How long to wait before meeting

Meeting too early and meeting too late are equally wrong, and here's why.

So you've started talking to a girl on a dating site and you want to meet her in real life. If she lives close to you, perhaps around one hour away, you will usually be able to propose a date after you've sent five to ten messages back and forth over the course of one to two weeks. You can't just suggest a date in the first message; the girl has to feel like she knows you well enough to meet you, and both the number of messages and the time that's passed since you first started your conversation will help give her that feeling.

This is one of the reasons why you shouldn't respond right away even if she instantly replies to your message; if you do, you will have to exchange a higher number of messages before she's ready to meet you. After five messages back and forth on the first night she will feel like she knows you less than she would if you had portioned those five messages out over the course of a week! In your messages, you should also make sure to exchange some personal information; this will also be important for building the trust that the girl needs in order to meet you on a date.

Sending five to ten messages back and forth over the course of one to two weeks before you suggest a date seems to be a good rule to go by. Some girls will be ready if you try earlier, but most will tell you they don't know you well enough yet.

But even though time and the number of messages you've exchanged are important factors in building the trust the girl needs to meet you, you still shouldn't wait too long. As the weeks pass, your online relationship runs the risk of becoming stale and awkward; the excitement disappears, and you window of opportunity closes. Most guys have experienced something like this; you met a girl at a party and added her on Facebook, or you started saying hello to a girl at school, but time passed, nothing more happened and things became weird. The same phenomenon occurs on dating sites.

That's why you shouldn't start talking to new girls if you know you won't be able too meet them in a few weeks time.

If it turns out a girl won't be able too meet you right now, perhaps because she's abroad at the moment, you should actually stop sending her messages. Reinitiate contact at some later point, either by noting her name and contacting her on the dating site ("Poke!!! What's up? ;)" or by taking her phone number (Listen, I don't think I'll have a profile here much longer... but if you give me your number I could text you sometime? :)

If there's a substantial distance between you, meeting up will become a bigger deal; grabbing a quick cup of coffee and saying your goodbyes if things don't work out is no longer an alternative. There will be traveling, and you're going to have to spend some time together to make it all worth it. Your goal should be having her come to your place to stay with you for a day or two, perhaps a weekend, and that means you'll need higher levels of trust and acquaintance. Communicating through messages on the dating site won't be enough. You'll need to speak on the phone or on Skype, FaceTime, or some other sort of video chat.

Even so, you should still be careful not to wait too long before you suggest meeting up; there should be progression in your relationship, and after three weeks or so the risk of staleness starts increasing.

In conclusion, understanding how long to wait before you meet her isn't that complicated. The hard part is the stuff that happens earlier: Creating a profile that's good enough to make her interested in the first place and a conversation that makes her want to meet you. If girls don't want to go on dates with you, the main problem is usually found in these two issues. Incidentally, I cover both of them in detail in my book.

About the author:

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  My name is Sondre and I'm an obsessive guy. I've spent the better part of a decade studying how attraction is kindled by text and images, and through interviews and experiments I have figured out how to create a profile that appeals to exactly the kind of women you want to meet. Through impressiveprofile.com I have helped regular guys get extraordinary results, and now it's finally your turn!