The key to a successful first date is to relax and just be yourself. If you try to act like you think the other person will like you, they may like someone who is not you and you will end up breaking up and getting hurt, so honesty really is the best policy, and in the end, if you just be yourself and it does not work out, you know she was not the one for you.
Dating is like gambling in poker. Sure you can win a hand or two with a good bluff, but you will not win the World Series of Poker by bluffing, you’ll win it by doing the best you can.
It’s no different from dating. If you make something up to impress the person, they will not like you, but they will like the fake you and eventually realise that the two are not the same.
Try to remember the things you both talked about on the phone and see if you learned anything that might help you decide on your date, but if you do not have enough information about the person to know what they might like, sometimes you have to take a chance and roll the dice and hope you do not fail.
The most important thing on a first date is to enjoy yourself.
The more you make of it, the harder it will be and the more likely you are to make an idiot of yourself. If you are nervous before the date, take a few minutes and take a few deep breaths. If that does not help, I recommend you do what I like to do in casinos when my nerves are bothering me: just have a drink. The alcohol in a drink usually calms me down enough to concentrate.
Take her/him to a nice place that is quiet, but not too quiet. They should be able to hear each other, but other distractions are also good for those awkward moments.
Do not take her/him out to a place where your friends hang out, because then she/he will feel like she/he is being hassled or she/he will feel out of place and resent you for making her/him feel that way.
It is very important to plan the whole evening before the date and have a fallback idea just in case. The tricky part is making it look like it was not all planned.
Let us say you decide to take her out to dinner and then go for a walk on the beach, you do not just say, “Hey, let us go for a walk on the beach after dinner”. I would recommend you wait until after dinner and ask her if she wants to go for a walk to recover from dinner and then take her to the beach.
Then when you are at the beach, take her/his hand while you are walking. This creates a physical connection between you and makes it easier later when you get to the first kiss.
Remember that dating is a game of chance where you sometimes have bad cards. If you play your cards right, you will eventually find the right person and hit the jackpot.
