Haven't had a date in almost a year; first date since lurking seddit for about a month. Me [M] 25, her [F] 21.

Started conversation on okc with a message from something in her profile we both do. She responds with detailed answer, ask me a different question back. I respond and ask another question back, this goes on until about 4 or 5 message later. I send a message with my number suggesting meetup, she reciprocates with her number and agreeing AND name (oops on me for not doing that in the first place, lol).

Send a text with my name, she responds with asking what I'm doing. I try to DHV by saying that I'm busy, and telling her what interesting stuff I'm doing. This part is new to me that I've never done before seddit: I wait a long time before responding to her texts, usually at least 6 hours, and sometimes not til the next day if I forget.

Eventually I ask her to meet, but not by asking "Hey [name], we should meet up, let's do something friday". She accepts and inquires to activity, I respond with a location and time without telling her what it is, I just say "secret". She eventually figured it out anyway...

I gave her a call the day before we met up, just as a creeper-check, because I've had bad experiences with some girls on okc before, and wanted to get a verbal verification of normality, she passed and we met up.

We went to Improv, which goes from 11pm-1am. There was a lot of good conversation before the show, and during the breaks. During we were both laughing and having a good time. I tried to kino by lightly touching her back when we started walking to guide her, knee / thigh touching during seated conversation, and occasionally touching her arms / hand to make a point.

Part way through the good conversation, I think I fucked up. All the stuff she was talking about I found really interesting, and at one point I switched from "DHV and be outcome independent" to "I really like her, I hope she likes me too!" I ended up falling back on the principle of people like talking about themselves, so I listened really carefully to everything she said, I tried to focus on using language to elicit responses from her, and whenever I felt I was talking too much I would turn it back focusing on her.

At this point things were still going reasonably well, but felt that I was conveying less dating value than her. The stuff I was saying was more along the lines of "if I say this I hope she'll like me" rather than "I'm awesome, and I'm going to say this, and I don't care what she thinks". There wasn't any negative responses to my kino, but I found it difficult to escalate from touching the knee. While we were sitting together I didn't want to hold her hand b/c I thought that would come off as needy.

Eventually we made our way to a lounge after, had a few drinks. I sat across from her at the table, which I think was a huge mistake b/c we were far away and it was super awkward to try and kino.

At the end she said she had to get up early, so she had to go home. We said good-bye outside the bar, just hugged, kiss on her cheek, and walked to our own cars.

TL;DR #-close on okc, met for improv, good convo & some kino, difficulty in constantly DHV'ing, maintaining outcome independence, & kino escalation, H-close

any tips, comments suggestions? specifically on maintaining outcome independence when you realize you "like" a girl, and how to escalate kino

p.s. I've been trying to apply the principles of seddit to all my relationships in my life to great success; I've only been on here for a month and I'm already noticing people wanting me to do stuff with them more, and female friends are more interested in talking / spending time with me

ninjaedit: formatting