Putting the chance for a nightcap of sex to the side with the person you just spent five hours with, what’s the goal of a first date?
Or, to be more focused, what’s the purpose?
The answers differ depending on where a person happens to be on their dating journey. The freshly-divorced, newly single woman who spent her twenties and thirties focused on her husband and his needs, her preteen, and an unexpected toddler that was, basically, the makeup baby for a relationship that emotionally ended five years prior, and…then herself – in that order – could be on the date to be reminded that she is, in fact, desired by men half her age. She’s an effortless beauty in her early forties who is still peaking – and her ex-husband lost sight of that.
Why is she there?
To bask in the attention she missed out on and to smile like a hanger’s been in her mouth overnight. It’s all fun for her. She deserves it. For two decades, she wasn’t the priority. Tonight, she is.
For the undergraduate who’s the last single guy in his friend group, approaching his final spring semester, he’s on the date to see if he can get the smartest girl on the entire campus – who’s headed across the pond to study Criminology at Oxford, after wrapping four years of Business Administration coursework in 3.5 in order to hand her parents that degree and tell them to “Fuck off!”- back to his apartment. Off campus. He’s proud of the place. It’s a real dump.
She’s there for the possibility of sex too. Don’t take her wry smile as a sign of passivity. She’s hunting for an uncommitted, absent of emotion, session in bed that can last 60 minutes, at the least. She also wants to cum. Preferably twice – if he has the stamina to aid in her mission without losing himself in the process. You get the innuendo. It isn’t clever.
He drones on about being the odd-ball without a girlfriend. How he’s shunned from group activities. Actually, he was left of out the plans to take a four-day weekend in San Diego. He was set to be the ninth-wheel but he was down to buy the ticket regardless. The friend group is inevitably splitting after graduation. They’re all trying to hold on. He’s nursing a beer and spilling his guts. He never bought that ticket to San Diego. The four girlfriends held a secret council meeting and vetoed his attendance. His four friends broke the news to him in the emotionally stilted and juvenile way that men in their twenties express themselves.
He's actively talking his way out of watching her undress in an hour. Their purposes for this first date were aligned up until the midpoint. Primarily around his fourth IPA. She wants to mount him. He…wants a therapy session. As the campus bar fills with hopefuls, she scans the room. One of the two will be going home to sleep. The other will blissfully rest after two orgasms.
What is the purpose of a first date?
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