Brunch Etiquette: A First Date Favorite

First dates can be are terrifying. At least before they start. For people in long term relationships, you may have forgotten the feeling of pre-first-date anxiety.

It's pre-first-date anxiety that causes women to purchase inordinately expensive new shoes to wear with that skirt that makes their ass look spectacular (yes, we all have that skirt). It's pre-first-date anxiety that causes men to check in advance that their credit card won't be declined paying for the exorbitant dinner bill that they (hopefully) refuse to split with their date.* It's "I-Want-To-Impress-You-But-How-Much-Effort-Should-I-Really-Be-Putting-Into-This" anxiety.

It is horrible.

Dinner dates, in particular, are stressful. It's not just the apprehension before hand, it's also planning an escape route. Why do you need an escape route? Because you and your date knows damn well this was the last thing on your schedule for the day, so when you cut out early, you're making an escape.

Enter the first date savior: Brunch.

Other than the drawback that the lighting is a bit little less concealing, everything is truly brighter at brunch. There are fewer guessing games about what to wear (it's the day time -- causal is king!), the price point will be less burdensome than dinner fare, and you have the whole day ahead of you to either make up a prior engagement or to continue hanging out.  It's the perfect remedy to higher stress traditional itinerary of dinner and drinks. Why does brunch work so well? To elaborate on the reasons above:

• Brunch is casual without feeling cheap. There's a novelty to a brunch date that you don't get with dinner. 
• Almost wherever you go the food will feel familiar without being boring, so there's less risk than accidentally bringing your vegetarian date to a steak house.
• If things are going well, you have time to hang out. Grab some coffee, take a walk to a bookshop or a park.
• Alternatively, if things aren't going well, having a class or somewhere else to be doesn't sound like an outlandish lie, so you don't need an elaborate escape ruse that involves rushing to the restroom to send a secret text to your friend asking them to call sobbing in 5 minutes so you can politely excuse yourself.
• Daylight doesn't mean you can't make out. If things are headed in that direction, you'll still get some.

So next time you have a first date coming up, consider making reservations for brunch. It won't make your date more attractive or a better conversationalist, but it will save you some stress before hand.

*Yes, I'm making a hetero-normative gender assumptions. Apologies if this blog post sets women's rights or social progress back a few decades.