A Few Insider Tips | First Date Advice

Happy New Years! We hope your New Year is off to an exceptional start and that you are starting to think about dating again after the holiday rush. Even the most seasoned daters among us can use a refresher course in the ins and outs of dating. Dating is a skill and preparation is key so you arrive confident, relaxed, and importantly enthusiastic! Here are a few key basic pieces of advice for men and women based on well over a decade of experience in matching thousands of Bay Area professionals.

For the Guys…

1. Call with a plan. When you call to schedule your date, have two or three restaurants in mind, as well as a few days/times that work for you. That way you don’t get caught up in the early planning stages. For those guys who are rusty at dating and get caught up with nerves when calling her, it’s fine to even script this out if you need to. Make a checklist. Whatever works best for you.

2. Seek expert advice. If you don’t know how to order wine or aren’t even sure what seems like the best dish on the menu, ask for advice. Restaurants are full of “experts” so let the server or sommelier direct your choices if you’re not good at making them for yourself. Women like men who are willing to ask for directions. 😉

3. Stay out of quicksand. We all have topics we’d like to avoid in a first date conversation. All of us. Instead of completely deflecting them and sounding evasive or sharing too much and allowing the date conversation to take a difficult turn, develop a quick sound bite to address the topic and move on. For example, if you have a difficult custody situation with your ex-wife, simply say, “I actually spend as much time as I can with my kids currently, and we’re still negotiating what makes the most sense for everyone. I’m optimistic this will have a happy ending.” This is a clean and concise way to convey factual, relevant details that is also positive and encouraging. Don’t air your dirty laundry on a first date; you have nothing to gain by doing so.

For the women…

1. Be responsive. This one is really, really important. If your date calls you, respond to him quickly if you don’t get his initial phone call. And don’t start counting or matching days between calls in some sort of quid pro quo. You both want to go on a date, so make that happen. I repeat, you both want to go on a date, so make that happen. And make it happen sooner rather than later. A lot of great matches stall out because people get stubborn about returning calls instead of getting serious about establishing communication. I am continually amazed at the lack of responsiveness amongst many people I see out there dating in the wild.

2. Change for the better. Even if you’re in the sort of job where your work wear transitions well to dates, make a wardrobe shift to remind yourself that this isn’t work and it isn’t an interview and you don’t do this every day. Frankly, it’s highly unlikely that your day looks are also great date looks, so don’t be afraid to slip into a colorful dress, throw on a great pair of heels, and let your hair down. If not now, when?

3. Be direct. If you’re out of practice with dating, you might have a tendency to make conditional statements about future dates like “I’d like to do this again if you would….” Don’t do that. Just be clear about it and say “I’d love to see you again. This has been a lot of fun.” The confidence will be incredibly attractive, and will make it easy for your date to ask you out again.

We have countless tips to share so if you’re someone who’s interested in hiring a date coach, inquire within amy@linxdating.com. As for matchmaking, we currently have so many successfully paired couples! In December alone, we celebrated engagements and learned about new Linx matches reaching exclusive status. Contact Amy today to learn more about our unique offline matchmaking services and how Linx can bring you multiple steps closer to finding “the one.” Our clients hire us and engage our service due to our gaining access to a pool of candidates they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. On top of this, our scrupulous vetting process allows Linx to reach new standards of excellence in the business.

Picture This…

Amy and I recently talked to a client about conducting a VIP search on his behalf, and after our meeting, he sent us a short follow up email that simply said “I think it bears repeating that I am not interested in meeting anyone who has an embarrassing web presence.” Given that so many of our clients come to us as referrals, we don’t always do extensive web research on the people we meet, but in this case we knew it would be necessary. And this particular client had encountered an “embarrassing web presence” in a date in the past, so we wanted to be exceedingly careful while conducting his search.

While we weren’t shocked or surprised by anything we discovered, the truth is that most of us have a stray picture or article or comment floating around that we’d rather forget or can’t control, and none of us wants to be Googled or judged by a potential date before meeting. The concept of net neutrality in no way keeps the web itself from being a rather ruthless place – and humans are all too inquisitive by nature – so when you do have control of your web presence, you need to do everything you can to keep it clean and respectable. You should keep in mind that even if we introduce you to the best man or woman in the world, it’s all but guaranteed that someone in his or her life will Google you at some point… and you don’t want to be blindsided by the results.

So how much is too much? How do we know when captured moments of our past might be damaging our future? Where’s the line between private and public, and how do we stay on the right side of it?

Beware of Pictures with Girls

This applies to both men and women, actually. If you’re a guy, do NOT have public pictures of yourself surrounded by seemingly single women. You might think that it makes you seem like a stallion to your friends, but it makes you seem like a player to strangers. And that’s really not an impression that you want to make. If you’re a woman of a certain age (basically any age north of 27 or so) avoid posting the sort of pictures you might have taken at a high school formal with the rest of your dance team. Yes, it’s nice to know that you have great legs, but posing sideways in a line of friends with a dropped shoulder while you lift the hem of your dress to show your thigh is not really going to attract the right guys into your life. In fact, if you’re over 40 it’s a really good way to keep them far, far away.

Stop Double Fisting

I don’t care if it’s a bachelor party, a football tailgate, or an opening night at the opera – having two drinks in your hands is having one two many. It might be a great picture of you and your friends, or maybe your abs have never looked so good, or maybe you’ll never again be able to wear that dress, but two drinks exceeds the allowable Linx limit. If you need to provide a backstory to keep a picture from being embarrassing, then you simply need to hide the picture. Your friends might think it’s funny, but your date’s friends will probably not. This also applies to any pictures where you are drunk, vomiting, doing a keg stand, engaging in a chicken fight in a pool with someone of the opposite sex, or are passed out.

Close Your Legs. Seriously.

Again, this applies to both sexes. For some reason, guys seem to love to point at their packages, to grab themselves, to turn a pool noodle into a giant phallus, and to generally call attention to their favorite part of their bodies. It might have been part of a dumb prank or a great vacation, but it’s not smart to make pictures like that available to the general public. It’s always possible that you’re managing a Jon Hamm or Justin Theroux-style situation, in which case that part of your body needs no help drawing attention to itself, but don’t purposely make it the star of any picture. Ladies should remember to be just that – ladies. Unless you’re squatting at the top of KT-22 and this is the only evidence of that accomplishment, or you were an Olympic gymnast, we don’t need to see how flexible you are.

Exes are a big “Oh No!”

So let’s assume you’re quite prim and proper… public drunkenness? Never! Revealing pictures? Absolutely not. Poses that aren’t age appropriate? Not on your life. Believe it or not, you might still be guilty of photographic crimes. At first blush it doesn’t seem like it would be much of an issue, but if you still have lots of public pictures with your ex, it can signal that you’re not over your last relationship (and for someone who doesn’t know you’re single, it can make you look like a cheater). A lot of us don’t even really think about what’s visible on Facebook or Instagram or Tumblr, but if you’re serious about looking for a new relationship, you need to digitally box up your last one – to the best of your ability – and put it out of sight.

You can’t control what conclusions someone else might draw from pictures of you, but you can try to control which pictures they can see. So if you’re trying to move forward with your life, make sure you aren’t being handicapped by your past… or your friends, for that matter. Take the extra step of doing a “photos of…” search on yourself on Facebook, and request that your friends hide anything that might be unflattering. Getting into a great relationship really is a team effort; we know that better than most. So make sure that your friends and family are doing their part to help you score the guy or girl of your dreams.

In the meantime, be respectful of your potential Linx matches and KEEP GOOGLE OUT OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP- no offense Larry and Sergey ;). When it comes to digging up dirt on a harmless stranger, it’s important to follow the Golden Rule; do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.