Host: What should I do on my first meeting?

Gloria MacDonald: So lets say you have e-mailed someone through online dating or you have been introduced to someone through friends, you have been setup for a blind date through friends or you have been introduced to someone through a dating service and you are about to meet that person for the very first time, maybe a blind date, what do you do? Well, a clue for you men, women really love it if you take the initiative to make the phone call to setup the date and I highly recommend that you talk to somebody on the phone to setup the meeting. I dont recommend you do it through e-mail. It just warms it up a little bit, so you at least hear a voice on the phone before you meet that person. It is just a little bit helpful before that first meeting to have some more personal contact than just e-mail.

So guys, take the initiative to phone the women and get together for something casual. Do drinks or coffee. Do not do a full sit down dinner at a formal restaurant. It just, if it is awkward for any reason then you are really stuck and you can be stuck in that restaurant for an hour and a half to two hours.

So I highly recommend you take as much pressure off the situation as possible. If you are going to meet for coffee, meet at a nice place. Dont meet at a cheap donut place, meet at a Starbucks or Sun bearing nice coffee place or meet for drink somewhere and if you are meeting for drinks maybe after work, the beauty of that is you have the conversation is really flowing in and you are really enjoying one another, you can go from drinks onto dinner.

One of the things I recommend is if you are meeting for drinks, very often nice hotels will have a very nice lounge or bar and its a public place, its not a pub, its a little more upscale. Again, it depends upon your age range. If you are in your 20s and you want to go to a pub, thats great.

If you are in your 40s, in your 50s, you probably want to do something a little more upscale, so, maybe a lounge or the bar in a nice hotel. So, do something casual, take as much pressure off the situation as possible. Dont commit yourself to an hour and a half or two hour dinner and by all means, men, phone the women and one of the things that you should do is have a couple of suggestions for places where you might be able to meet.

So, suggest to her a couple of times and places. Women also love it if you have ideas already and you can suggest something. But you also want to leave it open to the woman. You want to be very cautious that in a blind dating situation, the women be a little bit more concerned about her personal safety.

So, offer to do something in her neighborhood of the city, somewhere that she has been to, somewhere that she would be comfortable, just be aware of that and offer somewhere that might be a little more convenient for her than it might be for you.