I listen while they discuss the dance which takes place with each meeting. It's fascinatingly complex, they both want the process to be simpler, but then add on layers of What ifs and What did it mean whens?

They ask me if I am ready to look for love, I say no.

Joe(no no nonononono no)Nation

I suspect that u r right, Joe.
When u buy the roses: u buy the thorns.

It is not by chance that the divorce rate is so hi
and the road to divorce is paved with headaches, heartaches and unnecessary expenses.