Surviving Dating Disasters

Not everybody can glide seamlessly for doorstep to doorstep without a hitch. The transition from beginning to middle to end of a date has more opportunities for heartbreak and disaster than a Dickens novel, but never you fear. We’ve got a few preparatory tips for you so that when you’re out there where love is a battlefield, you’ll be armed to the teeth (with a handy utility belt!), and ready for anything.

Cash/gas up

This is the first and one of the oldest rules of dating. Go get gas and go get cash. Why don’t you do it right now so you don’t have trouble later. Consider this horror story from Nick, aged 24. “I took a girl to a seaside seafood restaurant and a nearby movie once.   I almost never carry cash, and when we got there, they had had one of those needless valets where they drive your car ten feet. She had to pay for me. Then I ran out of gas and they only took cash. She had to pay for that. Then she had to pay for parking at the theater, too. Needless to say, buying her popcorn and tickets wasn’t quite enough to even the score – definitely no second date.” 

Protect yourself

Usually when you’re walking into battle, you’re protecting yourself for worst case scenarios. That’s not exactly what we’re talking about.   If things should go swimmingly (perhaps literally if skinny dipping in stranger’s hot tubs is involved), you’re going to need a different kind of prophylaxis.  We suggest the Ecstasy line from Trojan as they have an evolutionary shape and deeper-than-average ribs. You only get one first impression, one not making it an ergonomic, ribbed, stimulating one. 

Avoid the exes

This seems like a no-brainer, and it doesn’t seem like something you can control, but you can. The simple fact is that most people have a set number of places they go in a city, and when you date somebody, those places ten to mash up.   The average number of friends a human has is 150, but the closer friends are about a group of 35. BBC describes it thusly: They usually consist of an inner circle of five “core” people and an additional layer of 10, he says. That makes 15 people – some will probably be family members – who are your central group and then outside that, there’s another 35 in the next circle and another 100 on the outside. And that’s one person’s social world.

To avoid awkward run-ins, you need to go to a part of town you’ve never been to and a place you’ve never tried. The number of meta reviews on the internet preclude you from complaining that you won’t know if it’s any good – it’s certainly better than running into Karen. Karen is always a douche.

 G.I. Jumbles

Nothing stops a date (or any other social gathering) in its tracks like a case of pretty-much-anything-going-wrong-with-your-G.I.-tract.   You don’t want anything unsavory coming out of you – either end – in any sense of the word for this, so your best bet is to do some prep work ahead of time. Alex Wise, an online dating expert from Loveawake dating site, in an interview with HuffPost, offers these three steps: 

1. Make sure and eat conservatively the day of the date – bland things colored yellow and white. 
2. Go for a run before the date. This will loosen up any potentially embarrassing impediments to romance as well as reduce your stress levels
3. Drink plenty of water – it aids digestion and if you end up accidentally having a third glass of wine because the dreamgirl you just met hasn’t finished giving you her three stooges editorialized biopic, it’ll do you good.

Have an ace up your sleeve

The best preparation you can have is an escape plan. Not away from your date – that’s easy – just say you’ve got no money, bad diarrhea, or that you have to call an ex (ignore above rule). What we’re talking about is a secret plan to step things up a notch or to get out of a sticky situation. Let’s say you do run into an ex, or a snooty French maître d’, and you need to split and split quick. You need a place where you can escape to – do a little research and find a quiet café, homey dive bar, or any less obvious version of Make Out Point that you can. Keep that hot little card up your cuff, just in case, and you should be set to jet.