The Best Dates We Ever Had

The best dates we have ever been on are the ones that were the most fun with the best company. They may not end in blinding love or marriage but they may have lived on with us because we enjoyed them so much. There was something memorable about them. Lots of dates are mundane, dull, meaningless repetition of standard question and answer sessions punctuated by some forced humor and and attempt to keep things genuine whilst knowing the moment you exit the cafe, you will never see that person again. Personally I have traveled all over the country on dates and some have been truly awful and the odd one, spectacular.

The best dates are the simplest, the least forced, the most natural. The best dates can happen with a complete stranger out of nowhere, or are planned weeks in advance by making special plans to win your date's heart. I remember chatting with a person on an Internet dating site on Saturday evening and within an hour of first chatting we had met for a drink. That Saturday evening in Chicago was tremendous fun, the person fantastic company, 4 hours of laughter and great food. We swapped life stories and details of the smallest things about our lives and for those briefest of hours everything was fabulous. Due to travel etc., we never met again but the point is that a perfect date can really be that unplanned.

I think it's true that when we plan something too far in advance we can get carried away and build things up to much higher levels than is really justified. If I know we are going on a date three weeks on Saturday I will start planning, however much I try not to. What will I wear, how will I wear my hair, what will they be like, will anything come of it. And so on. Before you know it, a simple date has turned into the planning of Woodstock.

In other words, simple spontaneous dates are the best. Formality too tends to wreck the best dates. Somewhere too formal doesn't allow both parties to relax and can be oppressive and stifling. The worry of getting everything right, ordering the correct dishes, selecting the right wine, even paying the check. Particularly the right clothes. A self assured dating partner will allow things to flow more smoothly and put you at your ease but the point is, the best dates involve somewhere far more relaxed. It could be a diner an a walk in the park, a beach bar and a stroll on the beach. So always choose something where both people can be comfortable, kick off their shoes and just chill.

The best dates are ones that begin with few expectations and open into something much greater. A short meeting over a coffee ends up being a day long passionate conversation. A lunch hour one afternoon ends up taking over the whole day, even weekend. They are the best dates. Not expecting your date to be anything special and discovering that they are amazing, that is a good date too. Two people who end up becoming a couple will always remember how they met and what they did so it is always important to put some thought into every date you go on.

I think if you date continually for the sake of it then you will have some idea of your idea of a perfect date and how it would go. Even if you haven't met anyone fabulous lately you can still imagine what best dates should be like for you. There are a great many clichés surrounding dates, from sunsets over blue lagoons to romantic restaurants in Rome. They are things we can aspire to in our fantasies. But having great dates means being open minded, being open to new people, new ideas and very good conversation. I often observe friends with their lists of questions that they reel off as they go through the motions on a first date and wonder why they get nowhere.

My method always involves meeting and greeting my date like I have know them years. In this way I put myself and them at easy. I love to talk so I always try and get us both to chat about anything and everything over a glass of wine. If it flows naturally then great, if it doesn't then its fine as I always set a mental time limit at first. My favorite best dates have always been with charming individuals who are interesting and interested. They have always been brief encounters the first time where I am dying to meet them again. They are instant adrenaline shots, they are eye opening meetings that me salivate with anticipation. I put some of that down to trying to date the kind of people I get along with but also being extremely receptive to new ideas.

Your best dates with differ from mine probably, but the point is, treasure best dates as excellent memories and experiences. You have met some great people and you are going to meet a few more along the way before your dating is done.

Great Places to Date

Where are the best places to go on a date someone asked me the other day and I had to admit I didn't have a ready reply so I decided to give it some thought. I suppose we take it for granted that when someone likes us enough to agree to spend time with us that we just know where to go for some social company. The fact is most of the time we don't. As we are put on the spot we have some quick thinking to do to look decisive and original. Where shall I meet you, he asks and you are saying "ehm ehm -let me think". Well it occurred to me that we need a little planning here if we are serious about dating.

Usually I would just suggest my favorite bar or coffee shop or somewhere nearby as a great place to date, but without really thinking how that will affect the date and how it may help things go well. I can concentrate on my dress , on my chat, on my appearance, but the place itself is often ignored. And yet the place can make the date so it is time to think about this one.

Okay the first thing is, do you date at lunchtime or after work? If you date at lunchtime then I am supposing it is close to your place of work. If it is, then what establishments are near enough to be practical and at the same time atmospheric? Clearly some cities are better at providing great places than others. For example when I lived in Paris there were a million cafes to meet in, but when in Singapore I usually had to meet in food halls which lacked the same ambiance. I would always recommend dating at lunchtime if possible for a first date as there is a fixed time limit and an escape route implied. You can grab a coffee for 30 minutes and you don't need to worry about looking smart as much as you may be in work wear.

If this makes sense then spend a few lunchtimes going to a few places with friends to see which would suit you best as a work venue. Remember never to let on where you work in the early stages of dating. Keep safe. Try out a few small restaurants, tapas bars, coffee shops, diners and sandwich bars and see which you think would make a great place to check your new date out.

If you are dating after work then maybe it will be a bar downtown or an early evening restaurant etc. I would always advise somewhere informal to begin with so that you can both relax over a drink. A formal evening dinner for a first date is a recipe for letdowns in my opinion. There is a great build up, a lot of effort, expense only to find the date lasts 20 minutes. So don't bother initially, get into the groove of short snappy dates that are relaxed and a lot of fun. This will demonstrate your creative part.

Almost every major city has some kind of cool art gallery. In my opinion these are tailor made for dating and great places to date. You can appreciate the finer things in life, or look like you appreciate them, whilst at the same time spend time in the presence of your date whilst at the same time have a distraction in the art itself. Popping to the toilet also acts as the perfect escape route if you have made a grave mistake!

Comedy clubs are a great place to date. You can meet for a drink beforehand and relax and have a chat. You then have the marvelous facility of built-in comedic entertainment that rubs off as showing you as being funny too because the whole atmosphere lends itself to humor. Although you can't chat as much throughout the show it will quickly demonstrate sense of humor levels and you will be able to sense if you are on the same wave length. If you can laugh together you may be on to a winner.

I love going on dates to Zoos, particularly out of season. I don't necessarily agree with keeping wild animals in cages but as they are there and zoos are trying to keep species from extinction that it is the least we can do to try and help. But as animals show our softer side and are interesting to go see then they are the perfect backdrop for a date. There are plenty of discussion points, plenty of things to chat about which relate to past experiences and lots of walking together. There are small cafes dotted around and places to sit and talk.

Sports activities are great fun, especially if there is lots of physical involvement. Going bowling or ice skating are perfect dating activities. I have never been anywhere so romantic as ice skating in Central Park in the snow one winter. The great thing about bowling is that you have a challenge from the first moment. The man can show his masculinity by dealing with the ridiculously complex scoring computer whilst the lady can show her adept handling of a 12lb ball, usually in orange. No kidding, its fun and its a great place to chat as well as grab a coffee. Ice skating allows you to fall into each others arms and therefore I think it speaks for itself. The worse you are, the better the date!

So rather than depending on my list of places to date, grab a good food guide, and start looking around you at the places that would be great for a date. When someone agrees next time you will be fully armored with lots of choices that you have tested out. By being prepared you will reduce your stress levels by 50% before your date even begins.

Our Dating Regrets

I decided to take a survey of good friends and find out what kind of regrets people had when dating. Regrets took on many different forms in their varied answers but I thought it was interesting to ask because it often highlights dating issues we often forget to mention. As with many of my surveys, the results are haphazard but are useful in pointing out that we are not alone in the mistakes that occur in our dating lives.

Here follows are a mind boggling catalogue of dating disasters that we should bear in mind as lessons learned.

1, In top spot - dating a married person. Man or woman, it makes no difference. In every version the story was the same, dating a married person was a complete disaster. Not withstanding the lies, deceit, regret, cheating and false promises, on NO occasion did anyone I asked have a good outcome for their married affairs. This was one good example of how to waste your years waiting for someone who will never leave; sharing your loved one with someone else and spending thousands of dollars on stolen moments and brief weekends where you were not the only person on their mind. Avoid like the plague unless you want to lose all the dignity you ever had.

2. Amazingly not marrying your childhood sweetheart was number 2. It appears there are a lot of people who have spent years wishing they had married the person of their dreams when they had the chance. Unfortunately this often tends to be your childhood sweetheart or first love at college. At the time you are too young and there are too many other fish in the sea. In later years you have used them as a bench mark of the minimal level of romance required for potential partners and never quite match it. This leads to a feeling of making do with second best. In turn you start hankering for the girl or boy from all those years ago.

3. Not asking someone out on a date when the offer was there. This is a biggie because we are dealing with the eternal niggling "what if.." question. This tends to come out as a regret at a time when other things are not going well and you find yourself fantasizing. What if you had asked him out. What if you had said yes to that date. What if you had got married and had children. It seems that not asking someone out can leave a long term legacy. Just look at the popularity of reunion sites on the Internet just now.

4. Not ending a bad relationship earlier. Yes lot of us listed this one. There are many of us who have entered into a relationship willingly only to discover to our cost that the relationship wasn't all it could be. Whilst the door was only over there we chose for many a reason not to walk out of it. Whilst perhaps a worthy concept in itself it does none of us a service. The fact is, too many of us have stayed in long term relationships that were not good for ourselves and our partners. If only we had had the courage at the time.

5. Dating the wrong person for the wrong reasons. Maybe for sex, for appearance, for contacts, for business reasons or even out of sympathy. It appears that there are plenty of people out there who have dated people for the wrong reasons and lived to regret it. This has to be balanced against hindsight. Looking back it is obvious which people we perhaps should never have dated but there are plenty of us who dated the wrong person at the time and knew we were doing it. No excuse.

6. Putting your career first and waiting too long. Oh yes, this is a modern classic. Our current society has a problem in that a third of all adults are now single - and growing. The most commonly sited reason is that we put our career first, especially through out 20's and then begin seriously dating in our 30's when we feel ready. The problem is that we are not as young as we were, not as attractive as when we were 21 in many cases, our body clocks are ticking at a deafening volume and all the best catches have been snapped up. A great many of us appear to be wishing we had sorted out our love lives earlier. Be warned.

7. Leaving someone you were in love with. I don't have the answers but it cropped up quite a few times in my survey and could be tied in with point 2. People in love have left and seem to struggle to find an explanation. All too often the decision was regretted very quickly only to find that the rejected partner had closed and bolted the door and you were never going to be allowed back. Infidelity is the primary cause, or more to the point, getting caught. If you love someone stay with them faithfully appears to be the lesson here.

8. Not being the nice person you could have been. Treating someone badly in a relationship always comes back to haunt you if you are the guilty party, however empowering it may have felt at the time. As we grow older we list mentally those we could have been nicer too and I am amazed how many of us confess we could have been nicer people to our lovers. I am not talking about physical violence though we all accept that it does exist within our society. No I simply mean being courteous, kind, remembering birthdays and anniversaries, buying flowers, compromising, going on holidays and being romantic and spontaneous. We live and learn and later regret is clearly the message.

9. Dumping someone in a callous and bad way. I have done it and I have had it done to me and I regret both happening. When young it was easy to love and leave and I never thought anything of it. As I grew older I had it done to me by someone I loved and it broke my heart. I don't think we every do get over being left in a bad way - no explanation, no reasons given. One day it's fine, the next day you're gone. Dumping via email, texting or phone should be made cardinal sins and it appears from my survey that many of us regret doing just that.