Emma met Mark on a dating site. He’d liked her smiley profile picture which showed her cuddled up to her little Jack Russel dog Sparky, and the couple began messaging. Eventually, they met for a date at a pub near where Emma lived.
It was a good first date. Mark was warm and attentive: opening the door for her as they entered the pub, and insisting on paying the bill as they left. He messaged when he got home, suggesting a second date.
But Emma wasn’t sure.
“I gave a vague reply,” she recalls. “He’d been lovely, but I didn’t know if I wanted to see him again.”
If you’re currently in the same situation, here are five ways to know if you should go on a second date.
1. It wasn’t love at first sight. Second date? Yes
Love at first sight sounds romantic, doesn’t it? Eyes across a crowded room, strangers becoming lovers in one look… It’s the starting point for epic romances like Romeo and Juliet and The Fault In Our Stars. But, according to research, love at first sight isn’t real.
In 2017, scientists conducted a study that found love at first sight was merely intense, sudden physical attraction. Lust, basically. And while they started with a thunderbolt, those couples didn’t go on to enjoy higher levels of commitment, passion, or intimacy than couples whose feelings grew slowly.
Instant lust can be a red flag
Lightning attraction can even be a harmful beginning for relationships. Psychologists believe that people who drive us wild at first glance might just be triggering our attachment wounds.
Something about them (an aloof air, maybe a disdainful personality) may remind us of someone who hurt us in our past. And the attraction we feel can be our subconscious looking for a chance to replay that unhappy relationship. Generally speaking, like at first sight is a better starting point for date two.
Emma admitted she hadn’t been dazzled by Mark’s looks. “He was shorter in person than I’d expected, and his shirt needed an iron.”
2. You didn’t laugh on the first date. Second date? Maybe not
Laughter is important in relationships. It’s not just fun, it’s a signal of interest, desire, and long-term compatibility. It’s one of the ways we release tension and endorphins. If your sides weren’t even close to splitting on the first date, I’d perhaps think about whether or not you were a good fit.
According to research, we use humour to signal our interest to a potential partner and discover if it’s mutual. When we crack a joke, we can actually be saying, “Hey! I fancy you.” And if they laugh, they might be saying, “Me too.”
Why humour matters in long-term love
Later on in relationships, we tend to continue using humour to monitor our partner’s feelings. They’re like emotional sonar beams that we send out to test the other person’s interest.
“Knock knock? (Do you still like me?)”
“Ha ha! (Yes, I still do.)”
Have you ever stopped yourself laughing at someone’s joke because you were in a bad mood with them? If you felt that was a grumpy power move, you were probably right.
Laughter can boost your bond
Laughter is powerful because it’s involuntary: we’ve learned to trust it as a social signal. Even Great Apes use laughter to boost social bonds. Some evolutionary anthropologists believe that we evolved laughter purely to help us strengthen our connections — the Stone Age equivalent of liking someone’s Instagram. As a species, we were laughing (and bonding) long before we could talk.
Emma’s date with Mark was high on humour. “Mark saw I’d noticed his wrinkled shirt, and revealed how stressed he’d been choosing what to wear. He told me about some terrible clothes he’d bought online during lockdown, and questionable fashion decisions he’d made in his youth.
“I laughed so much we moved out to the pub’s garden because a woman next to us was giving me funny looks, which made me laugh even more.”
3. You liked who you were on the first date. Second date? Yes
Some people make you feel good. When they’re around, you feel relaxed, confident, calm. Other people can make you feel anxious, angry, or stressed just by walking into the room.
Why? It’s a phenomenon known as ‘affective presence’ by psychologists. Emotions are contagious. If someone is bad at managing their feelings, they will pass their negative vibes on to everyone they’re with. But if someone has a high emotional intelligence and/or healthy ways of regulating their emotions, they’ll make everyone around them feel good too.
Trust your feelings
How did you feel on your date? A good match for you will be someone who makes you feel good. Even if you’re not literally jumping for joy, you’ll be calmer or more positive.
Emma noticed Mark’s positive affective presence halfway through their first date.
“When I arrived at the pub, I felt tired and frazzled. I’d had a stressful day at work and would have preferred to be curled up on my sofa, eating a ready meal in front of the telly. I told myself I only had to stay for one drink, then I could make an excuse and leave.
“But Mark was so easy to be with that one drink turned into two, and I heard myself agreeing to stay for a meal. He just had an air of calm around him. It wasn’t necessarily sexy, but it was soothing. I felt like everything would be OK.”
4. You didn’t have much in common. Second date? Maybe not
If your date was dissimilar to you, it’s probably not worth rushing to nail down date two. Science has found again and again that the old adage ‘opposites attract’ isn’t true. In fact, according to a study of 80,000 heterosexual couples published in Nature Human Behavior, the most successful couples have around 82% – 89% of traits in common.
These traits include…
- Political leanings
- Age you lost your virginity
- Your vices (like drinking habits, drugs, or smoking)
- How much water you drink
- Average time spent on the computer every day
- How happy you are with your friendships
The similarities even include how cheerful or not you are in everyday life. Couples with “a similar level of miserableness” are very compatible, according to the researchers.
Differences that don’t matter
There were three traits that didn’t seem to impact the happiness of a couple: whether they were night owls or early birds; how good their hearing was; and how much they tended to worry.
Emma and Mark knew they had lots in common before they even met. “One of the first things we bonded over was politics,” Emma remembers. “One of my profile pictures was of me at a Labour rally.”
Three strange questions that reveal compatibility
Of course, it can be difficult to find out how much water someone drinks, or how much time they spend scrolling Facebook. So if you want to try an experiment, text them the three questions believed (by online dating experts) to reveal whether a couple will be happy together long-term…
- Do you like horror movies?
- Have you ever travelled around another country alone?
- Wouldn’t it be fun to chuck it all in and go and live on a sailboat?
If their answers match yours, that might be a sign to go on date two.
5. You had shared values. Second date? Yes
Similar values are even more important than shared interests. A study found that shared values stoke the flame of attraction. The more values a couple has in common, the more attracted they are to each other.
Some examples of values might be trust and communication, marriage, honesty, or giving back to the community.
Couples with shared values understand and respect each other’s motivations. For example, if one person has to cancel a date because their child is unwell, it’ll be a lot less annoying to a partner who places a similar value on family, than to one who prioritises socialising.
How to discover someone’s values
It’s not easy to learn someone’s core values at an early date, but you can get clues if you think back to what you talked about. Did the conversation revolve around work or fitness? Your date might value self-improvement. Did they evade questions about their past relationships? They probably don’t place a high value on communication.
Shared values were what finally persuaded Emma to see Mark again. “When I’d evaded Mark’s request for a second date a couple of times, he rang me up,” she says. “I was worried he was going to be angry, but instead he said he was looking for a serious relationship and would rather know if I really wasn’t interested.
“His honesty was refreshing. I realised he was very different to my ex, who’d been reluctant to talk about his feelings and rarely mentioned the future. I agreed to see Mark again, and we’ve been together ever since.”
To go on a second date or not — the decision
So, when you’re weighing up whether to see someone again, ask yourself…
- Did I like them at first sight?
- Did we laugh together?
- Did I feel good in their presence?
- Did we have much in common?
- Did we share similar values?
The more of these questions you can say yes to, the more confident you can feel going on a second date.
How do you decide whether to go on a second date? Will you be using any of these tips? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.