Today I’m sharing a guest post with some wonderful insight from Lilly Star at DatingWebsites.com. She shares what she “knows now that she wishes she knew then” about the downside of liquid confidence. Thank you Lilly!
Alcohol and Your Decreasing Return on Investment
I’ll never forget the first time I drank for a date as a post-collegiate single. Like many women, I went to a school that was equal parts partying and studying. That experience lead me to some fun nights and awful, awful mornings. After college, with a few more dollars in my pockets, I was finding that my nights were filled with better alcohol, and that there were a lot more men to date.
In retrospect that first date after college was nothing to be nervous about. The guy was coming to my apartment (which I shared with two girls) to “pick me up” for our date at a popular gastropub in Chelsea. I was edgy and though I was busy curling and primping, my girlfriends advised that it all would be a lot easier if I just had a glass of wine. I obliged, but by the time my date handed me the dessert menu later in the night my eyes were unfocused and darting around the room. I was sweating. I was in rough shape.
That date was our last, and as much as I should have been able to recognize that the first drink — the nervous one I gulped down with no food in my system — was likely a poor choice, I continued to do the same before each and every date for several more years.
I also drank at social occasions, and not with any deference to the importance of the occasion. Street festivals, concerts, lobbies of five star hotels – every time a few glasses of Chardonnay was my pre-date cocktail of choice. If only I saw how it was affecting my behavior earlier maybe I would have stopped. The alcohol was no longer “loosening” me up for conversations, it was making me a little too brash, a little too self-interested. I was becoming a bad date before the date even started.
One day late in my twenties I decided that to switch it up I’d just stick to water before dates. On the date I’d have a glass of wine and match my gentleman caller as we proceeded through the niceties of conversation. The results were immediate, instead of feeling outlandish, or in-his-face I felt more responsive and present, like I wasn’t on this date in an effort to tell my friends about it later, but to meet someone new and share an experience. It was that mentality (and not drinking) that lead me into some of the most caring and loving relationships of my life.
Booze is good, and having glasses of wine with girlfriends is always enjoyable. But when it came time to connect with a guy the idea that I needed to be “loosened” up by Chardonnay was a fallacy. Truth was that the woman I was, even if she was at times timid, was the one I wanted to show my potential partner.
Lilly Star
The lead female voice at DatingWebsites.com, Lilly is a professional advice-giver with experiences in dating men of all types, including the good ones that got away. Her passions include white wine, purple peonies and relaxing on the chaise lounge with her dachshund Samantha. Lily’s work can be read on dating blogs for both men and women.
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