Second date help!

[Blazingdragoon04]

Haha, once again I find myself here asking for advice. I don't want to spam the message boards, but I'm just very... anxious about this dating procedure. I'm confident in person, but all these "games" and "rules" and what not... just so confusing and frustrating some times!

Anyways... I need a bit of advice. I went out on a date with someone that I met online. We'd been taking for... almost a month now really. Things went really well; I may have played it a bit conservatively but she still seemed very interested in seeing me again. Problem is, I don't want to blow my chances at getting to that point by being overly smothering or needy...

So, I called her the next day, got her v-mail, and left her a message about how much fun I had, nothing too serious. Then we got to texting back and forth. So now, its 3 days later, and I'm just getting worried I might be a bit too intense so I'm dialing it back a bit.

My question is this. I definitely want to see her again, preferably this weekend, and it seems like she'd be down with doing that too. What I want to know is how should I approach this? I had a couple of ideas...

My first was to not text her back tomorrow, since I was the last one to send a message, and then get back to her Wednesday and ask her out via text. Kind of lame, but I don't want to come off as overbearing and always needing to talk. TO be honest, I'd love to keep messaging her, but so many people and sites say to keep it distant for a while... not sure why since I'm not very good at these games...

My other idea was to text her tomorrow and tell her that I'm gonna be busy all day, so if she tries to get a hold of me I'll be busy, but that I'll call her Wednesday night. Not sure if I should include a bit about "maybe we can plan something for this weekend then?", as that might be a bit too needy too. At the same time though, it definitely shows that I'm interested, so I'm conflicted. Does having something to look forward to make her more excited to talk to me after a period of just not talking, or is it better to just be spontaneous?

So how should I go about doing this? I really don't want to mess this up...any thoughts on my plans, be they criticism or not, or some other alternative would be extremely appreciated.

 

[Vegosiux]

You're overthinking it. Forget the "game". Forget the "rules". Sure, maybe you leave a day, focus on your own stuff, just live your day as usual, and then on Wednesday, if you want, you just ask if she's free on the weekend, and if she wants to get together again, leave her to decide yes or no, and if yes, plan the time and place (or even ask her where and when it would suit her most). If no, you say no problem, some other time then.

Oh and don't go and pretend you're busy just so you see if she calls you, that's...just going to make you even more nervous. Just go about your day as normal. But there's no rule about "You have to not pay attention to her for X hours after your last message" or anything.

 

[Murrdox]

You're overthinking it. Forget the "game". Forget the "rules". Sure, maybe you leave a day, focus on your own stuff, just live your day as usual, and then on Wednesday, if you want, you just ask if she's free on the weekend, and if she wants to get together again, leave her to decide yes or no, and if yes, plan the time and place (or even ask her where and when it would suit her most). If no, you say no problem, some other time then.

Oh and don't go and pretend you're busy just so you see if she calls you, that's...just going to make you even more nervous. Just go about your day as normal. But there's no rule about "You have to not pay attention to her for X hours after your last message" or anything.

A thousand times this. You're overthinking it. You said you met this girl online, but you didn't say whether you met her specifically on a dating website or not. If you DID meet her on a dating site, your hesitation is that much more unnecessary. If she's talking to you, you KNOW she's interested. There's no need to play games with her.

Just call the girl already (I'm old, I don't understand why people don't actually talk to each other anymore... all you people seem to want to do is text!) and ask her if she'd like to get together this weekend! Have some kind of a plan for what you can do together so the conversation doesn't devolve into "Sure, what do you want to do?" "I don't know, what do YOU want to do?" "Well, I'm up for whatever..."

 

[Blazingdragoon04]

You're overthinking it. Forget the "game". Forget the "rules". Sure, maybe you leave a day, focus on your own stuff, just live your day as usual, and then on Wednesday, if you want, you just ask if she's free on the weekend, and if she wants to get together again, leave her to decide yes or no, and if yes, plan the time and place (or even ask her where and when it would suit her most). If no, you say no problem, some other time then.

Oh and don't go and pretend you're busy just so you see if she calls you, that's...just going to make you even more nervous. Just go about your day as normal. But there's no rule about "You have to not pay attention to her for X hours after your last message" or anything.

A thousand times this. You're overthinking it. You said you met this girl online, but you didn't say whether you met her specifically on a dating website or not. If you DID meet her on a dating site, your hesitation is that much more unnecessary. If she's talking to you, you KNOW she's interested. There's no need to play games with her.

Just call the girl already (I'm old, I don't understand why people don't actually talk to each other anymore... all you people seem to want to do is text!) and ask her if she'd like to get together this weekend! Have some kind of a plan for what you can do together so the conversation doesn't devolve into "Sure, what do you want to do?" "I don't know, what do YOU want to do?" "Well, I'm up for whatever..."

Ah, maybe I should clarify this. We did meet on a dating site; not sure how many of you are aware of the site OkCupid, but that would be where we met.

I've noticed that my ideals don't seem to line up with the mentality of advice forums on dating sites and sites like AskMen (hence why I do a lot of my advice seeking here.) I was reading through a bunch of articles and they just came off to me as being excessively misogynistic: Treating women like interchangable objects, suggesting playing games over and over, using manipulation techniques, all that jazz. Maybe it's the fact that I consider myself to be an empathic guy, or maybe it's because I've studied psychology for years and understand that, while effective, manipulation techniques are by and large extremely immoral.

Oh, and I LOVE talking on the phone. I don't get why more people don't do it. I blame the age of texting, tweeting, and being able to just hide behind a message instead of having to talk to people in person.

I think my ultimate plan is to let her decide what to do next time, but not in just a "I'll do whatever" kind of way. In an attempt to make things interesting, I was gonna ask her to think of something that she hasn't done in our city: something that she's always wanted to do, or hadn't done yet, and just hasn't for one reason or another. I've got a few ideas myself on the backburner, but I figured this was an interesting way for her to pick something fun to do!

I think my biggest fear is just smothering her and killing the interest too fast.

 

[Murrdox]

I think my biggest fear is just smothering her and killing the interest too fast.

Okay, if you met on OKCupid, you've been talking for a month and you've been on one date, I can tell you you're MOST DEFINITELY over-thinking things. You don't have to play coy. You're not in a situation where you're not sure if she likes you or not so you have to be tentative about contacting her. You know she's interested, otherwise she wouldn't have even bothered responding to you on OKCupid.

Your biggest fear should not be smothering her and killing the interest too fast.

Your biggest fear should be that if you drag your feet and hestitate too much, she's going to meet someone ELSE on OKcupid, and lose interest in you. You want to get another date scheduled pronto.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Snip

Has anyone stopped by yet to tell you you're over-thinking it?

You're totally over-thinking it. Just relax and try to be fun and happy on your dates, instead of wound up and neurotic because you're worried about blowing it.