BenMVP.com: Men and Women Would Like to Know: Ummm... is this a date?

So last week I asked the ladies if there were any places or situations in which they felt that a dude hollerin' would be inappropriate or otherwise not well received. After a lot of high-larious stories about the rude, crude, and downright crazy ways that guys have tried to get at them, I believe the consensus was that it's more about the how than the where. That makes sense. The approach is like 90% of the battle.

Some ladies mentioned that they don't like to be hollered at all, and instead prefer the guy to approach them on the friend tip. Then if she's interested, she'll turn it into something more than friends. I agree that when time permits, that's definitely the best strategy. Shoot, I don't even know if I wanna holla at a girl until I've at least talked to her. But I do want to point out that even if the dude comes with the "platonic" approach, he's still tryna holla. He's just not coming on full throttle like these guys. CHOCOLATE TWANKIE!!

Anyway, let's get on with today's topic. Since this one actually applies to both men and women, I guess this would be the 10th episode of the "Men Would Like to Know" series and only the 3rd of the "Women Would Like to Know" series.

So what makes a date a date? Is it simply when a guy and a girl go out together? Or does one specifically have to ask the other to go out? Is it a date only when one person pays (for the dinner, the movie, etc.)? Can it be a date if only one person has romantic feelings for the other? Or do both people have to like each other for it be classified as a date?

Is it date if flowers are involved?

Me and my girl were reminiscing about when we first started dating. She started talking about our first date, and I quickly realized that what she considered to be our first date, I considered to be our third, if not our fourth. The discrepancy came about because we had two different criteria for what constituted a date.

You see before we started dating, me and Ari were acquaintances and had mutual friends at church. We would usually say hello and make small talk whenever we ran into each other, but not much more than that. But one time after service, we were talking to a mutual friend and then she had to take off, leaving us together to continue a conversation. After about 15-20 minutes, she asked if I wanted to grab some coffee down the street. I don't drink coffee at all, but I'm down for a hot chocolate or apple cider (with a cute female).

I offer to pay for both our drinks, we sit down, and end up talking for about another hour before she has to dip out. Before she leaves, I mention that there's this free outdoor jazz concert going on the next weekend (I just found out she loves jazz) and asked if she'd like to roll. She says "OMG, I'd love to go!" and we exchange numbers so I can hit her up during the week with more info (at least that's the reason I gave for getting her number).

The next day at work, I quickly cop this jazz t-shirt so that I can wear it when we go out Saturday afternoon. Lame? Yep, I know. But she loves the shirt and we have a blast listening to jazz while eating cotton candy and laffy taffy. It's around dinnertime when the concert is winding down, so I suggest we go out to eat. The convo is great and this time she volunteers to pay since I paid the last time. Plus two points for her.

Apparently roller skating is a date

So at this point, I'm definitely feeling her and believe that I'm definitely in there (like swimwear). I hit her up on Wednesday to see if she'd like to do dinner and a movie that Saturday. From what I've learned, Wednesday is the day to set something up cuz it's not too early in the week (like Monday/Tuesday) that you seem too sprung and wanna lock up her weekend before the week even begins, but not too late (like Thursday or even Friday) that she feels like she was a last-minute thought. Having female friends has it's benefits.

The dinner was good and the movie was only aiight, but we still had a good time. Now during the next week, we start choppin it up on g-chat (cuz AIM is sooo last year) basically every day and at some point we make the decision to go roller skating on Friday. At the roller rink, we skate during the couple's song, holding hands and all that cute mushy stuff that girls like to do. I may have enjoyed it as well. But that night, when I dropped her off, was our first kiss and that's when she claims to have realized we were dating.

So what then were the jazz concert and dinner/movie outings? Were they just two "friends" hanging out? I, on the other hand, considered our first date to be when we went to the jazz concert. In fact, when we went out for coffee after church service, that was what I call a "pre date." It's kinda like a stripped down version of date. The purpose is to get to know the person as best as possible without a big commitment of time and/or money. It's like a risk-free trial. You can always dip out right when you've finished the $5 coffee if things get bad.

The question of whether or not an outing is in fact a date only really comes about when you already know the person. If I holla at a random girl I meet somewhere and we go out, that's a date. I don't think there's any confusion there. But if it's someone I already kinda sorta know, then there could be some ambiguity because we could just be "hanging out" as opposed to "going out."

I've had a number of people (both guys and girls) tell me about these ambiguous situations and ask me what I think is going on. Usually from an outsider's perspective it's easy to tell what's going on, but sometimes it's not so clear. And there are two main reasons for this.

The first is that the person who initiated the outing (usually the dude) wasn't direct enough for fear of rejection. Nobody wants to be rejected, so instead of saying something like "would you like to go out with me?" it's something more like "do you wanna hang out?" or "let's kick it."

I believe the second reason is because girls are actually interested in making new friends with guys they don't know. For me, it's extremely rare to want to actively make friends with a girl who I barely know or don't know at all. If I'm spending my time trying to get to know a girl, then I'm definitely trying to get at her. But for the ladies, that doesn't seem to always be the case. I've definitely come across girls who've basically said "I just thought he was cool and I wanted to see if we could be friends." And I'm not talking about Brittini from The Real World XX: Hollywood. Again for me, I don't have time for all of that.

But back to the main question. What makes a date a date? If she orders the finest wine, is it definitely a date then? Is it only a date when it's sealed with a kiss? Both men and women would like to know...

This blog post is purely fictional. Any similarity or connection to actual people, places or events is purely coincidental. For educational purposes only.

Update: Check out the facebook note version of this blog entry for many more comments on this topic.