First-Date Conversation Topics for Matchmaking Agency Blind Dates in Your 30s

Plenty of readers in their 30s have sat down to a matchmaking agency blind date with no idea what to talk about.

Most people never build a game plan of their own for a blind date.

In other words, the vast majority of blind dates are simply underprepared.

So let's walk through how to prepare for one, step by step.

The basics

Ideally, you start preparing about seven days before the date.

• The venue?

The agency usually picks it, so there's not much to worry about here.

• What to wear?

For men, it's a suit. Period. Nothing else makes you look as put-together.

If you're not confident in your styling skills anyway, I strongly recommend you just wear a suit, no exceptions.

For women, the key is to build around whatever you're most confident in. Decide on a concept first (elegant, sexy, sweet, whatever lets your own unique charm come through) and work from there.

• How to choose the food?

1) How much can you eat? If it's spicy, decide the portion based on how spicy it is.

2) How far can you walk? Factor in the weather on the day, the route from the restaurant to the café, and what the woman is likely to be wearing, shoes included.

3) Don't show up hungry. Guys, eat at least a little before you go. It's human instinct: when you're hungry, you stop looking at the person across the table and start staring at your plate. Worst case, you spend the whole date with your face buried in your food trying to kill the hunger, and then it's over. So that you can actually focus on the conversation, I recommend taking the edge off your appetite before you meet.

What comes next? Surprisingly, hygiene. In other words, cleanliness.

Washing thoroughly is, of course, the most basic of basics. (For the record, I go into cleanliness and appearance in much more detail in the column below, so it's worth a read.)

And it's not just your appearance. Men especially should pay attention to how clean their car is: wash it and tidy up the interior ahead of time.

Once all of that is handled, it's time for the next step, which is the real subject of this column.

How should you prepare the conversation?

1. What matters in a conversation is the flow.

What we need to focus on isn't so much how to keep the conversation flowing as when the flow is going to naturally break.

For example, even if you're going to a Western restaurant, go to one that serves a proper course meal. If the course comes in five stages (salad, appetizer, main, dessert, tea), then you need at least five conversation topics ready. Every time a new course arrives, the conversation will naturally pause. And in a way, those pauses are moments where you can buy yourself some 'time'.

Because you don't actually know the person sitting across from you!

Recognizing that the two of you don't really know each other yet is honestly the best blind-date conversation strategy there is.

Since the conversation can break off naturally, you need to map out the conversation in advance so that during each pause you can move smoothly on to the next topic.

To keep the conversation rolling along at a natural rhythm, you need a certain number of topics prepared ahead of time.

So, when it comes to topics: memorize at least five!

2. Manners to avoid

If the words "I had such a great time talking" come out of your mouth after the date, that's a hard no!

What you want to be saying instead is something like "That went by too fast. I want to see them again."

Across all the different topics, you should only say a word or two yourself and create the opportunity and the time for the other person to talk.

Now, when I tell readers to prepare small talk and then listen, the most common mistake they make is 'interrogating'.

For example, say the other person mentions they recently changed jobs.

If your response is to ask how many years they worked at their previous company, or why they left? Yes, that's an interrogation.

The ideal move here is to ask about their values.

For instance, ask whether they moved for the salary or to change their career direction, and then follow up with something like "I've actually been thinking about that a lot lately myself", so you build common ground naturally and keep the conversation going.

That's also what it means to respect the 'line' on a first blind date.

So that's my take on blind-date conversation topics for people in their 30s.

In the next installment, I'll share how to keep things going once a blind date moves into the talking stage.

And if you've been on plenty of blind dates but keep striking out, remember there's another option: submit the diagnosis questionnaire below, get an expert's objective read on how you come across, and map out what comes next!