Just wanted to run this by you guys see if you have some tips for me.

My lady friend and I meet up at a tiny intimate wine bar, I immediately work on coming off as high energy and a great listener. We're unfortunately sitting across each other, couldn't find anything better, but I still manage to get a good amount of touching in, plenty of shoulder pats when I get up go order drinks/bill etc. She's laughing non-stop, a lot of push-pull and teasing, which she receives beautifully, building a good connection. I'm using a lot of statements, talking as much as possible about personal life events, how that shaped me, really opening up. She seems to take all the baits and responds with her own side of it. After a few really bland recent first dates, seems like there's finally the combination of her liking me and me driving the conversation right.

An hour in I decide it's time to bounce, the place is getting steamy and loud. Time to get some exotic ice-cream a couple of blocks away. At this point I know I like her and I've attracted, I decide (Thanks Manson) I'm going to be aggressive with pushing the date forward: a couple of blocks into walking to our destination, I say "Wait.." (Thanks whoever wrote that post about this on seddit), pull her in and kiss her. She doesn't resist, but is also shocked that I went for it 1h after meeting her. I hold her hand and walk on, but she's still clearly not quite processing it and is blushing very heavily, being very shy and cute about, trying to cover it up. Of course I tease her about it :) I ask her if everything's ok and she says "Yeah sure, just not expecting it etc" to which I go with the canonical "If you're not comfortable with something, just let me know, we'll go with what you prefer", to which she replies "Oh no it's ok.. I just met you though..". I'm pretty sure nobody's done that to her before, so I'm feeling pretty accomplished. It felt good to be in the moment for the first time and to just do whatever the hell I wanted, without excuses or justifications.

We grab ice cream and sit around at the park chatting. She's definitely starting to touch back a lot as we speak, going as far as touching my face as I push-pull her. More escalation, although I'm easing off the kissing for now just to let her settle in. We chat some more, it gets cold, I decide we go on a rather long walk to find some hot tea. She's happy to follow. At this point we've been out for a good 3 hours, and she doesn't want to check out yet, again a pretty good sign. We grab some tea, chat some more for another hourish, then it's time to go.

On the way back we make out, and now she's holding my hand very comfortably, no resistance. However as we're waiting for our train, she starts dropping some massive hintzillas when I ask her when I'm seeing her next week:

  • She's in town only a few days a week, so those are the only convenient times (really? You can't inconvenience yourself for me? It's a 30m commuter train ride, or 20ish mins by car.. bad sign). It's a hassle to coordinate seeing people with the times she's in town (ok...)
  • She clarifies that she's interested in seeing a few people at once, doesn't want any kind of exclusivity (I didn't ask about that, but ok..)
  • One of the few days she's in town next week, she already has a date setup with someone else (Ok, good to know I guess?), so next week is not an option. She says she's sure I have other people I can go out with that week, so it's not going to be a big deal for me.
  • She's not sure it's a good idea to date someone who lives in the city as it's so inconvenient (Ok, I'm not worth it? Not a problem I guess, but you already made your way out of the suburbs to see me in the first place, so the logic is not sound).

This felt like some strange last minute buyer's remorse, I've never experienced anything like this before and have no point of reference for how to understand this. This finally felt like a really great 1st date, and yet the ending was so chock full of negative hints that I'm really confused about how that worked. It's possible I've overinvested in her towards the end as I felt us getting closer, meaning that she figured this wasn't going to be much of a challenge any longer, hence no fun. Not sure though.

It's also possible that I pushed so hard that she pretty much had no idea what was going on the entire time and she only got a chance to assess the situation at the last second, but I'm not too willing to buy that version.

I'm pretty much going to ease off of her for a bit, maybe drop her a text towards the end of next week without showing too much involvement see where she's at, but otherwise cut off all communication to make sure I don't give the impression of being too easy, although there's a 95% chance it's too late anyway.

Any thoughts on this? Has this happened to you guys before?