Why 8 a.m. Is the Best Time of Day for First Dates

I recently went on a first date with a woman before 9. In the morning. We’d been talking for a bit and having trouble nailing down a night we could both go out and get some drinks together and get to know each other. She half-jokingly said we should just meet for breakfast some morning, but then we talked a bit about it and agreed it seemed like a good idea or at least a better one than scheduling a first date weeks down the line.

We shared some avocado toast, soft-boiled eggs, and some excellent conversation, which we plan to continue soon on a second date. In other words, it was awesome, if unconventional.

Here are six reasons why I think it went so well.

 

1. Less Pre-Date Anxiety As someone with a penchant for extreme anxiety about life in general, I hate going on first dates after I’ve put in a full day of work or just merely existing primarily because I spend the majority of the day nervous and anxious. (To the point where I’ve canceled dates on the day of just because I don’t want to feel that way all day.) If you think about it, it’s kind of weird to set up an end-of-day experience that is, honestly, most likely to be awkward or even terrible.

 

2. You’re Fresh I’m the complete opposite of a morning person, but I’m still always more ready to behave coherently in the morning than I am after a long day of work. (Unless I’m hungover.)

 

3. If the Date Goes Well, So Does the Rest of Your Day You know how great it feels when you’re heading home at night after a successful first date? Fist-pumping is probably involved if you’re anything like me. Then, you get home and you’re like, “Oh, man, I’m so excited I can’t even sleep!” Imagine what that would be like during the workday. I know when I had my great breakfast date, I showed up to work in a great mood. People called me out on it, so I had to tell them about the how I’d spent my morning and why I was now a brand-new advocate of breakfast dates.

 

4. If It Goes Horribly, at Least You Know Your Day Can Only Get Better This is arguably a lot better than ending your day on a terrible note.

 

5. You Won’t Make a Drunken Fool of Yourself Raise your hand it you’ve ever gotten drunk on a first date and messed the whole thing up. I know I sure have. It’s essentially a hobby of mine. But if you go out to breakfast, you’re probably not going to drink (unless it’s the weekend or a day off). And you’re not expected to. If you make the choice to not drink on a first date that takes place where alcohol is served (which I’d say is the way it is at least 84 percent of the time in New York City, where I live), it’s usually a thing. You’ll have to explain yourself so the person doesn’t think you’re a recovering alcoholic or teetotaler or whatever. At breakfast time, though, this isn’t an issue.

 

6. Expectations are Low on first dates, there’s always the underlying question: Will we or won’t we get some action at the end of this? When it’s a breakfast date, you have a specific place to be at a specific time, making any sort of fooling around an impossibility. And you know what? If it goes really well, you can be brash and propose you have two dates in one day the second of which would happen after work, when the booze will flow and you can both be open to the possibility of ending the date with a bang.