Setting guidelines on when to share feelings is a bit trickier. Admittedly, the coin of the realm for dating is feelings and intimacy, but in the early stages of dating, everything is a bit fragile. What you’re trying to do at this point is to set a firm foundation for everything to follow — but what this everything entails is almost impossible to predict.
A new dating situation is an investment between the two of you. You need to establish the ground rules together and get a feel for who both of you are and what you want all the while watching the interest mount, getting a return on your investment, and trusting the stability and reliability of the institution (that is, the idea that neither of you is going to rip the other off). Building this kind of trust takes a bit of time. Just as if you were to borrow money from a bank and be late on your first payment, the bank very well may see you as a bad credit risk and recall the loan. But if you’ve had the loan for years and have never been late or missed a payment, being late or missing a payment in year three will feel very different to both you and the bank.
When you share feelings, follow these basic rules:
- Be a tad cautious. Over exuberance (for example, taking a pledge of undying love) can feel pretty scary if it’s in the first 15 minutes of a date. No, you don’t have to be Gary Cooper, strong and silent, or Mata Hari, the keeper of mysterious secrets, but blurting out unformed and unexamined feelings à la Pee-wee Herman can scare the daylights out of both of you.
- Live with a feeling a bit before you express it. Make sure that what you’re saying is true for more than the moment. If you’ve just tripped over your date’s tennis shoe and you’re feeling angry, saying “I hate you, you slob” probably reflects emotions stronger than you’ll be feeling in ten minutes. If the sentiment isn’t going to be true for more than ten minutes, stifle it.
- Get some perspective on your own emotions and some control over your mouth before you speak. Otherwise, you can mislead yourself and your date. Saying “I love you” when you mean “Thank you” or “I’d like to have sex,” for example, isn’t fair or kosher, and it misleads both of you. As the two of you get to know each other better and feel safer and more comfortable with one another and develop some history, your words will have a context and can be evaluated that way. You’ll have a track record together and will have enough experience to know what is characteristic and what isn’t.
- In deciding what feelings to share and when, think about what would be reasonable to expect at any given time. A promise of undying love and devotion on the first date might feel kinda cool until you think it through. All of us long to be loved and appreciated, but on the first date? Nice — sorta — but completely unbelievable except in movies or romance novels or from folks who are a bit unbalanced, really needy, or really manipulative. So although “I really had a great time with you and I’d like to do it again. How about you?” isn’t quite as flamboyant as “Will you marry me? I knew from the first moment (five minutes ago) that you were the one,” it is a lot more believable. If you want to tell your grandchildren “We knew from the very first moment” 50 years from now, okay, but when in doubt, go slowly.
So do share your feelings, but beware of temper and elation. Make sure they’re feelings you’ve been feeling for more than one second and can live with in an hour or two or a day or two. If you really must say it, finesse a bit — for example, “I know it’s too soon to be feeling this, but it sure feels good to me right now” — and then laugh sweetly. Trust is a fragile thing. You need to trust not only each other, but yourself.
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