Matthew Hussey: 

Wow. It was so good meeting you. Oh, and it was great talking to you, too. Yeah, that was a fun conversation. Maybe we could, exchanged numbers. We can. Yeah. Yeah, I’d love that. I’m actually free on Friday afternoon. Next week, if you wanted to do something, then maybe get together and get coffee. Coffee? Coffee? Oh, yeah.

You just order at the counter. I never understood why people don’t bring coffee table books to coffee shops. What is is that, almond milk?

Is a big controversy that’s taken over the internet when it comes to early dating rules. Is that of the coffee date on Reddit. People are asking our coffee dates really low effort. And then there are all the TikToks that indicate that if you accept the coffee date, you are essentially positioning yourself as a low value person.

Try telling that to Sir Benedict Ashworth, who just spent half his monthly salary importing expensive beans from Yemen so that he could flirt in a candlelit coffeehouse. Once upon a time, coffee was a hallmark of luxury and intellectualism, but that’s not necessary for this video. These are from Costco. Even on my own channel when I put up a poll and asked if you would all like to see a video about coffee dates, someone commented, I think coffee dates are low effort and are truly for broke high schoolers or college kids.

When it comes to coffee dates, there are plenty of people who see the benefit. They’re low stakes, they’re easy to end if things aren’t going well and they are affordable, they are a great way to test chemistry. And if a coffee date goes really well, it can always turn into dinner. Despite this, they get so much pushback online.

I want to get this video started by saying I get it. There is nothing more unattractive than someone who has zero plan. Put zero thought into a real date shows up. Having put no effort into their own appearance on a date, and just generally is shown no respect for the fact that you have come out to meet them.

A date is a vulnerable act to begin with. Meeting up and taking a chance on someone that we have never been with in person before. The least we can do is put in a little effort for each other, but we have to put this in an historical context. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go back to 17th century Europe.

But even if we just go back 50 years, people had far more certainty before the formal date ever happened. And that is the crucial distinction. People met through work, friends, school, church, bars, parties, repeated social environments. So by the time someone said, do you want to go to dinner sometime? They usually had already been flirting, conversation, observation, familiarity, social proof, mutual friends, and a sense of chemistry that was building.

Even if you met someone in a bar 20 years ago before the apps existed, you met them, you had a great conversation, and then you decided to do something because you had spent three hours talking to them and realizing you liked them. At that point, yes, it might have been weird to say you. We’ve been talking for the last three hours in this bar.

You want to go for coffee next week? Dinner sounds appropriate. In other words, the screening process happened organically before the official date. But app culture changed that. Now people are talking to multiple people at once, people they’ve never met. Heavily curated versions of people. People who may disappear tomorrow. People who may not even resemble their photos, and people who may not have any genuine intention whatsoever.

Which means the first day is often the screening process itself. And in that context, a low stakes coffee suddenly feels far more rational than it might have in previous generations. But that is not what the internet will have you believe. So let’s look at some of the biggest criticisms of people who oppose coffee dates. Criticism one. Higher value women don’t accept coffee.

A lot of TikTokers and influencers claim that women who accept coffee dates are acting low value.

I do not accept a coffee or a walk as a possible date option, and neither should you. First of all, I’m not a dog that needs to be walked. Second, I have an espresso machine at home. Works.

Fabulous. I used to use the term high value behavior in my work, and then I stopped using it because I just didn’t like the way it sounded anymore. But the argument these people make is that a woman who respects herself wouldn’t show up to meet someone that isn’t paying a lot to spend time with her. And to that I say, you must never have got a coffee in West Hollywood.

Look, if our value is so easily lost that it goes away by showing up on a coffee date, there is a fragility to how we see our own value. Your value is not dependent on how much someone is willing to spend on you. That gives other people way too much power, and it also starts off a relationship as a transaction.

People are confusing here. Investment with intention, expensive does not equal serious. It does not even equal generous automatically. Inexpensive doesn’t mean unserious. Yes. Effort matters. Intentionality matters. Thoughtfulness matters. Generosity matters. But none of those things are perfectly measured by money. And there’s clearly a difference between someone who just says, let’s grab coffee and someone who says, there’s a gorgeous cafe.

I love near the park when I go Sunday afternoon. And by the way, even within this logic, the argument starts becoming contradictory. You could literally make the reverse argument and say, I’m so high value that I only have time for a coffee with someone before I really know I like them. My point with that, by the way, is not to use that as a serious point.

I think dinner can be a great date, but to say that any of these rules that we create about what makes us gain or lose value fall apart under scrutiny. You’ll also know that one of the things I advocate for in early dating in general, is the will see mindset. First, we have to adopt a will see mindset.

Instead of rushing to label someone is special or imagining a future together, remind yourself that you are still in the discovery phase. Tell yourself I’m enjoying to getting to know this person. But we’ll say don’t project all of your hopes and dreams onto that person. Remember the top job in your life? The role of the partner that you spend your life with has to be earned.

Women, by the way, really benefit from this advice and get a lot of value from it. They find it very useful. It’s also useful for men. It’s useful for everybody who has a tendency to rush in and over invest in the early stages. And I think that it’s important to allow men to use that advice as well. And if a guy is applying that advice, he might say to himself, you know what?

I often overdo it by trying too hard to impress someone on a first date instead of just, you know, spending a bit of time with someone, hanging out and seeing what happens. If a guy is applying that advice in that way. I don’t think that they should necessarily be criticized for not investing more by someone who themselves is benefiting from not investing too much.

When we talked about this on the Love Life Podcast, that was someone who said, men are just rationalizing something they’re not prepared to do. There are plenty of men who have invited me to a thoughtful date, like going to my favorite museum and the zoo afterwards. Coffee is just thoughtless, effortless, and lazy. How you do one thing is how you do everything.

Keep your standards higher than that girls. That’s a lot. To me, the idea of a first date when you go to a museum and then the zoo afterwards. What if you don’t like the person you’re stuck? That’s a hostage situation.

David:

Yeah, but what if you’re looking at the gorillas?

Matthew Hussey:

What?

David:

The gorillas at the zoo.

Matthew Hussey:

It’s still a long first date. To be stuck at the zoo with someone that you don’t like. Even if those gorillas.

David:

What? You don’t like gorillas.

Matthew Hussey:

I like — 

David:

If you hate gorillas so much, then what’s your favorite animal? Tough guy?

Matthew Hussey:

David, I don’t hate gorillas. This is a great. I’m just. I’m saying I don’t have time right now to answer this question. I get hundreds of questions a week. I can’t possibly get to every question on. Wait a minute, Earth. I took all of my content, everything I’ve ever said, every live event, every paid program, every thought I’ve ever had, every piece of advice on dating, relationships and confidence.

And I put it all into a digital mind. The mind of Matthew AI. A mind that anyone can go to at any time to ask the thing they’re dying to ask the piece of information they need to move forward. Whether it’s decoding a confusing text from someone, figuring out what the next best move is, knowing what to say in a specific, difficult conversation, or how to ask for more commitment.

And the best part is people can try it for free at AskMH.com right now so that they can literally get my answer to their biggest love life question in the next 60s. Now I can even answer David’s monkey question.

David:

Matt, Matt. What’s your favorite animal?

Matthew Hussey:

I’ll tell you the same thing I tell everyone who asks me that question David. Go to AskMH.com

David:

You can’t just tell me if you like —

Matthew Hussey:

No. Criticism number two, investment is disproportionate for women. A lot of women online argue that getting ready for a date involves a long process. Women don’t just spend the hour prior to the date getting ready. Many women spend their whole lives having to upkeep their looks. From microneedling sessions to makeup, hair, skincare, nails, outfits, shaving that scary looking red light mask you wear before bed, all of it.

I do think men do some of these things. You know, we are living in a world of the most metrosexual men have ever existed.

See. All of that costs money and time. And for women who want to opt out of it. Research shows that they are penalized in the workplace and in society in general, because women are judged more harshly on their looks than men are. I am not dismissing the burdens of any of this. And listen, I’m a big advocate for creating the culture you want to have in your dating life.

You know this. Most of us go into our lives if we’re not careful, if we haven’t decided the culture we want for our lives, we just end up becoming part of the culture of whatever it is we come into contact with. So if it’s important to you to never go on a coffee date, you get to choose that reality.

But that culture is not consequence free. And an unfortunate consequence of rejecting coffee dates outright due to the systemic issues stacked against women, is that you could be saying no to some really great men, people who are willing to invest as they get to know you. It can be dangerous to conclude that it is a stranger’s responsibility to compensate for the broader issues in society.

If we only measure seriousness through expensive first dates, we risk filtering out people who are genuinely intentional but simply cautious about investing too much, too soon in a modern, app based dating culture. It’s also worth making a point here about the sheer cost of dating, when it’s only sell on one side in terms of the dates themselves, and picking up the tab and how it can actually disqualify many people from dating.

It’s a dinner costs anywhere from 100 bucks to 200 bucks, and you have to date a lot of people to find your person. You might be going on four dates a month, and the person is picking up the tab every time. That’s $800 a month that they’re spending on lots of people who may not be the right person for them.

I’ve seen arguments online from people who say, if you’re two broke to date, you shouldn’t be dating, which is an extraordinarily cruel thing to suggest that our financial status should preclude us from a life of love.

If a man cannot afford dinner for two, he should not be dating. He should be working to make more money, because if he can’t afford dinner for two, how is he going to afford a family a support of future kids? Girl choose wisely.

And it’s not just women. I’ve seen older men righteously proclaim that if you can’t take someone to dinner, you’re not ready for marriage. You shouldn’t be allowed in the dating pool. Firstly, this is an insane amount of early judgment to place on someone who has simply invited you for coffee or a low stakes date. Secondly, whether you’re a man or a woman watching this, be incredibly skeptical of anyone you see online who seeks to keep dating.

Those people have the potential to either rob you of the right person by giving you filters that are just too hard, or being someone who robs you of your confidence because they make you feel like you’re not worthy in the dating pool. Criticism number three. Coffee dates are boring and business casual and seem like an interview. I do get this, and for sure someone taking you to Starbucks on a first date is like going to be a turnoff for most people.

I get that. That makes sense to me. “I have a mocha frappe up 50 Papa with light foam for a Steve. So where do you work?” I get it, and there are certainly places that if someone took you to for a date, would be an immediate turnoff. Starbucks is probably one of them, even though I enjoy a Starbucks.

It’s not a first date location, but someone might take you to a coffee shop that they really enjoy, or that is a personal favorite of theirs and therefore is intentional. And by the way, this video isn’t really about coffee shops at all. It’s not about coffee dates. It’s about the nature of first dates, and it’s about realizing that there are many first dates that don’t cost a dime.

That happen to be great first dates. And if we have these roles that say, someone has to take me to a table where they spend money on me in order to be a viable candidate, we’re missing amazing candidates that people are saying to me all the time right now that dating has become impossible, that they can’t even get someone to the point of a date, let alone worry about how the date is going.

I don’t think that in an age when meeting up in person feels increasingly difficult. The right response to that is to raise the activation energy of a date to dinner or nothing. I think we actually need to make it easier to get on dates with each other, where real connection will be built, and I think there is some basic confusion here over what a first date actually is.

It is a chance for two people, hopefully in a low stakes, enjoyable way, to find out if they like each other enough to do it again. In many ways, the second date is more of a date than the first date, because it’s the date where you really decided to go on a date. If people took the philosophy that I’m challenging in this video and simply shifted it to the second date instead of the first, I’d actually find it much more reasonable.

But for a first date, a coffee date, or any inexpensive date, a walk in the park, sitting on a park bench, looking at a river, going for ice cream is not a statement about anyone’s worth, yours or theirs. It is simply two human beings getting together, being in company, and deciding whether there is enough there to continue.

And at best, this whole argument is a distraction from what should actually be occupying your focus, rather than obsessing over the quality of the venue. What is the quality of your date? The person sitting in front of you? What are they like to spend time with? The best dates aren’t determined by what you do. They are determined by who you are with some of the strongest relationships begin in the smallest, simplest moments, not because someone spent the most money, but because sitting across from that person felt easy.

Look, there are couples who have been married for 40 years whose first date started with ice cream in a walk in the park. There are other people who are going through the most brutal breakup of divorce right now, whose first date will have been something incredibly expensive and lavish.

If what we are looking for is something meaningful and lasting, then what we need to look for is the connection. The activity and the money spent are far less important than that. And to be clear, this is not an advertisement for how amazing coffee dates are. This video is an advertisement for not finding yet one more way to cynically and prematurely disqualify people.

In a world where connection is hard enough as it is. Leave me a comment below letting me know a favorite first date you have been on, or maybe even a first date you would like to go on. If someone invited you, I will be reading the comments and I will see you in next week’s video.

Oh, Audrey. Just the lady I was looking for. Might I interest you in a double espresso on the patio.

Audrey Hussey:

At 6:30 p.m.? I’m getting ready for bed. I’m cozy.

Matthew Hussey:

Okay, well, I made this whole video to try and secure that date, so it’s pointless.

Audrey Hussey:

Goodnight.

*This transcript was whipped up with the help of AI. While it does a pretty impressive job, it may have the occasional typo, mix-up, or moment of creative interpretation. If you spot anything that looks a little . . . adventurous . . . thanks for your patience (and your sense of humor).*