The first meeting with a bull: a drink, all three of you

The first meeting is a drink. That is the whole design, and couples who treat it as anything more elaborate tend to regret the evening.

An hour, somewhere public, all three of you, with nothing else in the diary afterwards. It sounds underwhelming written down. It is also the single most useful hour in the entire process.

Why it is only a drink

You are not there to decide anything. You are there to collect the information that text and video calls cannot give you: what this person is like to sit near.

Two months of good messages can be produced by someone who writes well. An hour at a table shows you how he treats the waiter, whether he can be quiet for a moment, whether his humour has a target, and whether the room gets easier or harder while he is in it. That is not a small amount of information and there is no other way to get it.

Keeping it to a drink also protects the option of leaving. If the evening was never going to be more than an hour, ending it after an hour is not a rejection. It is what was agreed.

Public, and both of you there

A public place is not a formality. It sets the register, it means neither of you is alone with a stranger, and it makes leaving simple.

All three of you should be present. The husband is half of this, and the meeting exists partly so he can be in a room with the man in question. Watch how the third splits his attention. A man who talks to the wife and treats the husband as furniture has told you exactly how this will go. So has a man who directs everything at the husband and never asks her a question.

If the couple genuinely prefer he does not attend, he should still know where she is, when to expect contact, and what a call means. That is covered in staying safe in the lifestyle.

No play on the first meet

Agree this out loud before you go, and say it to him too. Nothing happens tonight.

Saying it in advance takes the pressure out of the whole evening. Nobody is auditioning. Nobody has to decide in the middle of a conversation. And his reaction to hearing it is itself a piece of screening: a man who takes it as normal is a man who has done this before or has sense, and a man who seems deflated has told you what he came for.

It also protects the couple from the thing that happens when an evening goes well. Momentum is persuasive and it is not the same as agreement. Whatever you decide the next morning will be a better decision than whatever you decide at half past ten.

What to actually talk about

Ordinary things, mostly. Work, where you live, how you each ended up here. Let it be a conversation rather than an interview, because you learn more from someone who has relaxed. The thing couples most often report afterwards is how unremarkable the hour felt, and that holds for most of what comes after it too.

Do cover the practical ground at some point, lightly. Confirm the shape of what you are looking for so nobody is running on an assumption. Mention that both partners can call anything off. Cover discretion. Health conversations are best done plainly and without ceremony, and doing them at this stage, in a normal voice, tells you a lot about how someone handles a straightforward adult subject.

Watch for the same things listed in vetting a third together, because they show up in person too, usually more clearly.

Ending it when the answer is no

Decide the exit before you arrive. An agreed finish time and a signal between the two of you is enough. When the hour is up, one of you says you should get going, and you get going.

Then say something kind and clear within a day or two. It was good to meet him, you have talked it over, and you have decided not to take it further. No reasons required, no long explanation, nothing that invites a negotiation. Most people take it well. Anyone who does not has confirmed you were right.

And do not decide on the night, in either direction. Go home, sleep, and talk in the morning when the nerves have gone. Both of you say your honest impression before either hears the other’s. If it is a yes from both of you, it will still be a yes at nine in the morning. If one of you is unsure, that is a no for now, and the board will still be there.