Hey, I've been lurking on here for a while, the field reports are really interesting so I thought I'd write one up and hopefully get some feedback.

Quick background on me, I'm 26, male, pretty average looking, was in a relationship for about 7 years but broke up nearly a year ago, it's taken a long time for me to get back into the whole idea of dating girls. I've got a lot of work to do, generally need to work on my personal image and confidence and start approaching girls more.

I started using Tinder and Happn over the past few weeks, had quite a few matches, maybe nearly 50ish between both apps over the past 6-8 weeks. Only one has resulted in a meet up so far, though possibly will have one more next week.

So I'd arranged to meet this girl after work for some drinks, we'd been chatting a little bit on and off on happn and through text and our humour seemed pretty similar, both extremely sarcastic. I go have a quick drink with some friends at a pub before heading to meet her. I'm not feeling nervous, one thing that's cool recently is I tend to not really get nervous or anxious as much as I used to, not sure why.

I get to the pub and meet her at the bar. She looks really fucking cute. One thing I immediately regretted, a mistake I won't make again...is to make a fucking effort to scrub up a bit before the date, even if it's under the pretense of post-work drinks. I was in a sweaty t shirt, jeans, converse and a sports jacket, she had jewellery, lipstick, make up etc. Fuck.

Ah well. I greet her with a kiss on both cheeks as I'm a grown up now and that's what grown ups do even though I'm generally awkward as fuck doing that. We sit down with a couple of drinks and start chatting. It's all going really well, chatting about life, work etc and it's pretty funny and relaxed. She suggests we go grab some food and I'm for it so we go exploring the area near where I live. Another mistake I feel I made was not having any sort of rough plan for how the night should proceed, I'd literally put no thought into how it was going to go. I ended up letting her make all the choices, which she seemed to enjoy doing but I think overall it put me in a much more negative light. She was running the date pretty much.

She takes me to a nice food place and it soon dawns on me that her knowledge of food and drink is way beyond me. Most of the stuff on the menu I'd never even heard of and she took great joy in going through everything and describing it and picking what we should eat. But I feel at this stage I slipped into a bit of a submissive frame of mind if that's the right way of putting it? I suddenly felt like this girl was out of my league and would be better off with some rich toff. Ah well. I try to brush it off and keep positive and we continue chatting and joking and teasing each other.

It was at this stage we began talking about exes, we were both out of a big relationship in the last year so spoke about this in length, which I feel was a mistake, kinda felt like this was getting me into friend-zone territory. Going to keep note to avoid this type of conversation...

The food and drink is great but we decide to explore and move on to another bar, we go to sit outside. Had a bit of a lucky moment here. I don't smoke too much but picked up a pack of Camels beforehand just in case, can be nice having a cigarette when you're drinking/relaxing. As we're sitting outside she says she really gets cravings to have a ciggy when she's drinking outside...so it was lucky I brought some along. We sit drinking and chatting and smoking and it goes pretty well.

We continue on exploring and finding different nooks and crannies of the city streets, some little secluded parks etc. There was a nice moment when we were alone in a churchyard which could have been a good moment to kiss her but I hadn't gotten that vibe from her yet, we hadn't had much kino or anything, and I was having fun so didn't want to ruin the night by making things awkward. Really should have used this opportunity to do something a bit more romantic though.

We go to a nice cocktail bar down the road and have some cocktails and more food. It's pretty shwanky in there, lots of suits hanging out. I'm still feeling a bit beta because I literally have never been to any of these places and it's pretty close to my place so I get the impression she's starting to think it's a little weird that I don't go to these bars. I kinda get the feeling the 'beta-ness' is affecting my posture and conversation and stuff, but maybe I was just crashing a bit.

We continue chatting in this bar anyway and it's going ok. One interesting thing I noticed is when we were talking about music she took out her ear phones and made me listen to one of her favourite songs. This was interesting to me as I'd been on a date very similar to this with a beautiful girl who I bumped into in New York a few months before. We'd had a very similar night of bar-hopping and there was a stage where she shared her ear phones with me, is this common? I'm wondering if it's a positive or negative thing.

Anyway, the night starts coming to an end as the bar closes up and we're kicked out. I'm not feeling too buzzed unfortunately, I think I should have gotten a few shots in and maybe found a place to go dancing, but she said she had a meeting in the morning for work so she decides to head home. I'm not feeling much of a sexual vibe from her at this stage but it is frustrating as I think it might have been in my control and I just blew it with some basic mistakes and a loss of confidence. I kiss her on the cheek goodbye and head home. She texts me to say goodbye and I text her back a funny reference to something we'd been joking about earlier in the evening.

I wake up the next morning a little frustrated. I feel I really liked this girl and potentially could have swung it in my favour but honestly I blew it. Felt a bit of one-itis setting in...she was really cute and intelligent and I just felt like shit all day. I sent her a quick text later that day referencing something that had happened at work, but no response. It's been a few days since the and I can see she's been active on happn so I'm guessing that's the end of that chapter. Oh well.

[TLDR]:

  • Dress up a bit, even if it's casual drinks, put a fucking shirt on, have a shower etc. Otherwise confidence will suffer. The girl will make an effort to look good.

  • Don't talk about exes for an extended amount of time as it ruins the atmosphere.

  • Even if she seems out of your league, try not to let it get to you. I found my self-deprecating sarcastic sense of humour went on overdrive once I realised how intelligent and cultured she seemed to be. That definitely ruined the night.

  • I have no kino skills. Peck on the cheek as a greeting is a good start and breaks that initial boundary I feel but after that I'm lost.

  • Unfortunately accept defeat and move on. I blew the date with some basic mistakes and a lack of confidence, and I was punished by driving away a girl I feel I could have potentially gotten to see again and maybe won her over.

  • Would be really interested to hear about this earphone-sharing thing, as it's happend on both dates with very similar girls...

Looking forward to hearing some feedback - cheers!