18 Tips to Avoid Getting Friendzoned on a First Date
Keep getting friendzoned after every first date?
Here are 18 tips and tricks that’ll help you avoid getting friendzoned for good.
How Not to Get Friendzoned: 18 Tips
1. Dress well
Choose an outfit that suits your body type and style while being appropriate for the occasion.
2. Groom yourself
Take care of your personal grooming, including maintaining a neat haircut, trimming any facial hair, and wearing clean clothes.
3. Maintain good hygiene
Shower, apply deodorant, and brush your teeth before the date to ensure you smell fresh throughout it.
4. Display confident body language
Stand tall, maintain eye contact, and smile genuinely.
Simply paying attention to these aspects of nonverbal communication can help you create immediate physical attraction with your date.
5. Show genuine interest to build emotional connection
Building an emotional connection is an important step that will help you avoid the friend zone.
Listen attentively to your date, and ask open-ended questions to encourage them to open up about their feelings and experiences.
Read: New Study Reveals 110 Funny Questions to Ask on a First Date
6. Be authentically yourself
Instead of trying to impress your date with a fabricated persona, let your personality shine through.
Being authentic allows your date to connect with you on a deeper level. Your date will sense any inauthenticity and count you out immediately for it.
Showcase your unique qualities and let your date see you for who you are. When you show your comfort with your real self, your date will be more likely to see you as a potential romantic partner.
7. Display a sense of humor
Humor can help break the ice and create rapport, making way for deeper emotional connection.
A sense of humor is an attractive quality that can bring a first date to the next level of spark and help you avoid being friendzoned after a first date.
Read: Creating Chemistry on a First Date: 7 Tips for Feeling a Spark
8. Balance assertiveness and vulnerability
Expressing your feelings and desires with a mix of confidence and openness can help create emotional attraction.
Being vulnerable lets your date connect with you on a deeper level of emotional intimacy, which can be a powerful way to spark a feeling of closeness and attraction.
9. Improve your confidence
How much confidence you give off makes a big difference in how others perceive you.
Being confident in yourself shows your date that you’re secure in who you are and allows you to appear sincerely interested in getting to know them.
Remember, your confidence has to align with your authentic self and come from within. The key to real connection is not just being confident but also being genuine.
Read: 4 Reasons Why Confidence is So Attractive
10. Practice self-affirmations
Practice self-affirmations before the date to remind yourself of your strengths and positive qualities.
This can help improve your self-esteem and make you feel more comfortable during the date.
Read: The Words of Affirmation Love Language Explained
11. Relax before the date
Enjoy a relaxing activity before the date to calm your nerves and ensure you’re feeling at ease when you head out, such as meditating, exercising, or chatting with a close friend.
12. Lean in
Lean forward slightly when your date is speaking to indicate that you’re actively listening and engaged in the conversation, and to create a feeling of physical closeness.
13. Gesture openly
Gesture with your hands when talking to add emphasis, to be animated, and to demonstrate enthusiasm and passion.
By focusing on improving your confidence through expressions and maintaining effective body language, you can make a positive impression and avoid getting friendzoned after the first date.
14. Avoid closed body language
Avoid crossing your arms or legs so you don’t appear closed off, anxious, or disinterested.
Seeming unsure in yourself through this kind of body language can promote feelings of platonic friendship and disinterest you want to avoid.
Read: When to Ask for a Second Date: How Long Should You Wait?
15. Active Listening
On a first date, it’s important to practice active listening if you want to create a connection.
Actively listening shows that you’re truly interested in getting to know the other person and makes them feel seen and heard.
Maintain eye contact, nod sporadically, and respond with appropriate questions or comments to show you understand and care.
It’s important to strike a delicate balance between showing genuine interest in your date but not coming on too strong or seeming too desperate, else you’ll surely land in the friend zone.
16. Flirt
Listening well and responding thoughtfully aren’t enough to avoid being friendzoned after a date.
To create a romantic atmosphere and maintain a playful vibe that sparks attraction, you have to be flirty.
Use humor, gentle teasing, and appropriate touches on your date’s arm, hand, or back to show your interest.
By flirting throughout the date, you’ll send a clear signal of your intentions and prevent any misunderstandings about your attraction. You’ll prevent your date from seeing you as just a friend.
Read: Texting Between the First and Second Date: 5 Rules to Know
17. Compliments
Giving compliments is another way to show your attraction and build rapport with your date.
Be genuine in your compliments and focus on qualities that you truly admire about the person. This can be their fashion sense, intelligence, their quirks, or their sense of humor.
It can be about their physical appearance, though make sure you’re specific and don’t overdo it. Compliments create a positive dynamic and reinforce your romantic intentions, making it less likely for you to be placed in the friend zone.
18. Balance your communication
Remember to maintain a balance in your communication during your first date.
Don’t overdo flirting at the expense of being a good conversationalist.
Likewise, don’t compliment excessively without flirting to create tease and tension.
By actively listening, flirting, and complimenting together, you’ll create a strong foundation for a potential relationship and minimize the risk of getting friendzoned.
Read: 11 Best Tinder Pictures to Get More Likes (for Guys & Women)
Understand These 3 Common Reasons Why People Get Friendzoned
Here are 3 common reasons why someone might get friendzoned after a first date.
1. Lack of attraction: Physical and emotional attraction play a central role in developing a romantic or sexual relationship. Personality and conversational connection aren’t enough. If a person doesn’t feel any attraction towards you, they’ll see the relationship as platonic, even if they are blown away by your personality.
2. Poor communication: Not clearly communicating your intentions or interest in a romantic or sexual relationship can lead to misunderstandings and is a common reason why people end up in the friend zone. It’s important to express your feelings and make sure you’re on the same page, even if that means feeling vulnerable or facing rejection. Conveying your romantic interest on a first date, whether subtly or explicitly, is a good way to pave the way for a significant, intimate connection. Often, you won’t ever get something you want unless you ask for it.
3. Taking it too slow: While it’s essential to get to know someone before starting a romantic relationship, being too cautious and hesitant and taking it slow could cause the other person to lose interest, which will land you in the friend zone. There’s a critical window of time when you need to express your interest and make a move before it’s too late.
Read: 8 Reasons Why You Should Kiss on the Second Date
If you can understand the friend zone and these key reasons why it happens to so many people, you can identify when it’s coming on and take the needed steps to avoid it yourself.
How to use dating apps to land more first dates
Hopefully these tips give some insights into how to avoid the friend zone on a first date.
When planning a first date with someone you met on a dating app like Hinge, Tinder, or Bumble, it’s important to plan ahead and do what you can to make it go well.
If you’re on dating apps and want to improve your dating profile so you land more first dates, we have you covered.
We at The Match Lab offer professional services to create dating profiles that attract high-quality matches.
If you’d like to find out which are your most attractive photos to use in your dating profile, give our dating photo analyzer a try. Just upload some photos of yourself, and our algorithm will reveal which photos you should be using in your profile and the ideal order they should go in.
If you’re looking for help with writing your dating profile, then check out our professional dating profile writing service.
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10 Reasons Why You Keep Having Bad First Dates
5 Signs of Chemistry on a First Date: How to Know It Went Well