COLUMN: I went on a date but she didn’t know it
What is a date?
It seems like a date should be a fairly easy term to define. Dating has been around since the beginning of time, so we’ve had all of history to define it. However, there seems to be a lot of dispute between the two sexes as to the definition of a date.
If you ask a male, he will tell you a date is when a guy spends money on a girl.
If you ask a female, she’ll tell you a date is when a guy goes the entire night without making any crude noises.
So, by these standards, all a guy has to do is buy the woman a 5-cent gum ball and make sure he doesn’t burp, sneeze or scratch his head too loudly, and they’ve had a successful date. As you and I both know, however, a trip to the gum ball machine typically doesn’t count as a date in either person’s book. Hence, what we need is an across-the-board definition of a date.
One of the biggest breakdowns in the dating process lies in the invitation itself. Most guys give weak invitations, and most girls wouldn’t recognize a strong invitation if it bit them in the face. As a result, the date itself is doomed to fail from the outset nearly every time. Only through divine intervention do men and women actually get paired up with one another in a date-like setting.
Guys like to be suave when they ask women out. We don’t like tipping our hand any sooner than we have to. After all, the male has to be the initiator; it’s up to him to get the ball rolling and ask the female out.
This is not a comfortable role for a lot of guys. It’s kind of like slipping your head through a hangman’s noose and awaiting a sentence to be handed down. Men feel vulnerable, as though their innermost feelings are exposed, and he must wait for the girl to either accept the invitation and help him out of the noose, or pull the rope and watch him swing from the gallows.
Most guys try to protect themselves a little bit, resulting in a weak invitation. Here’s an example brought to us by Bob:
“Hey, Susie, some of the guys were planning on going to a movie tonight and I – or, I mean, we – were just wondering if you’d like to come. Do you want to go?”
Bob, like most guys, feels secure with an invitation like this one because regardless of what Susie says, she’s not responding directly to Bob himself. If Susie says no, then she’s merely turning down the activity and/or the group itself at the worst. Bob, as an individual, cannot be rejected. If Susie says she’d like to go, then Bob knows that all he has to do is pick her up, get the doors for her, pay for her ticket and popcorn, and she’ll realize it’s a date.
The problem, however, is that Susie won’t realize Bob is paying for all this stuff because it’s a date. She’ll just think he’s a nice guy and a great friend – possibly someone she’d like to go out with if he’d ever ask her.
This brings us to my next point: Women have difficulty recognizing when they’ve been asked out. Part of that difficulty comes from weak invitations like Bob’s. Part of it comes from simply being oblivious to what’s going on around them. Women seem to think if the word “date” is not used in an invitation, then it’s not a date. They fail to realize a guy will not spend money on a girl if he is not interested in her.
Oh, he might spend a buck or two, but he’s not going to pay for dinner, a movie and ice cream unless he’s trying to promote something more than friendship. Simply put, if a guy spends money on a girl, he’s chalking it up as a date. Women, no matter how many times you tell them this, refuse to believe it.
So Bob goes home and tells his roommates all about the great date he had with Susie and how much potential the two of them seem to have. He is excited, knowing the first date with Susie is history, and he can start to really put the moves on her next time.
Susie, however, returns to her apartment that night and expresses amazement at how good a friend Bob is. She tells the other girls how he paid for everything and didn’t make any crude noises. Then she and her roommates begin to console each other and ask why they never get asked out on dates by people like Bob.
“Men are scum,” they say. “And the good ones don’t want to date you. They only want to be your friend.”
Little do they know, nothing could be further from the truth – which is precisely the reason we need to have a uniform definition of a date. Until then, guys will continue to give weak invitations and girls will continue to stand up their dates, never realizing they’ve been asked out by the very person they long to be with.