Guys: How do you feel when a girl initiates a date?

[piratehound]

I can count the number of times a girl asked me out on one hand - and most of the time it was awkward - because I wasn't interested.

 

It really made me feel for what women must go through - turning someone down sucks, and I'm glad I've only had to do it a few times.

[Batya33]

This makes absolutely no sense. There is no sane reasoning for this to make a man uncomfortable.

 

LOL - who ever called dating and relationships logical? I think it has to do with biological differences plus, probably much more so, social conditioning. It may change and may have for people in their teens and 20s - it was and is very true in my collective experience for men in their 30s and up. Is it "sane" or "fair?" - probably not - but I am here to advise the OP on her next move, not to change the world. My advice would be that it's a bit risky this early on because of what I wrote - and if he is interested in asking her out on another date, he will. If she wants to test whether he is the kind of man who is not uncomfortable with the role reversal and that test is more important to her than the risk, then of course she should ask him out.

[The Wire]

It's risky either way no matter who does the asking, in fact I think women should be encouraged to do it more often. Makes no difference who asks who, where the relationship goes is still a coin flip situation. Girl likes a guy? Ask him out! Why are you holding out? Tradition? It's 2010, times have changed.

[rk2706]

I ask the guy I'm seeing out. We're two very busy adults with hectic schedules that makes getting together hard...if I'm free and can spend time with him, or if there is a party or something I would like to take him to, I'm going to ask him. If he's not put off by my career (you'd be surprised how many men are intimidated or put off by female lawyers), he's not going to be put off by me asking to spend time with him.

[Batya33]

I ask the guy I'm seeing out. We're two very busy adults with hectic schedules that makes getting together hard...if I'm free and can spend time with him, or if there is a party or something I would like to take him to, I'm going to ask him. If he's not put off by my career (you'd be surprised how many men are intimidated or put off by female lawyers), he's not going to be put off by me asking to spend time with him.

How many of the first 4 or 5 dates did you ask him for? I totally agree and I did the same - I had a very similar career to you and dated men with similarly hectic schedules so once we were seeing each other regularly I did as much of the asking as was needed - whether that was half or not I'm not sure - because most of the time the men I dated didn't give me a chance to ask them out - if they were interested, they were planning dates even more in advance than I would have. I think that whole "intimidated" by high powered careers like law is mostly a myth - I do think that when women act in an intimidating way, and happen to be lawyers or similar, it is blamed on their chosen career when most likely they would have acted in that manner no mater what they did for a living. It's unfortunate that the career choice is what is blamed. I also think there are some men who are so insecure that if a woman says she is too busy to go out on a certain night because of work, and she happens to be in one of those high powered careers, the very insecure man will take that as a rejection even if she offers an alternate date. I didn't get along well with very insecure people so if the man was put off by my having to cancel or postpone because of work, and took it personaly, we definitely were not a good match.

 

I think in general, busy or not, it works better to let the man ask the lady out for the first few dates at least or at least to do most of the asking - once they are dating regularly and get to know each other it really doesn't matter.

[rk2706]

No, that's totally not a myth. My friends and I have experimented with this. We did 2 virtually identical online dating profiles. Only difference was that one said corporate lawyer, the other said middle school teacher. Guess which got more replies? We've also played around when we were out before--one night telling guys we were lawyers. Another night, same bar, we lied and were teachers or paralegals or secretaries. Guess which night we had more guys ask for our numbers? I have guy friends who are lawyers and they won't date other lawyers because they don't want to "be with a woman trained to win every argument" (one friend's exact words). I was in a long term relationship all through college and my first career (I was a teacher) that ended mainly because my ex wanted a housewife and not a woman who was his intellectual equal and who made more $ than him. I'm not saying all guys are like this, but they are def out there. As are the polar opposite (lazy schmucks who ride their woman's success and who do let her call all the shots--I've had that too).

 

As far as current guy, The "asking" is more in the course of a conversation. He'll say we need to get together soon, I'll casually mention I'm free Friday, he makes plans, etc. It's pretty 50/50, I make him chase a bit...playing too hard to get though is just silly when you're as busy as we both are. (I've known this guy for about 4 years so conventional rules don't really apply).

[ItsmeShane]

I like it when women initiate.

[Allipie]

I asked out my current guy and he didn't seem to have a problem with it at all. In fact, he was quite eager to get together.

[bruinsy81]

In this particualr case the guy asked the OP out for the first two dates so if he was still interested why would he hesitate to ask her out for a 3rd date?She should wait for him to ask her out.It might be a different scenario if the guy in question was very shy and the OP wanted to ask him out on the first date ,to get the ball rolling..Once the ice is broken it would be up to the guy in question to ask her for dates 2 or 3.It would be a tremendous relief for many shy men if the women would ask them out on date 1 but unfortunately that usually not the way it goes.