** Click here for Episode 155 **
Cate in Glasgow has worked herself up into a bit of a tizzy:
I have just been asked on a date by a very nice boy, who is lovely, but not attractive. I have accepted because he was really nervous and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But if he asks me to be his permanent girlfriend, how can I tell him ‘no’, without hurting him, and still stay friends with him? Also, what if the date is really really awkward? What should I do? Also what were your first dates like?
So many questions! Firstly: it might be better to wriggle out of the date beforehand, as you going on it might raise his expectations unfairly and make your subsequent romantic rejection all the more painful.
Secondly, if you don’t want to be asked to be his permanent girlfriend, try to behave like a complete arsehole on the date and then he won’t want to ask. He won’t want to stay friends either, but such is the pickle you’ve got yourself into.
Thirdly: since you don’t want to go on it, of course the date will be really really awkward. So don’t go on it. See my above point.
Fourthly: mine involved a trip to the cinema with a boy called John to see Naked Gun 2 1/2. Readers, tell us in the comments what yours were like!
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ • Episodes
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Answer Me This! Podcast 
November 26, 2010 at 9:23 am |
Half an hour the first date in he asked me if i wanted to lick his feet.
Bleah!!!
November 14, 2010 at 8:10 am |
Well, to sum it up previously: it was a disaster. In details: I was 13 at that time – 5 years ago – and there was a girl called Camila who I met due to her friendship with one of my childhood best friends. Two days after I met her, my friend told me she was fancying me and really wanted to get to know me better.
I’d fretted, literally, almost had pooped in my trousers. Then we started talking and being friends, but, I’d noticed she’d been coming to house to pick me up – school time and stuff – every day and I knew how that would end up like… so as I wasn’t that proactive and courageous enough to hit on her and the like, she started flirting with me, when my friend sort of schemed something for us so that we would hook up – at last!
That was an awful crap as I’d just held her wrongly, I’d crossed my arms behind her neck whereas she was supposed to have done that, and she’d held me in the waist, I’d swallowed her mouth entirely, literally vacuumed it, and two days later she’d told all her friends I didn’t know how to kiss properly! Gurrreat!
Pitiful, I know.
November 11, 2010 at 12:47 pm |
I don’t think it was my very first date, but it was one of the first dates with a guy and I managed to whack him in the nuts – sort of sitting side by side but turned to face each other and my hand slipped off his shoulder and gravity did the rest. Very embarrassing but he was quite the gentleman about it!
My worst date (one and only with this guy) was a guy who first turned up about an hour late (I would have left but I had to be at this place anyway), then he told me he could cure my headache by waving his hands around my temples and said that colds weren’t viruses, the doctor told him so! He texted afterwards to ask me out again and when I said no he said “remember that I had a cold and so I didn’t want to get *too close*”. Bleh, more contact was not what I was after there!
November 11, 2010 at 10:41 am |
Cate, go on the date, behave as you would normally (you don’t want him telling everybody what a colossal witch you are afterwards) and then if he does ask you to be his girlfriend, but you’re not keen, you can be honest. Just say “I had a great time on our date, but I don’t feel that sort of connection with you.” Or chemistry. Or spark. Or any word that has featured in a rom-com film over the last 15 years.
(Oh, and my first date was to see Saving Private Ryan. Hang on! torchedEARTH – you’re not Dave from Liss, are you?)
November 10, 2010 at 4:42 pm |
My first date was with a girl 6 inches taller than me, I took her on a date to a country park. I just about had my arm round her trying to look all casual when I stepped into a dip and wrenched my shoulder. That was about as far as it went.
Found out a few years later than she came out – I can’t say that I didn’t make that particular decision a lot easier for her…
November 10, 2010 at 12:26 pm |
I took a girl to see Black Hawk Down.
A perfect date film, it is not.
November 10, 2010 at 12:03 pm |
my first date was supposed to be to take a girl called Jackie to see Forrest Gump at the cinema. unsurprisingly she blew me out and now over the years my recollection of the event has reconstructed into the image of me sat outside the cinema on a bench with a box of chocolates waiting for her looking like Gump himself. life immitating (he)art
November 10, 2010 at 11:56 am |
I went round to this girls (I say girl she was about 30) flat, she cooked me a spot on meal of steak with all the trimmings. We sat down to watch a film, one thing lead to another and we where having fun and I spent the night about 3am I had this unnerving feeling that someone was watching me sat bolt upright to find a man at the foot of the bed asking me what I was doing in bed with his wife! Needless to say I was a bit dumb struck and made a run for it leaving my favorite trainers behind gutted!
November 10, 2010 at 11:47 am |
We were 16, I took her bowling, and we had a very pleasant ultra-kissy time. I had to keep sitting down to mess with my shoelaces, and other delaying/distraction techniques to hide my near-constant erections though. Such is the life of the teenage boy.
November 10, 2010 at 11:23 am |
My first date was so so awkward.
My best friend was dating this guy and wanted me to double date his best friend, who was short and not my type and I had no interest in him at all. I felt that it wouldn’t be so bad a it was a double date but it was terrible and I was forced into kissing the guy by my stupid best friend. I ended up his girlfriend for two weeks. It was horrid and I never wanted to date him let alone have him as my first boyfriend!
Don’t do it! Let him down gently.
November 10, 2010 at 11:17 am |
Excessive politeness once led me to going on a THIRTEEN MILE post dinner romantic stroll – safe to say the romance was all his. The walk ended abruptedly when some teenagers loudly attempted to rob my date. Don’t go!
November 10, 2010 at 11:07 am |
I took a girl to the cinema, had a perfectly nice time, came home and my Mum told me that my Dad had died from liver failure. True story.
November 10, 2010 at 11:04 am |
My first date with my current beau was drinks in covent garden followed by dinner in chinatown, then last train back to southend. I was nervous as hell, my first proper date for ages. But we’re still together 6 years and one child later, and getting married on New years Eve.
November 17, 2010 at 10:54 pm |
Just curious. You’re called Paul and have a child, but you current partner appears to be a man (beau is masculine – if it was a woman it would be belle). So how does that work then? Adopted, stolen…?
November 10, 2010 at 10:59 am |
Would this just be your first date with him or would it be your first date ever as well?
If it’s the latter, then I’d suggest coming clean with the fella. If not, then on the date be happy-go-lucky & behave as if it’s just a movie with a friend. He would surely pick up that your feelings for him are not romantic and he will not suffer the pain of an outright rejection.
On my first ever date I took my then girlfriend for a romantic-comedy and then we went for ice-cream. It was pretty sweet
November 10, 2010 at 9:44 am |
I took a girl to see Saving Private Ryan.
Cate: tell your friend to grow a pair and ask out other girls rather than hitting on existing friends. Find someone in his league to set him up with.