It was just dinner and drinks . . . I showed up to the restaurant and he was in a FULL beekeeper’s suit, just sitting/chillin’ at the table waiting for me.
It was THE total ice breaker. I laughed so hard (in an endearing way.) The staff seemed confused and some people at neighboring tables were laughing. One guy, about my age, asked if we were on a reality show. We talked about his bees and honey and the little honey business he’s starting up. He even brought little honey samples for me to try! HAHA! (And I did, and it was delicious.) We had a great dinner and great conversation. He told me he was having a great time and asked if I wanted to go for a drink sometime, I said sure. He pulled out his phone and texted me at the table, “hey, are you free for a drink tonight?” I found that so sweet and silly, I texted him back and we totally went for drinks.
Now, granted, I’m not saying that we should all show up on dates wearing beekeeper suits. The dates that are not boring are not all super eccentric things. The common thread is that they weren’t just résumé exchanges over a drink or dinner; they were situations in which people could experience interesting things together and learn what it was like to be with someone new.
THE EFFECTS OF NON-BORING-ASS DATES
There is social science that shows that more interesting dates like this can lead to more romantic success. In their famous 1974 study called “Some Evidence for Heightened Sexual Attraction Under Conditions of High Anxiety,” Arthur Aron and Donald Dutton sent an attractive woman to the Capilano River in Vancouver, Canada.4 The river runs through a deep canyon, across which were two bridges. One of the bridges—the control bridge—was very sturdy. It was constructed of heavy cedar, had high handrails, and ran only about ten feet above the water. The second bridge—the experimental bridge—was much, much scarier. It was made of wooden boards attached to wire cables and had a tendency to tilt and sway. The handrails were low, and if you fell, it was a two-hundred-foot drop onto rocks and shallow rapids.
Of the two bridges, only the second was, neurologically speaking, arousing. The researchers had the attractive woman approach men as they crossed each of the bridges. She then told the men she was doing a psychological study and asked if they’d take a brief survey. Afterward, she gave the men her phone number and told them to call if they had any additional questions about the experiment. The researchers predicted that men on the shaky bridge would be more likely to call, as they might mistake their arousal, actually caused by fear, for romantic arousal caused by attraction to the woman. Sure enough, more men on the shaky bridge made the call.
Must have been a bummer for those dudes, though:
“Hey, Sharon? It’s Dave from the bridge study. I know this may sound weird, but I was wondering . . . would you like to grab a cup of coffee or something sometime?”
“No, David. Sorry, this isn’t Sharon. This is Martin. I’m a lab assistant. This was actually also part of the study. We wanted to see if you’d be more likely to call Sharon if you were on the more precarious bridge, and you were! This is great.”
“Oh, okay . . . Do you know how to get in touch with Sharon?”
“No. I don’t. This is the decoy number we gave all of you guys. Man, she is something, though, huh? [long pause] All right. Thanks again. Bye, David.”
“Bye.” [sad]
Aron published another study, titled “Couples’ Shared Participation in Novel and Arousing Activities and Experienced Relationship Quality” (damn, dude, shorten the names of your studies!), where he took sixty couples who were doing okay and had them (a) participate in activities that were novel and exciting (e.g., skiing, hiking), (b) participate in activities that were pleasant/mundane (e.g., dinner, movie), or (c) participate in no activity (this was the control group).5
The couples that did the novel and exciting activities showed a significantly greater increase in relationship quality.
Now, many of you are probably thinking that this directly contradicts a study cited by Keanu Reeves’s character at the end of the film Speed. “I’ve heard relationships based on intense experiences never work,” he says. “Okay,” replies Sandra Bullock’s character, “we’ll have to base it on sex, then.”
I’m not sure where Keanu’s character, Jack Traven, got his information, but if you trust that Aron and his colleagues aren’t bullshitting us, it seems like participating in novel and exciting activities increases our attraction to people. Do the dates you usually go on line up more with the mundane/boring or the exciting/novel variety? If I look back on my dating life, I wonder how much better I (and the other person) would have fared if I had done something exciting rather than just get a stupid drink at a local bar.