QUESTION:

Do You Have Any Guidelines For Setting Up The First Meeting?

ANSWER:

Abolutely! That first meeting is going to be very important, especially since you met as strangers online, and you really don’t know anything about one another. The first thing is always going to be safety. I encourage people .. at that point, if they have already shared phone numbers and last names, then they have some basic information about each other – they might even have some sense of where each other lives .. so what I recommend is that they never – even if it’s been going on well so far – they never get picked up at their home, or they don’t agree to meet at either one of their homes. Instead, they should meet in a public place.

Because it’s the first meeting, and you have a picture of this person but you haven’t experienced them first hand in person, I tell them to keep it short. I think a great first meeting is over coffee – something simple like that – perhaps lunch, something that’s easy. If it’s coffee or lunch and it’s not going well, it’s a very easy, easy out for either one of the people to say – “oh, I’ve got to get back to the office” or “I’ve gotta run ‘cos I’m meeting friends later tonight.”

If it’s going really well, then you can say “gee, this is fun .. do you want to go get something to eat together” – and you can make it into a sort of early dinner kind of thing. So it gives you that flexibility and it makes it easier on both people, and it’s just a little more relaxed – it’s a more relaxed environment.

So, you don’t plan to be at each other’s homes, you don’t plan this big long involved day, don’t plan something that’s going to require somebody or both people spending a lot of money or investing a lot of time.
Keep it simple, keep it easy, keep it fun.

Who Should Make The Arrangements And Pay?

Because it’s online dating, it’s very different than your traditional dating scenario where somebody asks somebody out – they make the arrangements – there’s an expectation that they will pay unless it’s discussed ahead of time. This is different. You’ve sort of come to this place together and you’ve been talking or emailing about what you’re going to do, and you’re both giving input.

Most likely both people will come up with the venue and will suggest what they’re going to do and choose it together and make arrangements to get there on their own – that kind of thing. So it’s really a “Dutch” situation. And if you think about the potential for meeting so many people online it’s also much more practical, in that you’re going to be perhaps meeting a lot of new people, and having a lot of these “first dates”.

So the expectation should be that they will split the check and that they will make their own transportation arrangements – that kind of thing. So it’s sort of more like a Dutch thing. They’ve come there to meet each other and to see what they think.