Dr Pam Spurr

Six Signs Your First Date Could Signal Love!

Six Signs Your First Date Could Signal Love!

Let me help you identify critical signs of a successful first date

First dates can be fraught no matter if you’re young and inexperienced or you're divorced and looking for someone new. There’s pressure to look your best, be scintillating, and to strike a chord halfway between desperate and aloof. We fear saying something silly or give off the wrong message.

All such worries miss the point because these things don't really matter when it comes to initial attraction on the first date. That's due to a simple fact: if you're attracted to each other at a basic, but important, subconscious level, you won’t notice if a joke falls flat or you mention something you wish you hadn't. Instead there are six key signs that signal your attraction is meaningful and love is on the horizon.

Pauses Are Positive -

There’s nothing worse than an uncomfortable silence where you don't know what to do with yourself. Your mind goes blank as you panic about what to say next. Believe me your date feels the same way! Often such awkward silences only come to an end when someone says something daft or irrelevant. BUT if you don't find these pauses are a problem and they’re quite natural and relaxed - and neither of you squirms awkwardly - then that's an excellent sign. This means you have almost immediately established an unspoken confidence between you. Neither feels they have to ‘rabbit on’ just to keep the other interested or fill the pause.

Mirroring -

Everyone knows about the importance of body language, the unspoken communication between people, to give us lots of genuine information about what the other's thinking. Many dating experts, including myself, recommend contriving to mirror your date's body language. This naturally puts them at their ease. But when you contrive to mirror someone's body language you won't necessarily pick up genuine information about how well you have hit it off. If however, you notice that you’re both mirroring each other’s body language naturally throughout the evening, it’s a key signal you’re in tune with the way the other feels. So take note if he picks up his drink when you pick up yours, or if he leans in towards you as you lean in towards him to speak.

All Your Life -

If you leave the date feeling that you've "known him all your life" that's a crucial clue you two share a lot in terms of your background, your values, and how you were raised. Yes, I know people often say that opposites attract but after the initial the relationship between two opposite is often doomed. What really attracts us is feeling comfortable in someone's company because we can sense we share the same sort of background, beliefs and point of view. This feeling of knowing someone on your life is evidence that your intuition has really come into play and is giving you this important message.

Savour the Moment –

This date was only supposed to last a couple hours. After all it's, say, a Tuesday night and you have a big conference in the morning, and you still haven't finished preparing for it. Or you promised yourself to get up early to go to the gym because you've neglected it recently. And then you find, as the date comes to an end, that you drag your feet and don't want to leave. You're savouring every moment. This signals that your pleasure responses have been triggered and you probably have the hormones of attraction whizzing around your bloodstream. These give you a sense of longing and desire when someone has shared a lovely time with you. And they won't be triggered if you've been stressed by the date in any way.

Time Flies -

You arrange to meet for a drink only, on the unspoken premise that if you two don't really hit it off then it’s "only a drink". Then you look at your watch and it's two hours later and you're having a wonderful time. When you both agree that it’d be nice to go on and have dinner somewhere then it's an excellent sign that you are in tune with each other’s feelings and expectations.

Sex Can Wait -

You're having a goodnight kiss and it feels so right that you actually don't want to jump into bed with this person. It feels so right that inside you want the sex to be right, too, and that means waiting. People often tell me they made the mistake of jumping into bed with a date because for some reason (like loneliness) they wanted desperately to make it work. They thought that sex would do the trick (like kickstart a real interest and they’d no longer be lonely). But the wrong reasons won't make a first date work that wasn't meant to. Listen to this signal that it feels so nice giving this person a goodnight kiss, but you want to wait as it's an excellent sign. And if the date was a bit of a disaster but you're desperate for some company, this is the wrong reason to jump into bed.

Published in The Express newspaper