FFJD: How To Appropriately Ask For A Date

There seems to be serious contusion about this for some dudes.  I know that we’re all on a million dating sites like Match, JDate, etc. — reducing what would be in-person interactions to text and email. However, there remains certain etiquette to asking someone out, even if you did meet them online.

1. Call.

Girls love boys who pick up the phone and call to ask you out. The end. No iffs, ands, or ampersands. Actually hearing someone’s voice is often key (as Patti says, women fall in love between the ears and men are more visual), but we want to know we can have a phone conversation with you before sitting across the dinner table and reenacting the Lady & the Tramp while splurging on carbs. I don’t care if you swapped meaningful messages about puppies and Bar Pilar on whatever site, Facebook, or Craigslist missed connections, you should still give some nod to real, human voice interaction and call to ask a girl out. Big points.

2. No Social Media.

Last week someone asked me out on both Facebook and on TWITTER. There is something so incredibly wrong about the tweet as a form of social interaction (beyond work, hawking FFJD stuff, or musing about Weezy’s release from jail or the fact that Kanye all of a sudden flashed the world, that it’s just unacceptable. Like, oh your tweet you wrote me was so romantic and included so many cute hashtags I think I’m going to jump at the chance to watch you tweet during our date.

@50firstjdates hahaah your joke was so funny and self-deprecating just now, the one with the two guys and the frat party and the girl who was wos-ing in her Halloween costume! Will you marry me? #proposals

(I fear that proposals will begin over Twitter, which apparently they have.) Facebook is pretty bad too. Poking might be the lowest of the low. Or as it’s set on my Spanish version “dar un toque.”

3. Be Direct.

Girls like it when you’re direct with your asking out to dinner at that awesome Asian place we’ve been wanting to try so that we can laugh over sashimi and talk about our friends from Long Island and fantasize about what going to your sister’s wedding will be like. But you should be direct about it. A simple yes or no question is pretty effective, and much more attractive than a flippity floppity boppity 20-minute convo shooting the breeze about dumb bars and other stuff. Don’t beat around the bush.

4. Follow-up.

Girls are planners. Like, are we going to dinner on Friday? I know it’s only Monday but I’m stressed because I want to make sure I can go to the gym before our date and then shower (although apparently the NYT is endorsing not showering these days?) and then do my hair, both blow-dry and straighten it in a way that looks effortless but really takes two hours. So like, please let’s confirm this.

I also might need some time to apply my Apple-Martini-scented lotion. Thanks.

5. Don’t do this:

I received this message on JDate:

Hello, if you are interested please meet me at X Restaurant at 7:30 pm tonight.

From, User 7888213 (Age: 45, Location: Washington, DC.)

We don’t really need another Chandra Levy (I mean, I have slightly better hair…too soon?) and NO GIRL is going to just show up at a location you ask her to if you’ve never spoken in any form.

Unless she really loved your ironic tweets.

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