The worst first dates you can organise

Save yourself from serious embarrassment. Here are the dates that you need to absolutely avoid – at all costs.

We’ll humour you for a moment; it can be tough dating when you’re a man. More often than not, it’s going to be up to you to decide where to take her on the first date and that in itself can be an absolute minefield to navigate. Get this crucial step wrong, and you’re out of luck. They’ll be no second date for you, and you’ll only have yourself to blame. So, to save yourself from serious embarrassment (and to stop you being dateless), here are the dates that you need to absolutely avoid – at all costs.

Dinner on a first date is always a bad idea, end of. Taking her to a smart, expensive restaurant might seem like a nice idea on the surface, but in actual fact there’s nothing that’s going to make her feel more uncomfortable – especially if she didn’t know about it and is therefore underdressed. There are so many things that can go wrong with a dinner date, and that’s before you’ve even chosen your food. Trust us on this one, don’t do it.

If you really want to screw up, tell her to meet you at outside a specific shop and a specific time and proceed to wander around the centre of town aimlessly without so much as a plan as to where to go and what to do. Not only does this make you seem like you don’t really care about her, her time or the effort she’s made to get to you, but it also makes you look highly dysfunctional and unorganised. There’s nothing nice or romantic about walking down Oxford Street on a Thursday night – and there never will be.

Sure, there are girls out there who would love nothing more than a light jog after work, a row along the canal on a Saturday afternoon or a visit down to the leisure centre for a spot of swimming. But those girls are few and far between and the majority of womankind does not want to get her hair wet, have her make-up rub off or chip her nails on a first date. If you discover, after a sizeable period of time, that she’s actually into that kind of activity then by all means take it there for your 3rd or 4th date. But for the first, stick to what you know and take her for a drink in a nice bar.

If you’re even thinking about taking her to the cinema for your first date, you may as well cancel the thing now because sitting through a film is akin to not seeing her at all. What is the point of sitting there, silent, then going home at the end? What have you achieved by doing that? Taking her to the cinema is the easiest way to think that you don’t care about her, what she has to say or anything else along those lines. It’s a pointless waste of money.

Your hot date does not want to be walked through a room drinking warm prosecco and having to be polite when she gets stuck talking to Wendy from the accounts team for the majority of the night. She also doesn’t know you, or whether she even likes you yet, so it’s highly doubtful that she’s going to want to get to know your awkward work colleagues. On a side note, if you’re a journalist or happen to get free dinners and hotel stays, do not use these as opportunity to take a girl on a cheap, free date – she’ll find out and that’s exactly what she’ll think of you, that you’re a cheapskate. Avoid this at all costs.

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