The Line Between Dating and Friendship

Is the following situation familiar to you? Just imagine – you meet a nice girl and ask her out for a drink. She willingly accepts your invitation and you go to a restaurant or a local bar together. The evening is perfect – she laughs, tells you about herself and even allows you to pay for her drinks and just at the end of the evening you find out that she has a boyfriend. Omg, why didn’t she tell you about this before? You feel confused and messed up. According to her behavior you would never think she isn’t single.

In order to avoid misunderstanding we should learn to be more respectful to other people’s feelings. If you have no romantic intentions – don’t send unclear signals to others.

Be more precise. Maybe it sounds obvious but first of all learn to state your intentions clearly. If you want to invite a girl to a date, just indicate that this is a date, for example “Would you mind going to a date with me?”, or “You look gorgeous, what about going out with me tonight?” Believe such invitation doesn’t live any space for her imagination and it’s pretty clear that you want to be more than just friends.

If you are not single – just state this. Maybe you think that your colleague who wants to share a drink after work is just a friend, but how can you be sure that he sees the situation the same way? Give him/her a clear message that you can be just friends.

Don’t let him/her pay for your dinner. If you’re out for a dinner with someone you don’t really like – never let the guy pay a bill. It doesn’t really matter why you’ve accepted an invitation – out of courtesy or lack of other variants. If you don’t offer at least to split the bill, the man may think that it’s actually a date and you’re interested in a romantic relationship. To avoid misunderstandings and for the sake of being straightforward don’t send misleading signal by letting the man pay.