First Date Ideas For Seniors Over 60

Most first-date advice is written for people in their twenties and it shows. It assumes you are trying to impress somebody. At sixty something you are trying to do something much simpler and much more useful: find out whether you would enjoy a second afternoon with this person. That is it. Nobody is being auditioned.

Once you accept that, picking a place gets easy. You want somewhere you can actually hear each other, somewhere neither of you has to drive an hour to reach, and something with a built-in ending so nobody has to invent an excuse to leave. Here are six that meet all three, and what each one is really good for.

1. Dinner

Good when you already know you like each other. Dinner is the default, and its weakness is that it is long. Two hours is a lot to commit to a stranger. Its other weakness is noise: a room with hard floors and music playing will have you both nodding along to sentences you never caught, which is a miserable evening. Call ahead and ask for a quiet table, and go early rather than late. Honestly, for a genuine first meeting, lunch is the better call. Same conversation, half the commitment, and nobody feels obliged to make an evening of it.

2. Country Walk

Good if you are nervous. Walking is the most underrated first date there is. You are side by side rather than staring across a table, and there is always something to look at when the conversation needs a rest. It does not have to be a hike. There are more than 41,000 miles of rail trail in this country, built on old railroad beds, which means flat, wide and easy on the knees. TrailLink will show you what is near you. Pick something short, agree the distance up front so nobody is regretting their shoes at the turnaround, and bring the dog if you have one.

3. City Bus Tour

Good if you are worried about running out of things to say. This one solves the exact thing people dread. On a tour you do not have to generate conversation, because it keeps arriving through the window. Obviously useful if one of you just moved to town, and better than you would guess between two people who have lived there forty years, because the guide always turns up something neither of you knew. It seats you, it lasts a fixed length of time, and it ends on its own.

4. Cinema

Good value, and good for a second date. People say a movie is a poor first date because you cannot talk. They have it backwards. The movie is not the date. The movie is what gives you something to talk about over coffee afterward, so neither of you has to show up with material. It is also cheap if you time it. AMC's senior discount starts at 60, Cinemark's is typically 62, and not every location takes part, so check yours. Often the better deal is the chain's weekday promotion, and both AMC and Regal require a free membership to get it. Weekday afternoons are half empty, which is much of the appeal.

5. Boating

Good for breaking the ice fast. Half an hour in a rented rowboat or paddleboat does more for first-date stiffness than any amount of clever conversation, and the reason is that you will both be visibly bad at it. It is very hard to stay formal with somebody while the two of you go in a slow circle and laugh about it. The length is right too. Long enough to get talking properly, short enough that if it is not working you can shake hands at the dock and nobody feels trapped. Somebody gets splashed. It has never once mattered.

6. Garden Center

Good if you would rather be doing something than talking. Not glamorous, and it works anyway. A big garden center gives you two easy hours with the structure built in: plenty to look at, plenty to point at, somewhere to sit halfway around, and no obligation to be charming on demand. What is in stock depends heavily on where you live, since Home Depot alone works with regional buyers, so Florida is planting in February while the northern stores are still waiting on April. If you both garden you will be fine. If only one of you does, that is fine too, because people are always worth listening to on the subject they care most about.

And if you cannot decide, coffee is not a cop-out. Forty minutes, cheap, easy to extend into a walk if it is going well.

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