Our first meeting is built so that nothing can happen at it
Looking for somebody who reads a deliberately dull hour as a good sign
We pick a time when one of us has to leave for something else afterwards. We pick somewhere with other people in it. There is a hard stop and we say so in advance. The whole design of that hour is that nothing can possibly happen at it, and roughly half the men we sit down with read the design as a lack of interest.
It is the exact opposite. If we did not want to know you we would not be driving across town on a wet Tuesday evening in July for a cup of tea.
Thirty nine and forty one, the inner city, four years of this. What we have learned is that the interesting part of a first meeting is what a person does with an hour in which nothing whatsoever is on offer. Some men talk to both of us. Some talk past him from the first minute. One asked her a question about her work and then listened to the entire answer, which sounds like a low bar and is apparently somewhere near the ceiling.
Afterwards we go home and talk about it for a week. Then, if it is still yes, we do the same thing again. Photographs come much later than anybody expects and we have never once been argued out of the order.
None of it is a test and there is no correct performance. We are two people who have to keep living in this city afterwards, and we would rather spend four careful months than have one bad six weeks.
Before the first drink Replying goes through the connected platform, so nothing about you is shared until you decide to share it. Take contact slowly and keep identifying details back until trust is earned. Meet somewhere public the first time, with your own way home from it, and if you are a couple then go together. Tell someone outside it where you are going. Never send money to someone you have not met. And if a post or a reply reads wrong, flag it rather than talking yourself out of the feeling.
Before you answer a post like this
Two people wrote this together, and both of them have to say yes to you. These are the three written for the man on the other end of it.
- What makes a single man read as safe
- Vetting a couple: the screening men skip
- The first meeting: a drink, all three of you