The Four Pins Guide To Not Being A <i>Complete</i> Failure At Dating

A class currently offered at Boston College assigns students to go on dates in order to get them to interact with other humans that they have feelings for. As we all know, young people these days are completely incapable of this because of Tinder and the hookup culture and hip-hop and cell phones and Socrates, the corrupter of the youth. Setting aside the fact that people of all generations are prone to spending too much time on their phones (example: my extremely non-Millennial dad), I doubt this generation invented social awkwardness. In fact, I know it didn't. While researching a paper once, I found a book from 1816 featuring the sentence: "They consider him as belonging to the awkward squad."

But since every other product review on this site tries to get you to buy some jawn by invoking the possibility of maybe impressing a woman so she will maybe touch your pale, desolate nether regions, maybe some of my contemporaries do need help in the dating department. I haven't been on many dates, but I figure any seduction strategies that don't rely entirely on Peter Pan-collared Junya Watanabe jackets could be of some use.

Before you lose trust in me completely, here goes: The following are a few of my tips on how to go on a date with a woman. These alone will NOT suffice to turn you into a suave ladykiller overnight, but there will probably be at least one aspect of your next date that you won't screw up horribly.

Emily Lever is a French-American writer who wishes she led a life of adventure. You can follow her on Twitter here.

Be honest: Part II

Even if it's clear that your outing to the museum is going to be one-on-one, make sure your fellow art buff knows it's a date. This doesn't go without saying: I can think of several women (not all of them are me) who have mistakenly thought they were hanging out with a friend only to realize flirtation and/or a date was in progress. Never play it so cool that you're lying by omission, like, "I really want to see the new Jim Jarmusch movie, but all my other friends have already seen it. Qanna go?" She might make the mistake of thinking you just want to chill and appreciate neo-noir minimalist cinema. She'll let her guard down the way she would around a friend, but never would on a date. This may seem like a good thing if you think the end justifies the means, but trust earned under false pretenses, when broken, breaks almost irredeemably. When your true intentions appear, she will feel misled and betrayed and your underhanded ass can expect to regain her trust around the same time Dr. Dre drops Detox.

Be honest: Part III

I'm assuming you aren't shameless enough to pretend that you art directed the Comme des Garçons S/S 16 lookbook that hasn't come out yet. But avoid the more commonplace deceptions too: Don't lie about your knowledge of a book, an article, and album, a movie, whatever. Just say, "I've been meaning to get around to watching that" or, "I've heard of it, but haven't read it." There are a lot of works of art out there and there's nothign embarrassing about not knowing every single one. What is embarrassing is if she says, "1Q84 was a great book. How about that scene with the ostrich?" and you respond with some cookie-cutter phrase about how you "love Murakami's idiosyncratic grasp of dialogue" and then she'll be like, "PSYCH! There was no such scene." Be careful and tread lightly.

Don't Believe Everything You Read/Hear

With all due respect to our dearly departed Jake Woolf, these black and red slides are unlikely to help you slide into a girl's DMs or anything else of hers for that matter, even if they are Raf Simons. But beware of normal-seeming advice too. Like your best friend from seventh grade who told you it would be a good idea to just walk up to your crush and kiss them on the last day of school, men's and women's magazines alike can give terrible romantic advice. Esquire and Men's Health and their peers often tell you that being attractive is being a red-blooded man who drinks whiskey, straight up (I guess ice isn't manly? I don't even know) and knows how to take control and never dithers and washes his face with the sweat of thoroughbred stallions, not some sissy Clarins Pour Homme cleansing gel. If you're not that guy, which nobody actually is, you'll have a terrible time pretending to be. That's why everyone in the 50s was so full of sadness and pent-up rage.