What Women Mean When They Say “You Choose.”
It doesn’t mean “your choice.”
Recently had some discussion with my wife about where to go for dates and thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned over the years.
Women aren’t being cryptic
I’d thought for a long time women were vague on purpose. Some fallacies included:
- Women want you to know what they want, to be able to read their minds.
- Not being able to read their minds indicates your inability to date
- No matter what, you lose
Turns out that maybe some women are this way, but there’s a better reason for women to say “you choose” that I think represents.
They want to have the luxury of picking options, not coming up with them. It’s your job, as part of dating, to come up with the options.
In my experience, women have a lot more choices to make than men do. What sort of ways to wear their hair, what jewelry to wear, what clothes to wear, etc. etc.
Pile onto that the choice of where to go, and the options just multiply.
Different locations call for different attire (a hike vs. a movie), but also different logistics (do I meet you there, do I drive? I need my good driving shoes!)
This puts women into “choice paralysis.” And the antidote to choice paralysis, a lot of the time, is to offload the choosing.
So… You choose.
Knowing is half the battle, Asking is the other half
So given that you have to make the choice, what can go wrong?
Well… many things can go wrong, such is the power of choosing.
I’ll get into the best way to present options, but don’t set yourself up for failure. If you don’t like doing something, don’t martyr yourself to make the other person happy. You’ll just make them feel miserable as you pout on your super expensive dinner date.
So the best things to know when coming up with a date are:
- Is this something YOU want to do
- Is this something SHE wants to do
- Is it relatively out of the way (going out for lunch if you’re coworkers probably doesn’t count)
The danger of doing something convenient is that a woman won’t see that as “a date.” That’s just palling around. You’re not going to have much luck wooing a woman by taking her to the bar you always go to after work.
If you don’t know what she wants to do, you’re going to have to ask her.
But remember to be specific. Don’t ask: “What kind of food do you like?” Ask: “What’s your favorite Thai place?” And then if she hates Thai food (but seriously who does?) then you can start over somewhere else.
Asking is a big part of coming up with good ideas for dates, especially if you don’t know the person well. Also you might be surprised if you ask someone you’ve dated for a while, if you’ve just been doing dates on autopilot you might find she’s got different ideas on what makes for a good date.
The best way to present options
When in doubt, the agreed upon “datebox.”
Write down a bunch of date ideas on pieces of paper, and make sure you both agree that they count as dates.
Make them specific enough so that you don’t have too much leeway (Dinner is bad, Dinner at our favorite sushi place is good). Then just pull something from the date box. If it keeps getting rejected (no we just went to the movies), then maybe remove it from the datebox.
In the case you don’t have a datebox, my personal favorite is the “two options.”
Don’t start going through the list (what about Mexican food, Thai food, Indian food, the movie theater, that new bar). This just basically opens your partner back up to choice paralysis. Instead, you find two, decently different but good options, and present them.
- Good: Would you like to go Ice Skating or Watch a Movie?
- Bad: Would you like to go to the Mexican place on 50th Street or the Taco stand on 51st Street?
Similar options just invite choice paralysis again. If you can’t come up with different enough options, you’re not trying hard enough!
Summary
- Choosing is work, and being a good option presenter is part of dating
- Do something you both want to do, that’s out of the way
- Make the choosing effortless (two options or one random one)
Hopefully this bit of dating knowledge will help you come up with some decent dates.
