It’s getting cold outside here in NYC, so I figure tonight I’ll bundle up on the couch, turn up the heat, and stay in for a movie, some Italian takeout, and a nice bottle of red.

While I’m thinking about it, bars are the farthest thing from my mind right now.  But it’s still Friday, so let’s talk about something relevant: going on a date.  Specifically, Friday night first dates, which I know a lot of guys tend to overthink.  So I’ll break it down and share an email I got from a client this week:

Hey Shogo,

Just wondering is there a polite way of asking a lady to pay for herself for an expensive outing?

I’m thinking about inviting this girl to an expensive concert, which costs $400.  I wouldn’t mind paying if she’s my girlfriend.  But, I barely know her and don’t know if it’s going to work out.  I know she likes music.  She’s in real estate, and I’m pretty sure she makes more $$$ than I do.  So, I wondering if I should ask her to pay for herself, forget about this whole thing and invite her to something else, or just take the risk and pay for her ticket and see what happens.  What do you think?

*I know they talk about ROI in dating, and this is an example.

Thanks in advance Shogo,

Jerry, New York City

Expensive Dates... Get it?

Jerry, good question.  Actually it’s two questions: 1) How much is ok to spend on a first date?  2) Can she pay her own way?

This is an expensive excursion we’re talking about.  Even if you’re banking some major green, a $400 event is just not date material.  It doesn’t matter if you can afford it or not.  Because even if you can, unless you want to be seen as a walking talking ATM or just another a guy who’s desperately trying to impress her, it’s a terrible idea to drop this much cash on a first date.

Ask yourself: do you really want to go to this concert?  Would you go to this concert if you went by yourself or with a buddy?  If the answer is no, then scrap the idea and do something else.  Go on dates where the activity is something that you actually personally want to do (or you know that she’s really going to enjoy—which in turn makes you want to do it too).  Don’t take a woman out for a first date that you would not want to do anyways.  You plan a date based on something that you want to do for fun, and as an added bonus, you have a great woman to share your time with.

So assuming this is a concert you really want to go to, if you’re going with her as friends, invite her along.  Just as you would invite a friend, tell her, “Hey, Sting (or whoever the hell costs $400 these days) is playing in concert next weekend, I really want to go and since you’re such a fan, I thought you’d be interested in going.  Tickets aren’t cheap though.”  Now you’ve implied that she’s got to pay if she wants to come.  Keep in mind that this is not a date.  This is you inviting her as a friend.  (It doesn’t mean you can’t date her later on down the road, but for now she is not your date to this event, so don’t treat it like one.)

But if you want to ask her out on a date, then ask her out.  And that means you pay.  My rule of thumb for guys is to ALWAYS PAY on the first dates.  Depending on your relationship, you can split (or let her pick up a check) later on down the road when you’re seeing each other on a regular basis.  But for now, you invited her, you pay, and you lead her on that date.

So that means that every date that you invite her on should be within your financial means to pay for both of you.  It can be dinner if you want (make sure it’s a place you actually enjoy going to; even better, a place you’ve been to many times before), it can be drinks, or just a simple coffee on the weekend or a stroll through the park or the holiday market—which costs nothing.

A date should never have to be “risky.”  A date should always be fun no matter what the outcome.  You should never feel like kicking yourself for having spent money on taking her out if the date turns out to be a flop.

How much would you pay for one night?

When you are spending money on things to go out and try to attract women, that’s when you think about your ROI, your return on investment.  But forget about the ROI when it comes down to the date itself, because on the date you are not spending money to try to attract the woman you’re going out with.  Your return on the investment is how much fun you had on the date itself, not what may or may not happen with her sexually after the date.  The money you spend is just window dressing for your leisure time—it does not buy anything from her, so do not expect anything.  If something happens, great.  But make sure it has nothing to do with the money you spent.  That’s just you and her being attracted to each other, and that’s not something money can buy.

So she doesn’t like you at the end of the date, or you don’t have chemistry, or whatever—you want to walk away from every first date with the attitude that you had a good time no matter what.  If there was no attraction, well then at least you learned something about yourself.  Or you practiced your skills communicating with a woman.  Or you learned something about how women work and it will make you better for next time.  Or you can walk away as friends and you’ve added a new person to your social network.

There is always an upside to every encounter with a new woman.  And that’s what you focus on.  Maybe the date works out, and that’s great.  But even if it doesn’t, don’t chalk that up as a lost investment.  Think about how you grew.  What you learned about your skills connecting with this woman, what you learned about women in general, and what you learned so you can improve the next time.

No date should ever have to be financially risky.  Eliminate that “risk” right out of the equation by asking yourself, “How much would I feel comfortable spending just to hang out and get to know this woman even if things don’t work out?”  And you will have your answer.

But they don’t just talk your ear off. It’s like every story they tell sounds like a novel.

You’re 100 pages into the story, and they still haven’t paused for a breath. You’re on your third cup of coffee, they’re 200 pages into the novel, and the stories usually pertain to nothing that really matters or had any relation to the conversation you we having.

You have just met who I call the epic story person. Epic story people are always nice people. They really mean well. But they just don’t know how to wrap it up and give you the Cliff Notes version of the story.

When I tell a story, I’m all about the Cliff Notes version. I’ll give you a couple minutes, I’ll make it fun and exciting. Then I get to the point, deliver the punch line, and I’m done with it.

When I hear a story, I don’t need to hear from somebody the very first chapter since the beginning of time. I don’t need to know every little detail about other people that have nothing to do with the story I’m being told. I’m not going to remember all that detail anyway, and if you’re an epic story teller, neither is anybody else you are telling your story to.

So if you know that you’re an epic story person, start thinking to yourself a bit about how much talking you do to other people. I’m sure your stories are great and entertaining, but start coming up with the Cliff Notes version of all your great stories. No matter how entertaining your stories are, nobody has time for a two hour movie. We all have ADD after a certain point. We all need a little commercial break. So treat it like the news, and wrap it up in a two and a half minute segment. Because that’s the attention span of the average person before they start feeling the need to interrupt, say something unrelated, or want to leave out of boredom.

So Mr. or Mrs. Epic story person, you’re wonderful, you’re great, but it’s time to practice the Cliff Notes.

Some of you need to think of your dating life as the stock market. Lots of ups, lots of downs. But the real question is, what is your ROI? Let’s talk about your ROI, your return on investment, when it comes down to dating and you.

And I want you to ask yourself right now, what is your ROI? What is your return on the investment that you make while trying to meet someone of the opposite sex? You go out Friday night, you go out Saturday night. I want you to right now write down on a piece of paper how much you spend and where you spend on an average Friday night, on an average Saturday night, going out trying to meet people. Write it down right now.

Now what I want you to do is write down the amount of money you spend on a vacation, and if you take that vacation to places where you try to go and meet people. Miami? Vegas? Cancun? I want you to write that down.

I also want you to write down how much you spend on online dating sites.

Now, add up your expenses, and from every Friday and Saturday night–times that by 52. Take a look at that number right now. How many dates is that yielding you? What is your return on investment?

Are You Undateable?

A client of mine, years ago, I did this formula with him. He was a big time investment banker. He decided he was going to get a house out in the Hamptons for a month. He didn’t even live in New York. He lived in California. He was ready to fly out to the Hamptons, throw some party every weekend, get lots of women over to his place to line up, and maybe one of them would end up moving to California.

Really? I thought that was crazy. But he had a lot of money so I figured, why not let him do it? It’s his money, not mine.

So he did it. And he threw some wild and crazy parties at the Hamptons. He even got written up in the New York Post. A month later, after moving back to LA, I asked him, “What’d you spend on that whole charade?” He said, “I don’t know, about 400,000 including the parties and the house I guess.”

So what was his ROI? He hooked up once, and he got a lot of women that said they wanted to come out to LA and visit.

And a month after that, I asked him how many of the women he met actually visited him. “Well,” he said, “one ended up visiting, but I had to fly her out. We didn’t really get along after a day or two, and it wasn’t really worth it.” He said, “I had a lot of fun, but it was a bad investment. I really believed I would meet somebody that way.”

Here’s the deal: For some reason we’ve been led to believe that we need to spend money to go out there and meet people. That somehow, we can just go out to these places on Friday and Saturday nights, work out beforehand, put on our best outfits, and stand there, drink, spend money, and it’s going to happen. But if you look at that number, and you look at your ROI—you look at the amount of dates you get from that—you’ll realize it’s one of the worst investments you’ve made in your entire life.

My ROI has always been great. I’ve said it a thousand times. Supermarkets, video stores (when they were hot), coffee shops, parks, just walking around every day. Things I do for free anyway, meeting people casually. I was meeting people and not spending not a penny. My stock market, if we had to do the math, was probably at 100,000, levels never hit before. You get my point.

The bottom line is, what is your ROI, and how are you maximizing it? Add it up. Go ahead and share it in the comments section if you want.

You’re going to see that number is really scary. And you’re going to have to start re-thinking things and where you’re investing your time and money in your life.

You think your lonely check this out what lonely really is all about.

As a man, you start getting annoyed because you made reservations, you took her to this nice restaurant, you spent money on movie tickets, or you ordered a nice bottle of wine. Or if you’re a woman, you’re sitting there and you’re just not having fun. The guy is just so boring, and you could be out with your girlfriends right now.

But really, so what if you don’t have chemistry? It doesn’t matter because this is somebody who’s also single and bored. This is another person to get to know, and networking is what it’s all about. Putting yourself out there and getting know people, even if it’s not your next boyfriend or girlfriend, is what it’s all about. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have chemistry, so don’t let it get your evening down.

It doesn’t really matter. What you’ve got to do in this situation is you’ve got to learn how to turn the bad date into the good date.

Look at it this way: if another person is sitting across from you, you’re stuck with that person for the evening. Your options are to either waste away the night and learn nothing and gain nothing—or you can make the most of it and get to know this person and see if it’s someone worth adding to your social network.

So don’t be an idiot, don’t be rude, don’t look at your watch over and over again just because you two aren’t clicking romantically. Don’t look down at your phone every five minutes and hope that someone texts you. Don’t leave the table and come back and make up some phony excuse to get out of there. Don’t be inconsiderate to your date just because you haven’t found the love of your life. Have a good time with that person. It’s the evening and you’re out having fun, so enjoy the moment and you’ll carry that good energy with you down the road. You’ll look back and actually be able to say to yourself that you had a good evening, a good weekend, and you know how to create a fun time.

First Date Nightmares

Then, at the end of your date, look at them and say, “Hey I really enjoyed this, I had a good time, but I don’t see you and I really going forward together. I just don’t think we have that chemistry, but you’re an interesting person and I’m sure we can network and make something happen with the people we know. You know what, I like to throw barbecues and dinner parties every now and then. Why don’t you get a few of your single friends, and I’ll get together a few of my single friends, and we’ll throw everyone together next weekend and see what happens!”

Now you’ve left having made a good impression, your ex-date will hype you up to their friends about how nice of a person you are, and they will all be incredibly eager to meet this great person they’ve been hearing about.

It’s all about the power of networking, and you never know what lies ahead for you down the road.

So I was boarding the flight and it’s funny, I’ve been a relationship coach for so long now that I pick up on first encounters everywhere I go. As I was getting seated, in the row in front of me I spotted a guy sitting next to a young woman and he was clearly trying to get a conversation going.

Problem was, he couldn’t get a sentence out without going “uhh” and “umm” every other word.

“That’s cool…ummm… Yea, that’s nice… uhh… So, um, where are you from?” Now I’m not making fun of this guy at all, he was just nervous and the woman he was talking to was trying really hard to listen to what he was saying.
Are you an “umm-er” or an “uhh-er”? There’s some new terminology. So this inspired me to do a “umm-uhh” blog today.

Here’s the deal: You know the people who, when they don’t know what to say next in conversation, they always go, “uh” or “um”? The only place where “uh’s” and “um’s” are great is when you’re in the heat of passion, you’re having great sex, and it feels really good and you let out an occasional “ah”, or an occasional “um”, or an occasional “hmm”.

But when you’re “ah-ing” and “um-ing” in the middle of a conversation, it means you’re not really listening to the conversation flow. It means that you’re stuck in your head thinking about what to say next and thinking about if what you’re saying right now is the right thing to say.

I’ve seen this with a lot of guys that I’ve coached. I’ve watched them go over and talk to women, and I know they stop listening in the middle of the conversation because what happens is the woman will say something interesting, the guy will not know what to say because he gets lost inside his head. He stops being present and he comes back with an “uh” or an “um”.

I know that when someone “uh’s” or “umm’s” me, it means that they’re really not paying attention. It means that they’re focusing on something else. Maybe they’re watching the television. Maybe somebody else caught their eye.

But in real conversations that are engaging and interesting, “uhh’s” and “umm’s” just don’t come up in the first 30 seconds of talking unless you’re not paying attention and you’re not present in the conversation. So if you’re an or an “umm-er”, realize why you’re doing it. And realize that you need to start paying deeper attention to what other people are saying so that you can be engaging and really carry the conversation forward.

If another person doesn’t choose to be with you, they are not rejecting you. They are choosing to go in another direction.

There may not be enough chemistry between the two of you. There may not be that connection there. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t mean that you are not a fantastic, wonderful and incredible person.

Here’s an email a client of mine recently sent me talking about how he’s been feeling a lot of rejection lately:

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Client Email
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“David, This is something I’ve been dealing with recently (and very poorly, since I’m overwhelmed and miserable from getting turned down by someone who I thought was showing me a lot of signs of romantic interest [buying me a couple little gifts, taking me on a scenic drive around town, asking my advice on a couple personal topics].) But it turned out, when I tried to kiss her after a great night out of dinner and dancing, that she had none of these romantic/sexual intentions in mind. There could be dozens of reasons why she dissed me (bad approach? too slow? not showing enough confidence in my pursuit of her? is she being fickle?), but after spending the last six weeks obsessing over her in my own mind and pretty much falling in love with her (as crazy as that seems), I’m inconsolable. How do you suggest rebounding from this sort of disappointment when you’ve thrown so much of your heart and your emotions at someone, only to see it fall flat?”

Meet Men Without Rejection?

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My Response To Client’s Email
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“Think about this. What was happening is that you fell in love with the fantasy of this woman. When you get to know a woman in the first week or you’ve gone out with her maybe once or twice, you are falling in love with the idea of her. The question is when are you going to go in, and are you going in with the intention of kissing her? If she does not want to kiss you, it is not the way you kiss or the way you went in. It is that she just is not feeling the chemistry, and you were not reading it because you were so in your head. David”

Just like with my client, a lot of guys that I have met are just so in their head it’s incredible. They are in their heads in such a ridiculous way, that what they are perceiving as chemistry is not chemistry at all.

Rejection is something that a lot of people take really hard. Rejection is a lot of things to a lot of different people.

I have decided in my life that I don’t believe in rejection. I don’t buy into rejection, nor do I believe that it even exists.

If someone chooses not to be with me, they are not rejecting me. They are just not feeling the chemistry with me. They are just not feeling the same things I think I may be feeling.

Ever since I’ve adopted this mindset in my life and really explored this part of my life, I have found that I live a rejection-free life because I am really happy with who I am as a person. I am really content with who I am. I think I am an amazing person.

If someone chooses not to participate in a friendship or a love relationship with me, that’s fine because I will keep moving forward and find the person with whom I’m meant to be.

As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I’ve done in my own personal life. That’s why I now have such a great, loving, and amazing relationship with my girlfriend.

This is something you need to think about. Think outside the box a little bit, and stop taking what you think of as “rejection” so personally. Start realizing that chemistry has a great deal to do with whether you will connect with someone, and consider taking “rejection” out of your dating vocabulary.

I am going to end this with another great email from a past client.

Hey Dave,

“An invaluable lesson i picked up from that weekend with you and Kheim last March was letting go of myself and allowing myself to not only appreciate, but help create the present for all its beauty. Whenever I get caught up with the “imminent concerns” confronting me and catch myself preoccupying myself with internal thoughts, I read this. Maybe it will help one of your students some day.”

-Mike

As we grow up, we learn that the one person that wasn’t supposed to ever let you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once and it’s harder every time. You will break hearts too, so remember how it felt when yours was broken. You’ll fight with your best friend. You’ll blame a new love for things an old one did. You’ll cry because time is passing too fast, and you’ll eventually lose someone you love. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you’ve never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you’ll never get back.

In today’s podcast, I go more in depth into the subject of rejection and tell you more about how to cope with rejection. If you thought my statement that rejection doesn’t exist was incredible, then you don’t want to miss what else I have to say on this subject:

Dating is all about creating time in your life to connect with other people. If you’re out there on the market and your next available date time is two weeks away, take yourself off the market until you’re able to balance your time.

Here is the reason why: If you meet someone spectacular and you’re in the middle of your “busy being busy” phase, you won’t have time to nurture that connection. What happens then is that this great person will lose interest, and they will be out of your life before they even had the chance to be in your life.

Now I know some people are thinking: “What if I tell them I’m super busy for the next two weeks and can’t hang out?” That’s acceptable. But if you are super busy for the next two weeks, you need to make the effort to reconnect with that person when the two weeks is over. Be a person of your word.

No Time To Date My Dog Needs Me

If you’re a woman and you’re super, super, super busy, don’t tell a guy “Let’s get together in two weeks,” tell him that you’ll call him in two weeks to set something up. By making that call, you’ll be a person of your word…and actions do speak louder than words.

The rule here is: If you’re the one whose is busy, YOU have to make the reconnecting phone call when you’re less busy.

If you’re on an online dating site and you’re super busy for two weeks, hide your profile for two weeks.

If you don’t have time to date, don’t! I’m all about taking time outs when needed. But by being busy and still trying to meet people when you don’t actually have the time to meet them, you may just miss out on that amazing person!

You always have to wait for your friends to go with you before you can do anything you want to do. How many of you do that?

How many of you have that mentality of always waiting for your friends to join you? How many of you live alone with no roommates, and you basically don’t have anyone to run with? How many of you work late all the time because you really just don’t know what else to do with yourself?

This is what I tell everybody, and this is what I do myself. You have to start dating yourself. In order to be able to go and meet somebody, you’ve got to start dating yourself.

So here are some things I used to do all the time. I would take myself out to dinner. Instead of going to Whole Foods and bringing dinner home, I’d go there and sit at one of their tables and eat. There are going to be other people there doing the exact same thing you are.

Instead of renting movies from Netflix when I wanted to see a new movie, I made sure that I went to the video store so I had an opportunity to meet somebody. Instead of making tea (since I don’t drink coffee) at home, I’d go to a coffee shop and sit there to drink my tea. I’d bring a newspaper, hang out and just talk to people there.

You have to start dating yourself. You really do.

You’ve got to start doing things with yourself. You’ve got to start enjoying yourself.

It’s almost like a new form of masturbation. You have to go out there. You have to entertain yourself. You have to go and do things on a consistent basis, because nobody else is going to bring the people to you.

What happens when you are always waiting for your friends to do things, is that you have all sorts of pressure because you’re always waiting for them. You finally get your friends to go out on Friday night, so you put all this pressure on that Friday night as your one opportunity to meet people.

So spend a few days a week dating yourself. Ask yourself out. Call yourself up. Send yourself a text. Send yourself a text and say, “Hey you, what do you want to do tonight?” Then text yourself right back and say, “I don’t know. What are you in the mood for?” Then text yourself again and say, “How about dinner at Whole Foods tonight, or why don’t we we go to that great little place up the street and have dinner at the bar?”

Go out and start communicating with people. The point is to build up your social network. When you go out and do all this, don’t just go out and wait for the most beautiful person to arrive before you’ll talk to anyone. Talk to everybody.

What happens when you do that is that you start to build up that social network. You will start to communicate with people all the time — men, women, kids, dogs, older people, younger people, everyone.

Then a month later, you’ll run into the woman you talked to at Whole Foods one night. You may not have been attracted to her, but you chatted with her a bit. You had a great conversation over Whole Foods dinner. You may run into that woman when she is with six of her friends, and you will immediately (and without any pressure) have an “in” into that group of women.

Even though you weren’t attracted to her, she was still a nice person to hang out with at the time. And now that you did that, when you see her now with her friends, you can walk right over to her and say, “Oh my God, it’s my dinner partner from Whole Foods a few weeks ago!”

So you’re building yourself a network that way which takes off some of the pressure. Instead of always having to do these cold approaches 24/7, it takes off that pressure and enables you to go and start building up a social network.

This is what I did, and this is how I know so many people. No matter where I go, I know people. If I fly to London tomorrow, I can call ten people for dinner and they’ll bring ten new people along. If I go to Wisconsin tomorrow, I’ve got a group of people I can hang out with. It’s called being a friendly person, dating yourself and meeting other people.

A “Three Fer” in my world refers to the fact that you do not ask someone out unless you have learned three things about them. Otherwise, you are just asking someone out based on physical attraction.

When you are looking at a woman and you’re talking to her, are you really talking to her? A lot of guys will talk AT a woman (instead of to her).

If you’re really talking to somebody, you’re learning things about them. A conversation is a conversation.

Think about a conversation you would have with a buddy. When you talk to a buddy, you’re talking about things back and forth. “How was your day?” “Wow, did you see the game last night?” “How are things going with that girl?” There are three things you are talking about right there.

You never go up and talk to your buddy and just say, “Hey do you like the tea here? I like the tea here. I think the tea is really good here. It’s not my favorite tea; my favorite tea is down the street. That other tea shop is actually my favorite. It’s great. Oh, can I have your number?”

In that situation, basically what’s happening is that your penis is getting her number because you need to get that number. You’re not really communicating.

If you had that same conversation with a friend, your friend would think that you had some type of learning disability and that you should be riding the short bus to school. So when you communicate, you really need to go for the “Three Fer.”

What the “Three Fer” means is that if you did not find out three interesting things about someone — and share a few things about yourself — then why would they ever want to go out with you? Life is all about creating an emotional bond with people.

You want to get together with people with whom you have formed an emotional bond. A woman will want to go out with you when there’s an emotional bond that has been formed.

When you meet a woman, all of this can happen pretty quickly. You can ask her a couple of questions, learn things about her, act enthusiastic about what she’s saying and go deeper into conversation in a short period of time. It doesn’t have to go on for three or four minutes to really learn things about her.

If you learn about a woman and show interest in who she is as a person before you ask her out, she is going to really be excited to go out with you. She is going to go home, talk to her friends and say, “God, I met this really cool guy today at the tea shop. It was so much fun. It was like he was so interested in my caffeine addiction, and he also has to get that jolt of caffeine in the morning like I do. We were talking about work, and he’s in the same field as I am. It was great!”

Do you see what I mean? You have to give her something to be excited about so that when she talks to her friends, they don’t sit there and say, “Oh God, another guy just cruising for numbers in the middle of the day. Don’t you hate when guys just ask you out for no reason? They don’t even get to know you!”

So, that is the “Three Fer.” One of the best ways to really learn how to do this is to take a little note pad around with you, and write down the three things you learned about each person with whom you have an interaction.

If you don’t learn three things about someone — if you only learn one or two things — then you know what you need to do in the next conversation. This is something that a lot of politicians and really good business people use all the time.

This is like what a lot of people do wrong when they’re going for a job interview. They go and try to sell themselves. They’ll just talk about all the things they are going to do for the company. All they do is sell themselves.

Meanwhile, they didn’t look around the room. The man interviewing them has pictures up of his daughter, a Golden Retriever, a golf outing with his buddies, and his boat.

In that situation, I’d walk into that office and say, “A Golden Retriever? No f*^king way man! I grew up with Golden Retrievers. My last dog was a Golden Retriever. What is your dog’s name?” I’m going to bond with him personally, because it’s a known fact that people will hire people with whom they bond personally. They will hire that person over the people who go in and just sell themselves.

Success in life is based on how well you are able to bond with people personally, and not on how well you can sell yourself. The “Three Fer” works in everything.

It works in every aspect of life. So when you go and approach a woman, you better learn three things about her. If you aren’t able to do this, then you need to keep going out and practicing — practice on little old men or on whomever you need to practice on to get it.

Start becoming inquisitive about people. The more inquisitive you are with people, the better connections you’re going to have with them and the more excited they are going to be about you.

You’re sitting there on a date. You’ve been looking forward to this date. You’ve build up a whole fantasy in your mind about this person. You really think that this is going to be the woman (or the man) for you.

Now they are sitting there next to you. After about twenty or twenty-five minutes, however, the conversation just kind of dies. Then there is that awkward silence.

It’s funny. When you’re with somebody for a long time, you have what people call comfortable silence. In the first twenty minutes or half hour of the beginning of this so-called relationship that you were so sure was going to happen, though, it’s called an awkward silence.

So what do you do in that situation?

At those moments, it’s time to make a joke. Just look the person in the eyes and say, “We’re having our first moment of comfortable silence together. It’s so nice, isn’t it? It’s like we’ve been together for a long time. Here we are. We’re both eating our burgers right now, and we’re having that comfortable silence that people have who have been dating for like six months. Don’t you feel it, too? Aren’t you as comfortable as I am right now?”

Kind of make a joke about it, because most people are probably nervous. Plus, remember that there are allowed to be silent periods in conversations. You don’t have to just keep rambling on and rambling on and rambling on nonstop.

Now, sometimes, there is silence on a date for another reason. Maybe twenty minutes or a half hour into the date you realize that there may not be as much chemistry between you as your mind had imagined there would be.

In that case, that awkward silence may be because of a total lack of chemistry. You can play that situation two ways.

One, you do the thing that I actually told you to do, i.e., make a joke about it, and then try to finish the date as enjoyably as possible. Two, you can look at the person and say, “Hmmm, do we have a lack of chemistry?” Since I don’t suggest going with the second option, I recommend you go with the first option.