It's Just Lunch Dating Service did a survey about first dates and here are the results:
I hope this gives you some insight into first dates with women
Advice for Men on Using Personal Ads to Meet Women
We've all heard horror stories about personal ads. Lonely women who placed personal ads and were ripped off (or worse) by smooth-talking con artists. Perhaps the woman who responded to man's personal ad and developed a Fatal Attraction-type obsession about him. It can and does happen. You might meet one of those types of people through the personal ads...but the odds are at least as good that you'll meet someone like that in a bar, at school or at church.
Some of are old enough to remember when the only personal ad we had ever heard about were in The Berkeley Barb or The Village Voice and were placed for the purpose of meeting people with, well, unusual "hobbies." Personal ads have come a long way. You can still read an ad from a professional man who has tattoos, rides a Harley motorcycle and wants to meet an Asian transsexual who likes classical music, romantic dinners and long sensual walks along the beach. For God's sake, how else are two people like that going to meet except through a personal ad? You can also read an ad from a man with a good education who has a heart of gold but doesn't meet many women because he's a very busy urologist.
Do some people lie about themselves in their ads or when they respond to an ad? Of course they do. The people who write and respond to personal ads are a cross-section of the general population. No better, no worse. My experience, and the experience of many people that I've talked to, is that you meet the good, the bad, the ugly, the honest and the dishonest through the personal ads.
I'm here to give you some ideas about how you can write an ad or pick out ads to respond to and increase your chances of meeting the good and minimize your chances that you'll meet the bad or the ugly. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee that even if you take my advice you'll meet the perfect person for you.
I don't have any gimmicks, magic words or canned phrases for you to use that will make people respond to your ad or like your response to their ad. There are none that I know of - except for those men who advertise that they're filthy rich and generous, especially in their headline, always seem to get a lot of responses from women. Women who say that they're beautiful and sexy always get a lot of responses from men. You didn't need me to help you figure that out. You probably rejected taking one of those approaches because either (a) it isn't true, or (b) if it is true, you don't want to rely on such shallow attributes, or (c) you don't want to attract the types of people that would respond to such shallow attributes.
Of course you can always just keep doing whatever you've been doing to meet people. You women can keep hoping that the next time your friends set you up with a man that they've known for a couple of weeks that he has a job and that his divorce really is final. You men can stand around looking puzzled by the yams and sweet potatoes in the vegetable section at the supermarket and hope that a beautiful woman comes over and offers to explain the difference between them to you. If you're really lucky, she might offer to go over to your place and cook them for you. Right. That will happen when donkeys levitate.
This article is an excerpt from our publication, "Effective Personal Ads - How to Write Personal Ads or Respond to Personal Ads."
Advice on Using Personals to Meet Women
Admit it...meeting people and dating now is the pits. It doesn't matter where you live, how young or how old you are, what you do for a living or what sex you are. Finding another person to date, much less a mate, just isn't as easy as it used to be - at least as easy as we think it used to be.
We've all heard about men who have rented billboards and put personal ads on them. We've seen daughters go on TV talk shows to try to find dates for their mothers from a studio made up of eligible men. It is a jungle out there. Between the fear of AIDS and all of the just plain weird people that there are in the world, many people have just about given up and are trying to find the positive aspects of celibacy and the monastic life.
Most of us don't consider celibacy or the monastic life to be viable options. Most of us can't afford to rent a billboard. Sally and Oprah don't want to hear our sad stories. There are just too many of us. Joining a dating service is usually too expensive. Some of us do the next best thing, we turn to answering or writing personal ads.
The personal ads are a lot like supermarket tabloids. Everyone jokes about them. Everyone makes fun of people that read them. Everyone is skeptical of what is written in them. Everyone wonders who writes them. And everyone reads them.
You've been tempted to either answer a personal ad or to write a personal ad yourself or you wouldn't be reading this right now. If you haven't responded to a personal ad, you probably worry that only losers and weirdos place them. You may worry that you'll only meet people who can't get a date any other way other than through personal ads. Even though you aren't a loser and you're thinking about placing or responding to an ad, you still aren't convinced that it's a safe or sane way to connect with safe or sane people.
Using the personals ads to meet people seems like such a desperate step to take. Its like you're admitting to the whole world that you can't meet people any other way. So you put down the personal ads, go out to the kitchen and make stir-fry for one and watch TV alone again.
Is it possible to meet attractive and compatible people through a personal ad? Absolutely. My younger brother met the woman that he married through a personal ad. It didn't happen overnight. He had to put in quite a few personal ads and went on a lot of dates that didn't lead anywhere. He finally found his sweetie though. I haven't found my perfect match yet, but I have met a lot of really nice women and had a number of very satisfying long-term relationships. I'm still friends with some of the women that I've met through personals ads. I also have a lot of stories to tell. You probably have friends who are dating or may have even married people that they met through personal ads, but are too ashamed to admit how they met.
This article is an excerpt from our publication, "Effective Personal Ads - How to Write Personal Ads or Respond to Personal Ads."
Tips for Men to Turn Your Love Life Around
Where have you pitched your tent today when it comes to thoughts about your dating and love life? Just what are you expecting to happen in your love and dating life this year?
Are you hopeful and optimistic about someone new coming into your life and filling your heart with lots of love, happiness, and contentment?
If things are not working out in your love life and you feel hopeless, lonely and you are constantly thinking about what's wrong and what is not working, then I would suggest that it's time to pack up your belongings in the land of discouragement and pull up your tent stakes.
It is time for you to move out of the subdivision of lonelyville. Make up your mind now to pack your bags in your mind and move into a new subdivision called hope, faith, and expectations to turn your love and dating life around.
Chose to set your mind free of all negative thoughts that are holding you back from finding love again and someone new. Also, chose to release your past experiences in dating that did not work our for you. It's time for a fresh start.
A Few More Awesome Dating Tips for Men
The Long View - What about when you are dating (searching)?
The trick is to balance your hormones with your gray matter. You should be thinking as much as you are feeling. The feeling part is very easy. It almost takes care of itself. Look. Be honest. It would be possible for you to work up some heat for a very wide variety of women. Every single woman has some level of charm and sexuality.
The hard part is thinking about the other factors - matching value systems, an equal interest in the relationship and the ability to relate intellectually. It will take time and thought to uncover this information. You are seeking potential. However, sometimes you can tell right away. The problem is that it is easy to overlook red flags when your testosterone is controlling the show.
Don't forget that it goes the other way. Dating is a true marketplace. You must exhibit potential as a partner in order to start the process. You will both be evaluating each other.
The Odds - Fairy Tales and Love Songs
The reality is that there are thousands, perhaps millions of single women who would work out just fine as dates or long term commitments. It is a matter of compromise, readiness, need and circumstance. You must realize that you don't end up with the absolute best choice available for a girlfriend or a wife.
If you look at it in statistical terms, there must be thousands of single women who have more to offer. You just don't have the time and resources to meet them all. Picture it as a major event like a college football game. You have one afternoon and about 20,000 available women. How many can you get to know well enough to ask out for Saturday night? OK, all analogies leak, but you get the point.
So with luck, you could hope to date less than 100 single girls during your bachelor-hood. (We're being generous.) With luck, the average Joe will experience a dozen or so "relationships" lasting more than a couple weeks. One or two of these will result in marriages. Maybe. Are you depressed? Don't be - these are just the facts. Check with your older friends and relatives for verification. (By the way, don't forget that single women are also out there meeting, rejecting, accepting, dating and marrying guys constantly - just to add to the confusion!)
P.S. - These are article excerpts from the book, "A Man's Field Guide to Women."
10 Things Don't do on First Dates with Women
How to Talk to Women Using Good Speech Delivery
Don't talk too fast. When feeling the emotional pressures of talking with a strange girl, men sometimes become a little flustered and excited. They speak carelessly, too fast, blurring their words. Your words should be spoken clearly and at a leisurely pace. You should be continually on guard for this.
Watch and listen to someone who speaks well, either in real life or a professional performer on TV, or in a play or film. Delivery is improved by dramatic emphasizing of words and phrases. It is very effective to pause after a statement, to allow your words to be digested, even though it feels more natural to rush on to your next statement. This requires some discipline on the part of the speaker.
Another effective feature of speaking is the upbeat sentence ending. You sound much more positive and dynamic if your voice rises in tone and sharpens in tempo at .the end of important sentences. By contrast, if your sentence drops in tone at the end, and trails off, the effect is one of indecision and vagueness.
The upbeat tone tends to urge your listener on to agree with you. It is like adding an imperative "Come on!" to the end of your sentence. You can practice speaking some sentences out loud and hear this effect.
Try to improve your speech as much as possible. A well-paced speech style is always much more effective than a hurried, nervous one. P.S. This article is an excerpt from our best-selling book called, "How to Talk to Women."
