Top 10 Blind Dating Tips

Going on a blind date? Here are a few tips for making the most of your blind dating experience:

• The best time for a blind date is lunch, or if it must be in the evening meet for drinks or coffee rather than dinner. If the meeting is scheduled to be short and casual, you’ll find far less pressure put on your blind date. You also won’t have to be concerned about the propriety of who is to pay for the dinner.
• Choose someplace quiet and someplace where you won’t run into several friends who stop and say hello. This is the time to pay attention to your date, not everyone else.
• Etiquette is an important part of your best blind date and an important tip. Avoid sarcasm, talking badly about other people, telling rude or crude jokes, using racial or ethnic slurs, and making suggestive comments. Especially if you are the male, the latter will make a very nervous blind date – and one probably not destined to see you again.
• Avoid controversial topics. A blind date isn’t the place to discuss how much you hate organized religion or how liberal your politics are. The exception is if this blind date is made after you are brought together online or otherwise and have determined that you have these attitudes in common.
• Courtesy, above all, is the rule for a blind date, no matter how disappointed you might be at the person sitting across the table from you.
• Ignore your cell phone calls. Better yet, you should turn your cell phone off, unless you are prohibited. The latter might be a physician on call, a police officer and so forth. If that is the case, the first thing you’ll want to do is explain that you might have to respond to some emergency call, but you’ll ignore all others.
• Your blind date shouldn’t be the one night search for your true love. Talk about pressure! Our tip is to avoid that kind of stress by telling yourself that this meeting is the chance to go out and have a good time and maybe meet somebody nice. Perhaps you won’t find your perfect mate, but you just might meet a new friend.
• Listen to your blind date – that’s an important tip. Listening at the first meeting is much more important than talking. Don’t avoid disclosing enough about yourself to seem open and honest, but don’t monopolize the conversation.
• Come armed with questions to keep the conversation flowing. These questions should be open-ended, to get your blind date talking. Asking, “What brought you to Boston?” could elicit a lot more conversation than, “How many years have you been in Boston?”
• While you might be dating someone that your friends know, don’t ask too many questions before you actually meet. Make your own decisions, rather than letting someone else’ biases negatively coloring your opinion before the blind date even happens.