The Small Dinner Out: Promoting adult acquaintances to friends

Making friends when an adult is hard. When you're kids/teens/college students, you're around people who have a lot of time on their hands and few responsibilities. After you start working, its a lot harder to move people over to that friend side of the friend/acquaintance line.

Now, I'm going to assume you and "prospective friend person" are both romantically attached to someone, as this is the ideal case for this activity.

Now, to the details of hosting The Small Dinner Out. The point of this is to just "flirt" with friendship. Much like a first date is often drinks or coffee to make the risk of going lower, the small dinner out has the added advantage of having a very fixed timescale.


1. Make sure the restaurant splits checks during dinner time

First off. Many Americans are very uptight about owing each other money. Offering to pick up the check is asserting that you're higher status than the other people/person. Strange and annoying, I know. Combine this with many restaurants not splitting checks during dinner...and well, you have an uneasy situation. Call before you pick the place. If you must deal with this, make sure you bring plenty of cash. Remember, add up your items, and multiply times enough to handle tax and gratuity. Where I live, that's 22%-27% (7% sales tax). Round up as always here.


2. Find a Restaurant where something notable is going on...a piano, a sports game, a band, a cool view of something, cool scenery, theatrical table service, etc.

This experience is usually a little strange for your prospective friend too. They don't know you socially, and they don't know your significant other either. They don't know what they can talk about without offending you/your S.O. So make it easy for them by making sure there is something for them to talk about around.


3. Make a cheat sheet

Now if you yourself aren't able to talk about anything on a whim, cheat.

Yup. Cheat.

Find a site that has a lot of news that's not political, such as google news. Look through non-political sections you never go through. (Go through the sections you normally would too). Now, write down 6 stories that can be as different from each other as possible. Just 2 sentences, the title, and the conclusion is enough to jog most people's memory. Now, put that on a card or slip of paper. If you can't think of something to talk about, (and can't remember what's on the slip), stop by the restroom, whip out the cheat sheet, and voila, a couple topics to last you at least a course of dinner. Most people won't ever look at the sheet. But having it there will remove the pressure to remember.


4. Conduct yourself as a good conversationalist.

Every time someone asks you a question in this situation, you owe them 1 in return. In addition, put yourself in debt 3 questions to each guest at the dinner to start off. Pretend that these questions you owe them are money (We can put that American anxiety about owing each other money to good use). At the same time, don't make it an interview. Self disclose things about yourself, and talk about what comes up as well. But by the end of the night:

Find out 1 thing about each person at the table (including your S.O).

Disclose 2 things about you.

Make at least one of the guests smile, with a joke on you, a sincere well timed compliment, or just by beaming a big smile at them.

Listen for conversational hooks they and their guest put forth: "When I was in France, I got this watch" could mean the person would like to talk about the watch or about France or about traveling. Try each branch if the others don't seem to go anywhere.

The Close of the Event:
This event must be kept time bounded. Don't watch your clock, but get the couple home early. Expect all of dinner to take 1-2.5 hours at the very longest. You want to end with all of you wanting more. Thank them for coming, and talk with your S.O. on the way home about the thing you learned about each of your guests. If you do *everything* in this article, this event will require a max of 2 hours to prepare for. Now if that's not a cheap time price for a probable new friend, I don't know what is.

Michael