You met online, and now you are ready to meet in person. Try these tips to make your first date successful.
First date preparation
Tony DeRosso of OnlineDatingMatches.com offers the following tips:
Dress to impress.
If you haven’t dated in a while, buy yourself some new clothes before you go out on your first date. Your confidence level will rise accordingly.
Leave something to talk about.
When talking to someone you meet online, don’t spend hours upon hours talking on the phone or via instant messaging. Save some discovery for the actual first date, lest you run out of new things to talk about.
Flattery might get you somewhere.
Compliments are nice; too many compliments is pandering.
You should be nervous.
First-date jitters are completely normal -- don’t take it as a bad thing. If you have fifth-date jitters, though, something might be amiss.
Don’t string him along.
If you go out on a blind date or meet someone on the Internet and it just isn’t working for you, do the honorable thing and tell him or her as soon as possible.
If you want to be special to him -- and if you want your relationship to be special -- then treat him just like you want to be treated. Read on for a few easy tips to making him feel loved, wanted and appreciated.
How do you make him feel?
You breeze into the living room, where your husband sits, waiting. He says, "You look beautiful." You smile.On the drive to the restaurant where you're meeting friends, you fix your lipstick, adjust a curl, think about the evening ahead. Your husband is quiet.
At the restaurant, your husband starts to tell the story of something that happened at work. When he takes a breath, you jump in to tell the rest of the story. After all, you're a much better storyteller than he is.
On the way home, you say of your friend, "The way she glows whenever he says something -- you'd think he was brilliant. He's just an accountant, for Heaven's sake." Your husband mutters, "I wouldn't mind a little glow." You frown, "What's that supposed to mean?" "Nothing" he replies.
Don't take him for granted
"Nothing" is unfortunately exactly what he means. You are treating your guy like nothing. You take his "You look beautiful" for granted, as your due. You give him a "Yes, I know I'm beautiful" smile instead of giving him your thanks, maybe even an "I love looking nice for you" or perhaps a compliment to him in return.The drive over is private time for the two of you. Time to share something, be it "Oh, what a lovely night. Look at all the stars!" or "Tell me more about what happened with that fussy client today." You can squeeze lipstick fixing in the middle of a mini-conversation, no problem.
Telling the end of his story for him? What is he, three years old? It's his story! Take a cue from your friend, and listen with admiration, respect, or how about plain old interest? Just because you've heard the story five times already doesn't make it something you can ignore. It's meaningful to him, so let it be meaningful to you.
If you want to be special to him, if you want your relationship to be special, wonderful, fireworks-in-the-sky, then make him special. You both deserve it.
Say No To The
Silent Treatment
The Silent Treatment. Does it work for you? Could there be a better way to deal with conflicts in your relationship? Read on...
Deadly silent
Oh, we gals think we are so clever, so smart! So morally superior, as we respond to something our honey does with The Silent Treatment.Not for us the yelling and screaming of dysfunctional relationships! Not that. No calling him names. No trashing his family origins or his manhood. Nuh-uh, never. That would be way beneath us. Instead, we zip our impeccably glossed lips. And wait.
Because we know, through our highly developed female senses, and with eons of female wisdom backing us up, that eventually he'll come around. Eventually he'll beg and plead "What did I do?!" "I don't know what I did, but whatever I did, I'm sorry!" which puts us in the catbird seat. We get to lord it over him as we tell him how awful he was to us, and here's how it can make it up.
Which all works very nicely until he's fed up with it, and either becomes inured to our Silent Treatment and amuses himself otherwise until we get over it, or... leaves.
Why the silent treatment doesn't work
Yes, that's right, ladies -- leaves. Maybe not leaves as in "divorce," but certainly "leaves" as in doesn't share his feelings or thoughts with us anymore, spends more time apart from us than with us, doesn't go out of his way to please us.Why? Because he doesn't feel safe with us anymore. He doesn't know when he might get frozen out without notice. So he stops reaching out. And a warm intimate part of your marriage dies.
