‘So, um, maybe we can grab coffee sometime…?’
Really?
…coffee…?
Do I speak for all girls when I ask: WHAT THE HECK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN!?!
I had a guy friend approach me recently and say something along these lines:
‘So, Debbie… I read your blog the other night. My question is this: how come, when you ask a girl out for coffee, she freaks out and doesn’t want to go because she thinks that coffee means that you want to marry her or something?’
Ohhh, the ‘coffee date’. Or… is it a ‘date’ at all?
And this is where the problem arises.
We sat and talked for a while about all the miscommunications that occur in the asking of girls out for coffee. While I could understand his side, I couldn’t necessarily appreciate it. The more we talked, the more I felt like he was only giving me fuel for my argument on why I think the coffee gesture is a terrible idea (not to mention this slightly spineless attempt to let a girl know that you’re interested in her…).
He insisted that, ‘The coffee is a way of getting to know a girl you’re interested in without scaring her off by asking her out on a date.’
My problem with this is that the girl usually has no idea what the guy’s intentions actually are. While in some guy’s minds it might be ‘universal knowledge’ that the coffee clearly means that he’s interested, there’s a whole other batch of men who mean nothing when they ask a girl to grab coffee with them. Yet, somehow we are supposed to be able to differentiate between the two and know which kind of guy we are dealing with? Impossible.
Sometimes coffee is just coffee…and sometimes coffee has a lot more meaning to it. Perhaps I’m the only one who likes to know just exactly what I’m agreeing to before I agree to it, but I don’t really think I am. It seems that the times I agree to coffee, hoping that coffee means more… it doesn’t, and the times that I turn down the offer because I’m fearful that it means more, it just means friendship. I clearly haven’t figured it out.
Feeling a bit more enlightened by the conversation with my friend, I was eager to hear some other guys’ perspectives of the ‘coffee date’. I was relieved when one guy basically said, ‘Asking for coffee is like asking for a date while minimizing the risk of rejection.’
Exactly.
That’s exactly what I was trying to get at.
Guys ask these girls out for coffee to try and get to know them better. While perhaps their intentions aren’t necessarily harmful, there tends to be this aspect of cowardice about it to me. If you’re interested in me, let me know… ask me out. But don’t ask me to coffee, because I don’t know what the heck that means. It puts me through emotional turmoil as I over-analyze just what you might mean by coffee.
And, if you just want to get to know me as a friend…? Let it happen naturally. Let’s hang out in group settings and, when we run into each other occasionally, let’s stop and talk… but if you choose to be intentional about your friendship with me by bringing coffee into the picture? I just might get the wrong idea.
Because, I don’t know what coffee means.
I think there’s a whole slew of women who don’t know what it means, either.
Sure, coffee may be non-threatening and it might be an ‘on-ramp’ (as one guy friend so eloquently put it) for dating… but it just seems like an unnecessary, confusing step to me.
So, for all of you guys out there who only mean it to be a friend thing when you ask a girl to grab coffee–I’m sorry. It’s almost always going to cause her to question what your intentions are (unless you’ve already been super straight forward with her, or you have a history of friendship to where you both undoubtedly know that coffee is just coffee).
And, for all of you guys out there who think it’s obvious that a girl should know that you’re somewhat interested in her when you ask her to grab coffee–I’m sorry. We don’t know. We might hope that’s what you mean, but we certainly don’t know. You’ll need to spell it out for us. There are too many guys in our lives that have asked us out for coffee who haven’t meant anything by it…and so we will not be quick to assume incorrectly again. Or, on the flip side, we will also be hesitant to assume that it’s just a friend thing. If we are not interested, we may reject the coffee because we’re terrified that the coffee actually might mean something more on your end when we aren’t feeling it on our end.
Ohhh, the coffee date. It’s a terrible thing.
But, I suppose it’s redeemable if you’re just honest and upfront about what coffee means from the beginning. After all, you may just want coffee.
And sometimes coffee is just coffee.
But, sometimes coffee is quite a bit more than coffee.
(And yes, the same principles actually do apply for all things comparable to coffee… like tea, or ice cream, or a walk down the beach…….)
You basically just need to know that when you’re unclear about your intentions and you’re asking to spend one-on-one time with us, it gets confusing.
The end.