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Hello. My name is Boston Max. I’m 27 years old, I’m unemployed and I live with my parents and I don’t know what a date is. Apparently.
Yesterday, I wrote a Friend Zone blog about grabbing dinner and drinks with a friend, Mia, a girl – at one point in my life – I wanted to date, and whether she has wanted to reciprocate those feelings is, at the moment, unlikely. And I said it was still technically a date because whether or not she goes in with romantic interest, there’s always a chance something comes to fruition. Hence, a date.
I can confidently say it’s been, by far, my most unpopular take on this very website. I got eviscerated in the comments section. That’s putting it kindly. I probably deserved it, because you get what you give, and I give a lot of people shit so I’m well prepared to take shit. I’m not one of those people who can dish it but can’t take it; I can take it. Throw your worst at me. I’ll forget about all the mean things when I’m ripping tequila shots with your sister.
Did I articulate my point clearly enough? Maybe, maybe not, but it brings up something that I think we must discuss: what the fuck is the definition of a date? Because after yesterday’s peanut gallery jumping farther down my throat than a Lexington Steele video, I guess I have to put my hand up and admit that maybe I have no fucking idea what a date really is.
Well, that’s not true. I know what a date definitely is, but I guess I don’t know what a date isn’t. Does it matter though? In yesterday’s blog, I knew that yes, conventionally I wasn’t on a date with Mia. I knew the intention to hang out was as friends. I think a date is two single people being alone together. You don’t. Let’s just agree to disagree and move on. Because the real crux of what I was trying to say is that maybe there’s a friend in your life who sees you as potentially something more than a friend, and you shouldn’t be quick to dismiss them as anything more than a friend. But, I am fully aware that I grew up listening to wayyyyy too much Taylor Swift.
Everyone’s favorite map maker and noted commenter, DrunkCartographer, had this to say about what a date is: “It’s a date when both people go into the drinks/coffee/dinner knowing it’s a date. If you have to ask, then it’s not a date. We aren’t in high school anymore.”
Let me play out a few scenarios.
Scenario 1: I meet a girl on Bumble. I ask her if she wants to grab a drink this week. Verdict: date.
Scenario 2: I meet a girl at the bar. I ask her if she’s up for sushi this week. Verdict: date.
Scenario 3: I recently hit up a girl I went to college with, someone I’ve known for eight years, someone who I know thinks I’m cute and funny, someone who I think is cute and funny. She works at MSG, I ask her to hook me up with some tickets. I say I owe her a favor. She says she wants to grab drinks. We go to a wine bar. Verdict: N/A.
Scenario 4: I go to a wine bar with a girl I dated for several years, was madly in love with, discussed marriage (albeit too early in our lives), we broke up, have remained in touch pretty frequently despite never living in the same city since college, and after the wine bar she comes back to my place we listen to music and crush more wine, we cuddle until 4 a.m. until she Ubers back to her parents’s house. Verdict: N/A.
You tell me what the hell scenarios #3 and #4 are. Because honestly, I think all four of these scenarios are dates, and maybe they aren’t and I just have no idea (because I’m Boston Max, Lord of the Idiots). But to me, in scenario #3, that’s two people laughing over wine, two people who I know find each other attractive, and yet, there’s been no sexual activity predating this event. Not even a kiss. But, is it a date? Like I’ve said before: you cannot tell me there is a non-zero chance of even a kiss at the end of the night. You just can’t. It’s two single people alone together getting to know each other. I say date. You say two friends chillin’. Tomato, tomato (that phrase does not translate to the written word, I just discovered).
And scenario #4. That’s hanging out with an ex as a friend going into the night before some physical connection towards the end of the night. Granted, it’s not sex, but certainly not something you do with a friend. It wasn’t a date in the technical sense, but it’s intimate. So I say date, you probably won’t. Potato, potato (again, this phrase doesn’t quite translate to the written word).
The point is, I personally don’t think of a date as a binary concept of “this is a predetermined thing” or not. I think it’s completely plausible for someone to go into an evening to hang with someone without it intending for it to be a “date” but could, in fact, be persuaded by night’s end to [insert sexual activity here].
Even if we have relatively normal friendly non-flirty banter and bitch and moan about the awful people we’ve been dating recently, I still think that’s a date. Because while I get that you want to present your best version of yourself on display when you’re on a date, I personally believe it’s hundo p different when you have a previous relationship with the person sitting across from you. At the end of the day, it’s still two single people getting to know each other better. I say that’s a date. Or so I’ve always thought.
So comes up the nature of “intent.” If you perceive a date as implying intent for a date (as in, both parties non-verbally understand that this “date” is a date in the conventional sense like scenarios #1 and #2 above), then you most definitely do not think that scenarios #3 and #4 are dates. Similarly, if you’re hanging out with a member of the opposite sex, get drunk, hook up, then get married, you’ll still tell me that initial hangout was not a date. Okay, I guess I’ll buy that. But then what do you call it? What would you call it if you continually are hanging out with someone where the intent of a date is not present, yet each time you hang out the nature of the hangout gets flirtier and flirtier?
And this all is to say: how in the name of Tom Brady are you supposed to initiate a date with someone who’s been your friend for years? Specifically, in scenario #3, (which, bee tee dubs, all four of these scenarios have happened to me in the last calendar year), but in scenario #3, if I was interested in this girl in a romantic sense, or at least trying it out just for a second, just to see how it feels, how would I go about doing that? Let me know. .
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Boston Max
Spending my retirement fund at Trader Joe's and trying to remember to check my mailbox semi-regularly
@BostonMaxG
@boston_maxg
Boston Max’s brain is just tossed salad and scrambled eggs rn.
That comment section from yesterday’s article was wild
I’m fully aware that not everything I write is going to be liked or perceived positively. I write things that I think will generate interesting debate and conversation. Definitely didn’t think I’d take such a bath but, hey, I put myself out there and got smacked around a bit.
Guy’s just trying to push a little content and got a carefrontation.
If you want it to be a date TELL HER THAT. Jesus Christ. You want to know how to get out of the gray area? Communicate. “Hey, I like you as more than a friend. Would you like to go out and grab drinks to see if there’s something more there?”
Nah that’s awkward I think I’d rather it just be confusing my entire life and just bitch and moan about it on the internet to random strangers.
In all seriousness, I think the reason I’m so often in these grey areas and refusing to communicate my true feelings is because I don’t want to put myself out there and get rejected by my own friend. I’m actually fine at the moment dating girls who I meet on Bumble or at the bar, but I’ve just got a proclivity for falling in love with my friends. Whoops
When you’re honest with your friends, people who truly respect and care about, they won’t make it awkward. Shoot your shot, that’s a lot more respectable than whining.
It’s Shoot Your Shot 2018, go for it.
I get this instinct man, I do, but at the end of the day you have to decide which is more important: the friendship or romance. We’ve all had friends that we wanted to sleep with, but the only reason to stay friends is that at the end of the day that urge isn’t so strong that you want to jeopardize the friendship. But if you’re up all the time wishing that you could date this girl, you gotta shoot you’re shot because you’re not friends with this girl. You’re a guy who’s in love with her and waiting in the Friendzone. It’s unfair to you, and it’s unfair to her. Once you shoot your shot and she rejects you, you’ll realize pretty quickly that the two of you probably weren’t actually friends.
I’m beginning to think , you like the chase and the unknown more than the girl. Once to tell her your feelings straight up it isn’t interesting anymore it’s just gonna be what it is. Either she will like you back or not and what’s going on right now is almost better than either situation.
The problem with yesterday’s take and this take is that you’re still reducing every interaction you have with a member of the opposite sex to whether or not you can define it as a date. 1) Why does the definition matter so much? 2) If the definition does really matter to you so much why don’t you just ask the person you’re on a date/not-date with?
It doesn’t matter. You’re 100% right. And I honestly don’t care about the label, tbh. BUT, I’ve been using my blogs for years to settle debates with my friends, leaving it up to the comments section to answer. So, recently, I said a date was two single people hanging out. My friends were like, “let the comment section decide.” So I wrote a bog yesterday, used a random story of me and Mia grabbing burgers (back in like October) to potentially illustrate the debate, and decided to see what y’all thought re: what you define a date as.
Clearly I’m wrong, my friends all agree with all of you, and I’m the sole person on the planet who’s believed for years that a date is merely two single people alone together. But hey, I’ve been wrong before and I’ll be wrong again.
Not to be stickler but a date doesn’t have to be between two single people. Two people that are married to other people can theoretically go on a date too…. but they’re cheating sinners and going to hell so in the end it doesn’t matter lol
Who hurt you
Lmao I love this
@EllisND
It’s national popcorn day and I’ve got mine ready for when DC and Miss Jackson obliterate this comments section
I’m at a loss of words right now. Max, you need to find your big boy pants(or go buy some if you don’t own any), and be direct with your intentions. Just because two friends are single, the 1-1 time they spend together doesn’t equal a date. If I followed your logic, I would have gone on countless dates with all my friends.
Can confirm I am eating popcorn at this very moment.
Worry less about the title and more about the time spent together. Be a solid guy, make her laugh, and just enjoy your time together. Regardless of what YOU call it, if she’s into you she’ll eventually start to tell her friends about these “dates” then BOOM, you’re in….until you do something dumb and she ends it because that’s what us guys do, dumb stuff
Can confirm. Lord of the Idiots.
You unseated Costanza??
After my last two blogs? Safe to say I’m wearing the crown
Eh, you’re taking hits from strangers on the Internet who are trying to seem as dating experts. Not knowing what a date “is” doesn’t make you an idiot. Just less experienced.
It all depends on the intent and how you see each other. Scenario 1 and 2 are obviously dates because Bumble is a dating app and a bar is a place you go to hook up/meet people you want to date. Scenario 4 is just a nightmare and you should stop being a cuck and forget about this girl. You’re being her emotional tampon.
Scenario 3 depends on the relationship with the girl. If you two are not close and just casual acquaintances who know each other, but don’t talk frequently (less than once a month), it could easily be a date. Or it couldn’t be. It’s up to you to read the room and her body language (has she suggested meeting a friend of hers to date? If so, NOT a date) and see. And if you’re still unsure, take your shot. She wasn’t really in your life before the night so if she rejects you, she won’t be in it after. No harm, no foul, it happens.
And for the love of God, stop trying to turn your female friends into girlfriends. It does happen and it can be incredible, but it’s generally not how things work. If I were a female friend of yours and read this, I would seriously consider cutting you off because I wouldn’t be sure of your true intentions.
Normally works out where girl starts as a friend, I fall in love with her, I get over it, we end up being such good friends that the thought of dating her weirds me out. It’s something that I’ve gone through with millions, maybe even hundreds, of female friends since I was, idk, 14? I could see a shrink for this but would rather just take lashings from internet strangers in the comment section
It was acceptable when you were 14 because you were 14 and didn’t know what you wanted (except to see boobs, any boobs). When you’re in your mid-late 20s, it’s weird and reeks of desperation and insecurity.
It doesn’t matter whether you’ve previously had a relationship with the person or how long you’ve known them for, you need to make sure you ask them directly to figure out whether it’s a date. 500 Days of Summer was not meant to be an instruction book.
500 Days of Summer is a how to guide on losing a girl’s interest in you over time. The entire movie Tom is wrapped up into Summer and way more into her than she is him, which is never good. It’s only in the end of the movie when he starts putting himself, his passion and his goals first (people are attracted to people with goals and passion) does he regain a sense of purpose and is able to confidently ask out Autumn, and confidently walk away when she initially says “no”. This a serious lesson the movie imparts on the viewers: be your own person, have goals and drive and not be wrapped up in someone else, and this will attract the right people into your life.
I can confirm that your earlier post about cutting communication works. My cousin just got married to a guy that she was friends with for about a year before they hooked up. About 5 of those months she spent studying abroad in Europe so they didn’t talk often. While she was abroad, she let her feelings for him brew and realized she was interested in him. He was already head over heels for her before she left anyway so it was just a matter of him taking a shot.
So what happened? Shortly after she came back, they went out with friends, got drunk, and with the help of some liquid courage (AKA, vodka), he made a move and the rest is history. He didn’t post blogs or sit there for months pondering whether the last time they hung out was a date or not. He shot his fucking shot and scored.
DING DING DING winner. This works, you have to let her miss you and think about you and how great you were to her. And after coming on strong or being rejected you do this by going full no contact and setting up real dates when she finally reaches out.
Maybe I’m missing the point here and this speaks to my clear division of male friends and males I’m interested in romantically, but I don’t spend that much time stressing over whether drinks/dinner/etc are dates or not.
I think his point is that there does exist a grey area where one party thinks that what they are doing is a date, but the other hasn’t quite given off a signal one way or another. I’ve had it happen multiple times, the only difference is that I (unlike my boy Max) don’t let it drag on. If I’m not sure after a hangout or two, I’ll put it out there what I want. To date, always been shot down, and it always sucks.
This. Exactly this. That’s what I’m writing about. HOWEVER, in real life, I’m not letting it drag on. I’m only letting it drag on on the internet so I have something to write about when I’m at a loss for other things to write about. Sue me, I like writing.
What?? You lie about things you write about that are based on your real life?? The audacity!!