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'My friends cousins son wants to meet you, I said I'd set it up'

Sentences such as this one usually send most sane people running screaming in the opposite direction, or for the braver ones at least a raised eyebrow. This is because we tend to have pre-conceived ideas about the dreaded Big Blind Date.

In particular bad cases we imagine ourselves sitting opposite a deranged psychotic or the Black Widow.

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP
Back it up please!

Blind Dates are not all about finding your 'soul mate'. They are about meeting new people, having fun and making new friends. If you find your perfect mate while you are at it, all well and good, but typically Blind Dates can be likened to two people meeting at a bar for the first time.

Before wading into these strange dark waters, ask yourself this question.

What are you afraid of?

If it is of finding yourself on a date where you can barely contain your snores, finding the other person offensive in manner or speech, or just winding up with no whiff of chemistry at all in the air, you can take solace in the fact that there are ways you can 'gracefully' bow out of the date.

There is nothing worse or more dull than a one sided conversation. If the other person dominates with topics about themselves, their achievements, their work, their opinions etc without once asking you anything about you, they are either extremely full of themselves and arrogant or they are very very nervous about being on this date with you. You can usually tell one from the other by observing the manner of the person and the way they talk to or treat others around them.

If you find the person offensive in any way,the best solution is to be upfront and tell them that you do not appreciate being spoken to/treated in that manner and if they do not stop you will leave. If they apologize and seem genuinely remorseful, it is usually nerves doing the talking.

I was once on a blind date where the guy would not look at me. When we spoke he would look at his hands or around the room . I felt very offended by this and thought him to be extremely rude. Given to my nature though, I chose to stick it out and by the end of the night he was looking me straight in the eye. When I asked him about it he told me that he had felt really nervous meeting me initially, and physically wasn't able to look at me straight until he had gotten to know me a bit better.

Unfortunately as they say 'first impressions do count', and I chose not to continue to see him, but it goes to show that what you

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