Keep first date on neutral ground

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/10/2019 (2182 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My friends have set me up with a male friend of theirs, and they are good, well-meaning people.

He seems nice enough on the phone and I have seen his picture — pretty good-looking.

We have talked a few times. We are supposed to be going on a date soon, but he wants to cook for me at his apartment. My friends say he’s an excellent cook. 

I’ve been dragging my feet, because I’m aware of the bedroom attached to this dinner scene, and I don’t want to be the dessert.

I have suggested we go out somewhere on our first date and he said sweetly, but quite insistently, “But I really want to cook for you!”

Am I being paranoid?

— Good Girl, Steinbach

Dear Good Girl: You’re thinking with your head and he may be thinking about something else. He might be innocently inviting you for dinner, but that seems doubtful because he’s being so insistent. Smart women don’t agree to first dates in a new guy’s place. 

Tell him you’re into a cosy coffee and conversation in a nice place with baked treats as a first-date meeting place.

If he refuses, then he isn’t as interested in meeting and getting to know you as he was in the possibilities available in a place with a comfy sofa and a bed in the next room. At a café, you can arrive in your own car, have a harmless coffee and escape easily, if you wish. 

At this point, you may be tired of his insistence and need to refuse the date altogether. Just tell him, “Sorry, I’m not interested anymore.”

You don’t know him, and you don’t owe him or your friends an explanation.

 

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts:  I had a gorgeous wife when I was in my early 20s, but she left me for another guy, saying I was “boring and uneducated.” That was a gift in the end. I figured out what I wanted to do with my life, went to college for it, and also took up an instrument to play in a band. I have an interesting job now and I love entertaining, plus I married a woman I met through playing music.

Well, who do I run into last week at St. Vital mall but my ex-wife! She was walking with two teenage kids, but made a beeline for me.

The kids followed her and she said to them, “I’d like you to meet my first husband.” The kids rolled their eyes and walked off to look in store windows.

She said flirtatiously, “You’re looking good now!” and somehow her tone made me go off, like I was her creation or something. I said to her, “I feel good. I have a career I love, play in a band and have a really nice wife. And how are you?”

She sighed and said, “Not so good. I just got separated from the father of these two kids. But that’s OK — he was boring anyway.” I just looked at her, shook my head and walked off.

I didn’t even feel like saying a polite goodbye. What’s her game anyway?

— Disgusted First Husband, Winnipeg

Dear Disgusted: She gets bored easily and tires of a live-in partner. Once she knows everything about him, the mystery is over. She doesn’t feel comfortable with warm familiarity, but rather is bored and irritated by it. 

She’d do far better to skip the marriages and just move on whenever the person she’s dating reveals his whole self and instantly becomes boring to her.

It seems she’s swimming in the shallow end of the pool — for life. 

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6.