How to Deal With First-Date Nerves for Senior Men

It’s funny that there are some things in life that never seem to leave us, one of which is that feeling of anxiety we all experience when we’re getting ready for a first date. After a long time of dating women and engaging in relationships with the fairer sex, a man should logically be able to take a girl out for coffee without stressing about the occasion’s outcome.

However, the heart and gut are anything but logical, and your anxious reactions are anything but avoidable, especially if you feel particularly invested in the date you’re about to go on.

To help ease those jitters, here are a few tips senior men can use to feel comfortable on their way to a first date.

What are the first things you will worry about when it comes to a first date? If you’re like most of us, you worry about aesthetic considerations. You worry about how you look, if your breath smells, if you need a haircut or a shave.

Instead of dismissing these concerns as shallow, take them seriously and spend a little time to make sure you look your best before your date. Go get a haircut, put on clean and pressed clothes, pop in a few breath mints, and you will immediately jump start your confidence.

The worst thing you can do is assume these qualities don’t matter. Men of all ages ignore the importance of looking their best in order to feel their best. It isn’t purely a problem with senior men.

Yet it doesn’t take more than a minute of thought to realize the more little nagging doubts you can eliminate, the more confident you will feel before your date. And the easiest nagging doubts to deal with are those physical speed bumps you can smooth over with a little focused personal attention.

And even if you really don’t care about your own appearance, I’d bet you care about your date’s appearance. Remember that fair is fair. If you expect your woman to look her best, you need to return the favor and look great yourself.

“Instead of believing you’re too old to be dating, let

go of any beliefs about your current standing in life.”

The key to experiencing a great date is simple: Let go of your expectations of what you think your woman should be like and how you think your evening should go, and simply enjoy yourself. It’s perfectly possible to have a great time out with a woman even if nothing particularly romantic comes from the evening.

By adopting the attitude that you’re going to have a good time and really get to know this woman (even if you realize you aren’t particularly interested in dating her), you will lose many of those jitters that keep you nervous and jumpy before your date. Nerves are ultimately caused by holding on to some sort of preconceived notion of what a “perfect” date looks like. If you have a very clear picture of what a “perfect” date entails, then you will naturally feel nervous that your experience won’t live up to your internal demands. But if you learn to relax and let things just happen naturally, you won’t ever have to worry about feeling let down.

The biggest expectations you need to eliminate are those you hold for yourself. You’re probably used to seeing yourself in a certain light, and that light probably has a lot to do with your current age. Yes, you are an older man, but first and foremost, you are still a man. Instead of believing you’re too old to be dating, let go of any beliefs about your current standing in life, and just enjoy being the man you have always been, young or old.