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The Two-Day Rule: Why You Have 48 Hours to Contact Someone After a First Date

You have precisely 2 days after a first date to let them know if you want to go out again.

By Chiara Atik for HowAboutWe

The Post-Date Follow-Up Text — what it should say and when it should be sent — is a topic that comes up again and again on The Date Report. This week, Chloe Anderson over at AskMen.com makes the case for contacting your date on the second day after you two went out — no sooner, and no later.

“If you make contact the very next day, you risk coming off as too eager. But by the third day of radio silence, she starts to think she’s never going to hear from you again, and then she starts to justify why she’s, like, totally OK with that: the slight gap between your teeth, the fact that you’re a loud breather, the fact that you wore sneakers on the date. Before you know it, her friends are telling her she can do better than you. (I know it sounds crazy, but again, this is just the way it works.) So I highly recommend following the two-day rule; get in touch with her no more and no less than a couple days after your first date. What should say? A simple “Thursday night was fun! Do you have plans next Friday?” will do just fine.”

Makes sense to me — though I still maintain that a quick “Thanks, I had fun!” text immediately after the date shouldn’t be labeled as “overeager.”

Original Story