Where to meet girls

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The opposite is just as bad, though. If you date the first person that comes along and it turns into a relationship, how can you be sure she’s THE one if you don’t have some basis for comparison?

I also dislike confusing “date” with “relationship” with “marriage proposal.” This is not an instruction to turn PUA. It’s entirely casual, no/low pressure or expectations. If I were to, say, ask magz out for coffee or whatever she likes, we might just end up “just friends” but still enjoy getting together over coffee. It doesn’t to be a romantic 3-hour “date-date” to be worthwhile. Answer if that’s the case, I would have no problem with her seeing other me and I assume she’d have no problem with me seeing other women.

Now, if she said she felt jealous or gave some indication that she wanted something else, I’d have to consider whether I valued her enough to make a move or cut ties to allay awkwardness if I couldn’t reciprocate.

Also, seeing 100 people is a bit lofty. But there has to be ONE person who would make a good match. It’s hardly likely you’ll ever make it to 100, but if you’ve met with #98 and bombed, which, again, I consider unlikely, then #99 and #100 should be looking really good by this point.

Last edited by AngelRho on 27 Apr 2018, 11:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

Coward... tsk tsk.

I have every confidence Magz would be able to take them (the hundreds of babes) on hands down.

These kinds of threads always make me feel very confused as to whether I have been on quite a few "outings" with people who thought we were on a date when I just thought we were hanging out.

If he is a male, and 1-on-1 outing = it’s always a date from his perspective.

We just call it outing to be PC.

This can not be true. Most of my friends are male and some of them I have been friends with for 20 years. In some of these friendships it has come out in retrospect that there were times when they wanted more from the friendship but in others I believe they have always been entirely platonic. In at least two of the ones I class as entirely platonic we have even shared beds together for longer periods without it being complicated.

Also, what about a scenario where I am a visiting researcher at another university - a male colleague in the department (he's married and I am married) asks me over for dinner as I don't know many people in town. His daughter is there. Is this a date? I would assume not. But as soon as his daughter went to bed he tried to kiss me. Surely, that is a mistake on his behalf gone terribly wrong as opposed to a date which I didn't realise was a date.

Outing, date, get-together, hangout...

We tend to associate the word “date” with specifically romantic or sexual intentions. I don’t believe it has to mean that. If that’s the hangup, then call it whatever you want.

In my parents’ and grandparents’ generation in certain social circles, it was expected a girl would date a different guy every weekend. There was no assumption that it would lead to anything, and socializing norms were much more conservative back then. Simpler, even. It was how a boy navigated the parent-daughter dynamic that really mattered the most in dating success and drastically complicated things. The same group of girls would date the same group of guys, so parents didn’t really worry about daughters ending up with the wrong men.

For a girl, it wasn’t in your best interest to turn a guy down. But it wasn’t to your advantage to be an easy date, either. You still wanted to filter out all the losers. But if you always turned down dates, guys would eventually just stop asking.

The expectations were different back then and they could strike a balance between romantic interest and more casual friendships. You never knew who you’d end up “going steady” with, and it wasn’t this brutal ordeal we have to deal with.

I’m not suggesting we roll the clock back to the 50’s. I just believe it’s worth rethinking how and why that worked back then and whether that’s a good alternative to talking to a girl and thinking she’s “The One™️“.

LOL I was with a playboy once. It was a mistake. No, I don't like this kind of relationships, thank you. I want to be valued for my brains at least equally to my boobs.


Oh, I know what you mean :/ I'm very careful with it. I've always hanged up with male friends and always made it clear that is not a date in romantic terms. I wonder about cultural aspects of this – when I was travelling with my boss in Turkey, the locals couldn't imagine us not to be lovers. Guys at hotels, at the bazaar, everywhere, were interpreting a 50yo man with 30yo woman as a pair of lovers. It never happened anywhere in Europe. Seems like the people in Turkey had trouble to accept such a pair connected by purely professional relation. People in Europe don't.
So, Boo, maybe your Muslim background affects your interpretation of possible male-female relations.

Well, it's not the first time I must admit I'm living totally outside American dating culture. In the society I live in, just like my parents, people engage in different activities, spend time together, often in broader circles, and only after finding one romantically attractive, any one-to-one dating starts, and usually it either quickly ends, or the first stage of a relationship begins.
Dating a different person every week is totally culturally alien idea for me.

[/quote]Oh, I know what you mean :/ I'm very careful with it. I've always hanged up with male friends and always made it clear that is not a date in romantic terms. [quote]

I think being very clear at the outset and having boundaries in the relationship does help but then you risk being seen as presumptuous and sounding like you assume everyone is interested in you in a sexual or romantic way. When I was single I eventually got so fed up with being misread that I came up with a whole (rather complex) system for avoiding it but now I am married and older I kind of figure I shouldn't have to worry anymore. But then situations sometimes still occur.

It's somehow default with me to be considered non romantic. I've always been the "buddy" kind of a girl and most of the men read it right without any additional actions on my side. Even easier since in relationship/married.

@magz: you aren’t off-base. What you described isn’t far off from American dating culture. Dating today is seen as intentionally romantic in its objective.

My point is I do not believe that’s a healthy way to do it and I think there are better ways to attract a mate. Upper middle class families in America back in the 1950s had a systematic way of dating that wasn’t so restrictive within groups.

It’s not different in PRINICPLE now. We’ve only grown more exclusive in our thinking. It’s like if a guy says “I love you” and you’re not really interested, so you say, “I like you a lot and always want you in my life. But if a relationship doesn’t work out, it would destroy what we have. Let’s just be friends.” You’re basically saying you like seeing him and will keep seeing him. It’s just never going to progress beyond that. It’s possible a guy could ask a woman out and NEVER intend anything beyond conversation and food or a shared activity.

It’s also possible that a couple could ask out another couple. No romance or “swinging” need be expected. It’s a date, too.

I think the definition of dating is too narrow to be useful for some people who might find it difficult or who have little or no experience. If you at least get someone to hang out with your for a half hour, even if nothing happens, it’s at least SOMETHING. People who struggle might feel encouraged if they make it at least that far.

What? If I'm not interested, I don't enter dating. If he hopes hanging out could become something more but I don't want it, I make clear boundaries. If he persistently mistakes hanging out for dating, I stop hanging out with him. When a guy said "I love you" and I didn't feel that way, I said "No hope, don't waste your time on me" and cut the contact if necessary. I regret one friendship that was destroyed that way but still believe it was the right thing to do.

I still have a feeling that I don't get the American idea of dating.

This closely resembles my experience. Usually if there are issues they come early on where the man might confuse "hanging out" for dating and attempt to make a move or have hopes it is going to lead to something more. Once it has been established that it won't it is more clear cut and both parties (hopefully) know where they stand. There are deviations from this though where you find out (down the line) that someone is still largely interested in you in other ways too. But I feel it would be pointless to feel guilty for this because if you have made your boundaries clear at the outset then that really needs to be that person's responsibility.

In my 20s I actually got so fed up with making clear boundaries that I was not interested in a relationship and people not taking my boundaries seriously that I had a year of celibacy. It didn't work out too well. The celibacy bit did but I think it just confused men even further as they became even more obsessed with being "the one."

Since I got married I have made less male friends as there were two incidents that rattled me where men overstepped the mark and I was confused as to whether I was sending out the wrong signals and I decided to be much more cautious as I felt uncomfortable and whilst I have a very patient and understanding husband I still didn't want to risk ever finding myself in that situation again.

I guess for me it was easier because I entered my final relationship at the age of 19. My then-boyfriend had to accept I have lots of male friends (he actually made friends with them himself – the best possible strategy, I believe) and my friends had to accept that I'm not available on the dating plane. Sometimes someone new doesn't get it but it means we couldn't be friends, anyway.
I'm glad my culture accepts such arrangements.

Stop generalizing, Boo.

The opposite sex doesn't exist for the sole purpose of serving as a pool of potential romantic/sexual partners. I have a female friend with whom I've spent a fair amount of time one-on-one, and we've established that our relationship is strictly platonic. And I certainly don't think of our one-on-one outings as dates to any extent. She's taken anyway, so that gives me even more reason not to.

Would you reject her if she asks you to be her boyfriend?

Also you are putting words in my mouth, no one said women exist for a that sole purpose... this is ridiculous.

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 28 Apr 2018, 7:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, that is probably part of it. I didn't meet my husband until I was 24 and the most challenging years in terms of boundaries being overstepped were my early 20s.

My husband would always accept that most (well all, really...) of my close friends are male. He likes some of them and would definitely hang out with them alone but I am not much for socialising in groups and having friends over as a couple and mixing as families kind of takes away from the ability to have one-on-one deeper discussions.

In reality, there are so very few people who really interest me in a more profound way. The last one I met 10 years ago. So most of the people I socialise with on a day-to-day basis are acquaintances, mums of my children's friends etc. and not people I feel any connection with.

Most of my real friends live so far away But when we meet it is always really amazing.

Last edited by elsapelsa on 28 Apr 2018, 8:08 am, edited 3 times in total.