The date
A friend set me up on a blind date. I knew nothing about this guy except his name, his number, and a picture she sent to me prior to the date. Let’s call him DJ.
I had never been on a blind date before and I was in the mood to try something new.
After a few brief exchanges over WhatsApp, we decided to meet up at a place I had been to many times. We scheduled 2 o’clock the following Saturday.
I had zero expectations which made me feel very relaxed about the whole thing.
Finally, the day came around and at about 13:30 I received a message from DJ asking me where we were meeting. I sighed. This man was going to be late.
Long story short, he arrived at 14:30 after mistakenly going to the wrong coffee shop branch even though I had shared the map location with him.
Despite the hiccups, we sat and talked for half an hour before I finished my drink (he didn’t get one) and he kindly walked me out.
Friend 1: “You spent half an hour? That’s not enough time!”
My friend was adamant that I had left prematurely. In her opinion, 30 minutes was not enough time to get to know a person. Perhaps, but it was enough time for me to know we were incompatible.
I am Muslim by faith and I am also looking for someone of the same faith. DJ believed in God but changed religion frequently. We were obviously not on the same page.
Friend 2: “You already planned something else after?”
I’d forgotten that I had signed up for a networking event several weeks earlier and that morning I had received a notification to remind me.
It was a genuine oversight on my part but either way, it actually turned out to be a good excuse to cut the date short.
Time flexibility is why I like coffee dates. The date can be as long or as short as you want it to be. It would have made me uncomfortable to be sat across from him while trying to make conversation stretch for the entirety of a meal. After 15 minutes, I was already struggling to think of more to say.
Also, in my defense, if he had arrived on time, he would have had a whole hour.
We were strangers
I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. It would have been a risk to go for dinner, especially with someone I knew next to nothing about. There’s so much process with dinners, from where should we go to who should pay at the end. All that palaver to answer a question that a coffee date simplifies so well: am I curious enough to want to know more?
Many times, we can tell within a few minutes whether we’ll get on with another person. By that time, you’ve already sat down and committed to an entire meal, then it’s 1–2 hours more of painful small talk.
Perhaps dinner dates are better for situations where you know the person a little already and then the intent becomes to dive a little deeper and over a much slower pace.
But perhaps that’s the very reason why people don’t like coffee dates. It almost feels too direct and any sense of romance is ironed out.
Unpopular opinion, but maybe romance clouds our judgment. It disables us from differentiating substance from superficiality. A romantic meal doesn’t equate to a healthy relationship.
A coffee date is simple. It’s functional. It’s stripped back of all the bells and whistles so that we have a clearer view of the person in front of us.
I read and enjoyed Carlyn Beccia’s essay on coffee dates and she wrote this:
“Mr. Espresso asks women out on coffee dates, not because he is trying to get to know you in a less pressured atmosphere. The real reason he prefers coffee dates is that it allows quantity over quality.”
And this may be true, in fact, it probably is for some people. Not that I encourage that kind of behavior but I see different faults in this argument.
The first is that I assume a man is trying to find his ideal partner, just like I am. If this man isn’t for me, whatever methods he has for finding his ideal partner are not my concern
The second is that it almost suggests that a man should invest more money on a date with a woman so that he’ll have less access to other women. Obviously, I’m rephrasing the sentiment and those aren’t Calyn’s words but it’s what came through for me.
I would argue that neither party owes the other much apart from good manners and their full attention during the date. We shouldn’t over-prioritize people when we don’t know them, meaning if I don’t know that we’ll get on, I don’t want to carve out 4 hours of my time in the hopes that we might.
But I get it, no one wants to feel like just another number on WhatsApp. It’s wise to concentrate on one person at a time, decide they’re not the one, and then move on to the next, instead of lining up different dates back-to-back.
A serious endeavor
A coffee date is a small investment. Two people who don’t know each other well enough to want to give up too much too soon. If you’re going on a coffee date I assume you’re serious which is great because relationships are serious. Amongst all the romance and fun, there’s a deeper and more solemn commitment that two individuals come together to take part in.
The coffee date is just one first step, and if it goes well, then it opens the door for many great dates and dinners and everything else that can come afterward.
But if it doesn’t go well, also great, at least we didn’t waste too much time, money, or energy.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
Compliments Men Want to Hear More Often | Relationships Aren’t Easy, But They’re Worth It | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | ..A Man’s Kiss Tells You Everything |
—–
Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com