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I had so many times where I should have just asked if it was a date. Like I remember this pretty redhead came over for a late night movie night and I was hopeful it was a date. Yet I didn’t make a move and neither did she. Then months passed by and she was dating someone else. I should have just asked!
I was on the other side when I met my husband for the first time. We met on a dating app and he assumed we were just talking shop (since we both worked in the same business) while I thought it was a date. Funny how that one turned out!
Ha. My husband and I have different versions of our “first date”. On his first date with me, I thought I was having lunch with a work friend.
Later, after I realized how much I liked him, I bravely asked him to dinner and a movie. He accepted but spent a lot of the evening wondering if it was a real date. At some point before the evening ended, one of us used our words and we declared it a date.
RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS.
Vanessa, living this platonic romcom we all wish we could live.
I want this in a theatre near me soon!
hahahaha, Living In Portland: The Queer Platonic RomCom We’ve All Been Waiting For ;)
Right?! Now I’m trying to see who I can hit up for some platonic cheeseboards and introverting in NOLA, for real.
Gotta step up my ig game.
I’d offer, but I have food allergies and stuff like only feta tastes edible as an individual cheese. Everything else is supposed to be on or with a red sauce based dish or is just completely inedible it me.
However I will advise you try taralli crackers, the best crackers.
The only feta thing is kinda wild, but I’m gonna trust your cracker recommendation anyway.
🤔 There’s always tea.
My taste in cheese is admittedly wild, but my taste in carbs is that of a lifelong connoisseur. Taralli crackers are very cheeseboard friendly…unless you like to make lil sandwiches of cheese and crackers.
But what to pair with the tea is an issue unless I bring my own nibbles, like seriously I’m currently recovering from a reaction to damn jello shot.
omg platonic cheeseboards forever <3
I asked a girl once what would you consider this, she replied I dunno two people who like each other out for food. Then a few weeks later asked are we dating, and she replied maybe?
AL SHE SOUNDS NONCOMMITTAL AND CONFUSING YOU ARE BEING DIRECT AND SHE IS NOT
I’m sure I’m not the only lbtq person to say this, but still are in that queer grey area of best friends who get intimate all the time. I’m single she is non monogamous. Ahhh
1. I will second Molly, “Can I kiss you?” is a strong A+ move that I utilize often, usually to good results (when it’s a date).
2. I’ve just started asking, because my ego can take it. It has saved me so much anxiety! I used to spend YEARS in friendship with women who I was like, do they like me? Is this a date, every single time we hang out? JESUS JEANNA GET YOUR LIFE TOGETHER. The time I could have saved. It was so deeply inefficient.
Anyway, I ask now. Saves a lot of time.
People asking for consent before kissing are MEGA HOT.
just here to third the fact that “can i kiss you?” is a STRONG move and (in my experience) has always resulted in affirmative answers! (although obviously negative answers would also be fine and legitimate!)
Please edit heather? ;)
LUCE WE FIXED IT FOR YOU
With lightning speed!
My wife and I hung out and watched movies/tv together while cuddling for two months before she finally got annoyed and kissed me. I had absolutely no confidence that it was dating until then, even though I really wanted it to be.
Sometimes your stories of open and honest communication make me want to be a mature adult.
Whoa there! Let’s not get carried away with ourselves! I am still unable to chair properly, I certainly am not about to try for mature adulthood.
Possibly this is just my browser doing a weird thing, or possibly Valerie Anne and Molly Priddy are actually a hive mind who forgot to put two different responses under their bodies’ different names. Or possibly an edit is called for? I like the hive mind explanation myself, but if that’s true I wish you’d just be honest about it. It’s ok, really. You do you. Even if “you” is one mind in two bodies. We’ll still support you. (See, I’m taking everyone’s advice and using my blunt communication skills, so that I don’t have to spend the rest of the evening wondering if this was supposed to be a hive-mind thing…)
WE FIXED IT SORRY THANK YOU SO MUCH WOW Y’ALL ARE ON IT
Awww man I was kinda hoping to get identically worded responses from both Valerie Anne and Molly…oh well I love you all anyway.
Molly IS trying to take control of my dating life, so that would be funny.
“Everyone always thinks I’m flirting with them because I’m generally warm and engaged and I ask questions and laugh easily and am tender and free with compliments and I make good eye contact and I touch people when I’m talking to them.”
Heather, I am like this, too! Coupled with my total inability to tell if someone is flirting with me, my friendliness has landed me in lots of mixed-signal situations. 😬
hi somehow i didn’t contribute to this roundtable which is funny b/c i have thoughts, mostly that i have never really thought about this! i would think that you go on friend dates with… friends. like people you already know? unless there’s a potential professional connection there and then it might be a stranger, but i would assume it was a potential professional connection. sometimes i wonder if i have made subconscious assumptions based on gender presentation or other elements of somebody’s “type” w/r/t hanging out with somebody who knows my general type or I know theirs, and if they match up it means one thing and if they don’t then it doesn’t.
the thing is if you’re hanging out with somebody and it might be a friend thing or a date thing and you’re not sure, just approaching it as a friend thing doesn’t preclude the possibility of a romantic/sexual spark happening, right? if that’s gonna happen it will happen whether you thought it was a date or not.
In my experience it does not just happen even if there are plenty of sparks in a case of two Heathers. But it’s cool because a Heather needs a Stacy.
So I guess I agree that it’ll happen if it’s supposed to.
I…figure everything is just being with another/ other humans and seeing how things go?
But…if there’s already been more-than-platonic time together once, that’s when I’d wonder on another meeting up if they are thinking date or not, and want to see if there’s expectations/ anticipation!
I’m currently not dating someone but going on a lot of not dates that feel a lot like dates. And texting/snap chatting/going to happy hour with her all the time. And we are going on vacation together. And yes I should just ask her but life is hard 🤷♀️
omg vacationing together? this is what fanfics are made of
I have no idea if anyone goes back and reads old comments BUT update: we are dating and it is perfect 💕
@kayyy I JUST CAME BACK AND IM SO GLAD I DID OMG
see i *hear* you all saying that direct communication is the way to go and that literally just asking if it’s a date is rockin’
but i know, deep in my oblivious bad-at-romance soul, that the words ‘so is this a date?’ have approximately a 34% chance of leaving my mouth in the next year. check in 2020 and see if my vision has improved (rimshot)
I’m a fan of the follow up text! It can be hard to say it out loud in person but a casual “I had so much fun, just wondering if you had date vibes or friend vibes feelings” is way easier and just as effective! <3
Once a friend asked me where I got my socks at the beginning of an outing, and I realized she had gone on a bad date with someone has the same socks ( I know the person and had seen her wearing the socks). She then said, “I hope that’s not inauspicious,” which made it clear it was a date. Haha.
I must know what these bad date socks look like
“I have a lot less patience for weird emotional tension now than I did in my early dating years. I no longer think it’s ‘fun’ or ‘part of the experience.’” This.
I love asking / being asked, “Can I kiss you?” It’s the best! 100% recommend it.
If I already think I like someone romantically then I try to ask, “Do you want to go on a date?” so that they clearly know beforehand, and I’ve asked before we met, “Would this be like a date or a friends thing for you?”, but it’s often this in between situation you have when you met online, and nobody’s sure, and it’s kind of developing while you’re together, and then I don’t have a strategy. I need to start getting comfortable asking in person, I guess. Thanks for the encouragement!
Vanessa, you inspire me!
this is so sweet! what if *you* inspire *me*?!?!?! <3
I used to have a really hard time being direct but then decided fuck it & asked my crush who I met through professional things to get a drink to see if there were more flirty vibes. At the end when we were walking to our cars and I was like, “So just throwing it out there, I think you’re super cute and would be really down to go on a date-date sometime if you were!” And she was like “Yeah! Can I kiss you?” and we kissed & fell super hard & fast & a year later it’s still perfect! Would recommend 10/10!
ok maybe i am being reductive but i just don’t understand how this is such a THING. like, in my mind there are implicit rules governing dating that you can learn such as:
-if you usually don’t hang out one-on-one & they ask you on a date-seeming thing (dinner, cute activities like mini-golf, any type of picnic), go & see how it feels. notice how close they put their body to your body!!! look out for flirting such as gentle teasing, eye contact, compliments, and question-asking.
-if u met on a dating service, that is a date unless explicitly specified.
-order of pre-makeout touching: arms (possibly platonic), low back (not platonic), thigh (ur gonna kiss), chest (run).
-at the end, if they don’t initiate physical contact or if it’s just a hug, it’s probably platonic. BUT if you get a follow-up text the next day, they might be taking it slow! you could just be like “i had a great time too! Date #2 at [location]?”
-if you touch their arm and they respond positively (leaning in, big eyes, touching back, etc), do it again. if they touch you back, that’s a promising sign.
-if they ask you what your plans are for the rest of the night, or suggest a walk or a trip to their place, ur gonna at least make out.
-if ur dealing with a Known Heather, you just have to ask.
and like obviously there are exceptions and some people are confusing, but tbh, it’s also not that big of a deal to get turned down? if your friendship can’t stand up to some light sexual rejection idk if it was that strong to begin with.
I agreeeeeee
Thank you for this comprehesive list! Yours truly, Heather Forever
“If you’re dealing with a Known Heather…”
❤️ this
I’ve been pondering this comment for awhile now. I think that it’s not a big deal – IF one is able to identify implicit rules governing social interactions, IF one is able to parse one’s (possibly) romantic and sexual feelings for other human beings and IF one has the awareness to interpret other people’s behavior – and hell, IF one is even aware of having feelings. But those are big IFs.
I would have to identify myself as A Heather, but you know, back when I was dating (or attempting to date, to be more accurate) I didn’t KNOW I was a Heather. I didn’t realize I was missing out on social cues, I didn’t know I was pretty oblivious to how other people thought about me, I didn’t know I’d shut down some type of emotions as a way to cope with childhood trauma. I didn’t know that 20 or 30 years later, I’d look back and realize that I’d been on a lot more dates and in a lot more relationships than I thought at the time.
I assume everything is a friendly hang until someone clarifies “as a date” or I realize I just agreed to buy her a drink on Valentine’s Day (although honestly even then I was just like “wait a minute…🤔”).
Bear with me, but I don’t actually know what a “date” is for. OK, basically, it’s arranging “alone time” with someone to see if there’s some kind of sexual or romantic spark. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)
But honestly, I can count on the fingers on two fingers where I actually got together with someone in that way. It seems like a lot of us get confused between just “hanging out” vs “potential love interest”. For me, I think they’re pretty much the same anyway.
One of my “quirks” is considering anyone I know and like as a potential interest – of course, very much only if they’re “available”. I’m not so arrogant or creepy to think that anyone I like would be into *me* (basically, I assume they aren’t), but whether they’re a recent acquaintance or an actual friend, the possibility is possible until it isn’t. (Let me tell you about ALL the friends I have who are actually my exes – boundaries between friends and romance? what boundaries?)
Related to that quirk, I don’t see much use for dates qua dates. I mostly meet people via mutual friends, parties, at work and so on. It seems pretty much the case that if we’re arranging actual alone-time, it’s really because it’s down-to-business time. The question of whether or not to get sexual has been answered in some way already. (I thoroughly endorse the “Can I kiss you now?” technique.)
I arrange meet-ups with people I want to hang out with in general, and if something romantic ensues, that’s kind of an unexpected bonus. That was the case with my last ex – we met via mutual friends, and we ended up having “business lunches” because we worked around 200m from each other and enjoyed chatting. Which turned into her eventually saying, “I would like to get to know you better”, and me saying, “Aren’t we doing that already? …Oh!” [Thank god it wasn’t just me with this crush!] And then arranging the, er, alone-time.
The actual dates I’ve gone on have been when it’s not particularly natural that we’d meet up in some other way – like meeting someone online. Online meetups are obviously more common for more people these days, and going on actual dates makes good sense. Much more sense than swearing utter devotion to someone you haven’t actually met.
But for dating someone you already know, I’m wondering if it’s somewhat of a cultural thing. There seems to be a lot more emphasis on dating in US culture. Not that we don’t ever go on dates in Oz/NZ (or the UK, where I’ve lived), but it seems like much less of a thing. Or maybe it’s just *me*. (That’s ok, I can take it.)
My problem is generally when I do not want a date (whether it’s b/c of being in a closed relationship, not wanting to date generally, or having zero interest in that person), but the other person wants it to be a date. I’m working on avoiding these situations, but if anyone has tips…