The Gap: Expectation vs Reality when it comes to meeting

So you’ve matched with someone on one of the various apps, and things have progressed to the point of meeting for the first time. You’ve agreed on a place and time, hopefully neither of you have backed out at the last minute and you’re either on your way or waiting to meet.

We all know how this tends to go, usually there’s a whole mixture of emotions going on, maybe a bit of nervousness, excitement, worry… maybe a bit of happiness and often other feelings as well. Finally they arrive (or you arrive where they’re waiting) and something is wrong… they’re not quite what you expected! The actual experience itself might vary, it might be an immediately obvious difference such as is the case with “item not as described” dates, or it might be a bit more subtle and not immediately obvious, such as discovering your date is awful to service staff or chews with their mouth open!

Suddenly there are all sorts of other emotions. Suspicion, confusion, concern, disappointment, awkwardness… Maybe even anger, outrage or betrayal and similar stronger negative emotions if the newly evident reality is sufficiently different to what you expected. First impressions do count for a lot, and it is always quite surprising to me that this is something so many people get so wrong in their dating experiences.

So why does this happen in the first place? Well, that is an easy question which has a whole bunch of much more complex answers.

Deception and dishonest intent

We’ve covered this previously, but in short this is when your date has said or expressed one thing but ends up being quite different, either through deliberate concealment or by otherwise deliberately leading you to believe differently about them. These can be the guys (or women) who express an interest in a long term relationship, only to turn around and say (or demonstrate) that they’re only really interested in a friends-with-benefits arrangement or a one-night-stand situation, or the people who express interest for exactly as long as it takes for them to order and expect you to pay for an expensive dinner (often all the while texting their other “friends”).

Whatever the type of dishonesty, it is pretty much guaranteed to make a date into a bad experience for at least one of the people involved. So why do people do this? As far as I can tell, there tends to be a few motives.

The most obvious one is selfishness - they want something from you and don’t care about how they get it from you or what impact it might have on anyone other than themselves. Another reason is that a previous smaller lie simply got out of hand, or that their current state of being isn’t as attractive to others as they would like it to be. This is a bit more complex than selfishness, because there can be a lot of reasons for lying (low self-esteem and lack of confidence being just a few), coupled with the fact that it is incredibly easy for people to lie when they are interacting via an app purely because there isn’t any way for the lie to be readily discovered (at least until things escalate to meeting in real life). Ultimately, it seems when people do this, they’re often hoping that their other attributes will outweigh the apparent deception or that whatever attachment they’ve been able to build will be sufficient to see past it. Sometimes it even works out, but more often than not it just ends up being a waste of everyone’s time.

Lack of awareness

It is usually hard to not be aware of your own physical features and traits, so lack of awareness tends to be more of a thing with the less obvious attributes of a person, particularly when it comes to personality and beliefs. This in part comes down to the usual dating apps tending to focus on physical attributes over that of people’s personalities, but also is because it is quite hard to express them on a digital medium of any sort. How can you tell if someone chews with their mouth open, speaks rudely to service staff, farts loudly in public or has a habit of getting drunk and trying to pick fights with random members of the public? Simple reality of the situation is that you probably can’t until either hear about it or actually see it happen in person. Things like political or religious beliefs can be difficult topics to broach, as can cultural and social beliefs or opinions such as equality, being inclusive, being progressive or conservative and so on. While they can be discovered either online or in person, such things often take time to be expressed, and it can take even longer to figure out just how seriously a person takes any of them as well.

Poor perception

This isn’t necessarily something that only other people do, it can easily be something you do yourself when meeting someone you’ve only previously interacted with online through one of the apps. Poor perception in this case is simply where you make assumptions or come to conclusions on what a person is like based on insufficient, incomplete or inaccurate information. In some cases it even ends up being a compounded thing, where an initial incorrect assumption ends up getting built on, resulting in further additional incorrect assumptions and conclusions.

These can be quite hard to unravel and figure out, because it means going back and determining where the first assumption was made and why it was made. Not only can the discovery of the gap between expectation and reality be jarring, it can be quite embarrassing to realise that it isn’t even the other person’s fault that the gap exists in the first place. While some people will work through such discoveries, many other people either won’t bother to consider that they got it wrong, or won’t want to admit it and will simply blame others for the assumptions they made instead. When this happens, anyone else involved usually ends up bewildered and confused as they have no idea what happened, as it was all contained within the head of the person who made the assumptions.

Dealing with it, or avoiding the gap

I’ve mercifully managed to avoid an awful lot of the really cringey bad date scenarios, and as far as I can tell it comes down to one key factor - I don’t typically go on dates with people unless I have first put some effort into getting to know them. The downside of this of course is that it means I don’t end up going on that many dates that often, but when I consider some of the horror stories I’ve heard both from people I’ve matched with on apps and others I know in real life and online, I’m actually quite glad!

Getting to know someone is critical to forming a meaningful relationship, and when it comes to dating apps, it often starts with the unfairly maligned smalltalk. For me at least, I use smalltalk as an opener to the conversation, with the aim of identifying what and where the boundaries are when interacting with the person I’ve matched with. With basic pleasantries (eg. “hello, how are you?”) out of the way, I then tend to try and steer the conversation towards a topic of mutual interest, based on either what they’ve shown in their profile pictures or whatever they might have on their bio. If neither of those provide much to work with, I might instead ask them how their day was or what they do for work or hobbies. Assuming there is some sort of engagement and mutual discussion, I’ll then let the topic wander around wherever it may, and start building a mental profile of the person based on all the little bits and pieces of things I learn from the conversation. With enough of these little snippets to work from, conversation then becomes easier and easier and it becomes possible to get to deeper or more complex subjects, all while building a level of familiarity.

Assuming conversation goes well enough, only then will I actually propose meeting in real life, and often before doing that I’ll ask whether they would like to talk on the phone or expand the conversation through another medium of their choice (eg voice notes, SMS or other messaging platforms that support images, etc). Tempting as it is to rush all the way to meeting as quickly as possible, every time I’ve tried this I’ve ended up meeting a stranger who I have no attachment or real interest in, for the simple reason that I don’t actually know anything about them!

Being honest

Honesty is a good policy when dating, particularly if you’re looking to build a relationship. It takes a remarkable amount of skill to not only tell a convincing lie, but to also ensure future discussions don’t end up exposing said lie through inconsistencies. While some psychopathic types are very good at this, the vast majority of people just aren’t good at keeping track of what they’ve lied about and will end up making mistakes. In most cases other people will pick up on when this is happening and will react with suspicion or even just end contact. In rarer cases, they may actively call the deception out or if particularly aggrieved, might even make it their mission to ensure those lies are exposed to the wider community. Ultimately, if you have no lies to hide when interacting with others, you’ll find the conversation ends up being a lot more natural and free-flowing as you won’t need to dedicate more and more effort to simply keeping track of what often ends up being compounded and complex lies.

In any case, nobody likes dealing with liars, so do yourself and everyone else a favour and just stick to the truth!

Doing quality control

When it comes to using most dating apps, we already perform a certain level of quality control simply by deciding which people we like and which people we’re not interested in. However, if you want to get better quality dates, you really need to put in some effort first to ensure the other person is genuinely the kind of person you want to go on a date with.

Arranging the date

If everything else has gone well and you’re finally at the point of organising the date where you’ll meet in person, it is important to establish ground rules, and even more important to communicate and agree on those rules before you meet. I was recently sent a link to a news article titled “Aussie men called out for being bad at dating” by another person also navigating the modern dating experience, and couldn’t help noticing that a lot of the complaint seemed to relate to what the actual expectations of the date were. Men were being called out for turning up unkempt and in ripped clothing, for inviting their date straight over to their place or the local pub where they proceed to split their attention between their date and whatever sport is on TV, or for simply not bothering to wash or brush their teeth before the date.

Honestly, this is fair criticism for the most part, and actually applies to everyone, male, female or anywhere in-between… That said, I couldn’t help but wonder whether perhaps there might have been some miscommunication going on that lead some of the men in question to believe the dates were more informal than was intended by their disappointed matches. When I’m going on a date, one of the things I’ll make a point of discussing is what kind of date it is. If its formal in a restaurant, my attire will be similarly formal. If its a casual coffee or drink at a pub, I’ll keep my attire more neat but casual. If the date is a meet somewhere and do an activity, or go for a walk while talking kind of thing, then I might well end up wearing activewear instead! Whatever the date ends up being like, I try and make a specific point of ensuring we’re both on the same page in terms of what we’ll be wearing and what we’ll be doing. This avoids any surprises or disappointments on the day, and just makes enjoying the date a lot easier too.

Going on the date

This should be pretty simple, but I remain surprised at how many people manage to get this wrong. If you’ve arranged the date already, make sure you’ll be able to attend! Move things around if necessary, factor in extra time beforehand in case things go wrong and even arrange some time after when you’re expecting the date to finish just in case it goes longer than originally planned. This is not a hard thing to do. If you do find out that something else has come up and you have to cancel meeting your date, DO IT AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE. I really can’t stress this enough, because the earlier you cancel and confirm with them, the easier and less inconvenient it will be to reschedule for a different time. Being stood up or made to wait for a substantial length of time is never a fun experience, and it gives an absolutely horrible first impression to whoever has been left waiting. If you’re running a little late, message them to apologise and let them know as well. If you have had to cancel, offer an alternative time and/or venue to make up for it. It isn’t on the other person to find alternatives if you’re the cause of needing to reschedule.

When you’re on the date, put the phone away. If you must check it, do so when they’re in the bathroom or otherwise away! Remember, the point of being on the date is to interact with each other, not to be distracted by everything else. If you’ve done things properly and established some conversation topics online on the apps first, talk about them!

Lastly, observe. Read body language, expressions, emotions and all the things that most dating apps are awful at communicating to others.

Final thoughts

The above is mostly based on my own experiences and observations, along with reading way too many horror stories that people have posted online about disaster dates. One thing to remember is that it is very common to hear about the negative situations where things don’t work out, but far less common to hear about the times where things went well, whether it lead to future dates or not. It’s also quite easy to fall victim to generalisations and assumptions, which then tie in with poor perceptions as I covered above.

I’m interested in what other people’s experiences have been with dating expectations vs reality, both positive and negative. What went right, and what went wrong? More importantly, for those dates that turned out to be disasters, what sort of verification or vetting process did you go through before agreeing to go on a date? Let me know over on Instagram!