@CathodeRayGun @mmmfeet @birdulon @monsterislandcolonizer Met through family/friends. She was a rudderless NEET after doing a semester of comm college from home, and her parents pushed her into taking a job w/ a dentist we both know. I met her when I was visiting the old hometown for the holidays, and my dad told me to go drop off a present to the guy while advising me to “checkout the cute receptionist, she’s totally your type”
I hung out in the lobby for a while flirting with her, and the dentist helped me by teeing her up w/ “can you believe she’s single? She never even goes out, she’s a total homebody… why don’t you take her out?“ I was leery of the age gap at first, so to me I fell into this weird frame where I offered to take her on a “practice date”. We ended up going downtown to check out the xmas decorations and eat at a nice little restaurant (bc I liked the food, some places really need a partner to go).
For her, it really broke the pattern of everything she hated about dating, because it wasn’t the usual thing of ‘hanging out’ on someone’s couch and ‘watching’ garbage on TV. She got to wear a dress and feel like an actual adult for once, which was novel for her. Combine it with the fact that her boss/fam friend vouched for me as trustworthy, and the “practice date” pretext let me put her at ease knowing I wouldn’t be forcing her into anything.
Not really a strategy that would work on most gals by any means, they’re much more forthcoming about dating and have a good deal of experience under their belt. She’d just had those classic naive girl experiences like “oh you wanna hang out in the backseat of your car? okay, yeah hey what’re you doing?!?!?” so she’s pretty gun-shy. Add in the fact that she never really liked going out and meeting people, content to stay at home, and I totally get why her parents were almost glad to have me take her off their hands.
NEET woman in mom & dad’s house: “Ewww, she needs to get her life together”
NEET woman in my house: Awww, she’s building a lil’ family