Two Becomes One

The Day After the Date

Posted on September 20, 2009 by Two Becomes One

After a lousy date, the first thing you want to do is restore your confidence.  When a date that you have been anticipating goes badly, the worst possible side effect is a crushed ego and you may need a confidence booster to get back out there.  Even if you are working the following day and your schedule is jam-packed, take a little time for yourself and do something that you know you do well.  Or, do something that relaxes you and makes you feel good about yourself or your appearance.  Whatever you do, make it a positive reaction to a bad situation.  Don’t sit around and stew and feel sorry for yourself or blame yourself entirely.  Remember that this was only one date and there will be more.

If your date wasn’t terrible but wasn’t perfect either, evaluate what happened.  Did you do something wrong?  If so, call and apologize to clear the air.  If nothing specific happened but the date just didn’t go as well as you had hoped it would, take some time to reflect on the situation.  Don’t call right away because if you haven’t thought things through, this could worsen a tenuous situation.  Call if and when you decide that you like the person and you want to see them again to get to know them better, not because you feel guilty.  Call when you have had the chance to determine what you can do differently next time.

The day after a wonderful date can be both exciting and nerve-racking for one reason, in particular.  Women and men have completely different concepts of the post-date period and what constitutes an appropriate time lapse before initiating the second contact.  Therefore the hours and days following a first date are full of opportunities for misunderstanding and miscommunication.

Specifically, when a guy says, “I’ll call you soon” after a first date, the woman assumes that “soon” means tomorrow.  However, “soon” to him, most likely means sometime when he has a free moment in the next week or two.  Thus, the female is hovering over the phone waiting for it to ring while the guy hasn’t even thought about calling yet.  By the time he usually gets around to calling, she is fuming because she has been waiting and waiting for him to call and nothing.  As a result, she is irritated and short-tempered during their conversation and things can easily go awry.

On the other hand, if the woman decides she doesn’t want to wait for him to call and phones him the next day; that can lead to issues as well.  He is probably thinking, “Wow, she really wants me.  This means SEX!”.  In actuality, she is simply saying that she had a nice time and she would like to see him again.  As you can see, there are many opportunities for mistakes so it is important to understand what’s going on from the female and male point of view.

Now, our advice for guys would be, ‘Don’t wait as long as you normally would before calling’.  If you do intend to call her “soon”, call her within one or two days and you are guaranteed to make a lasting impression.  For females, don’t call as quickly as you ordinarily would.  Wait at least twice as long before picking up the phone and when he does call, relax and be happy that he called rather than irritated that it took him so long to do so.  Last but not least, the best way to avoid the above scenario is to arrange date number two before the end of date number one if things have gone well. If your second date is pre-arranged, there is no reason for anyone to sit by the phone, fretting and no possibility for misunderstandings or mistakes.

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