How To Navigate Casual Dating
Casual dating has many benefits — it can be healing after an intense breakup, allows space for self-work, creates the opportunity to figure out your preferred or ideal dating style, or provides a way to maintain intimacy when you are prioritizing other areas of your life.
Dating people short-term or simply for the pleasure of connecting with others instead of searching for “the one” can often be seen as taboo, but there is no shame in craving these kinds of romantic or sexual connections. When you determine what you want from dating and are upfront about that early on (or right away in your dating profile), casual connections can flourish and provide exactly what you need in that moment.
These tips will help you navigate casual dating in a way that allows for healthy and nourished connections with others.
Pre-Date Video Chat
Dating apps and other forms of online dating are a primary way of meeting new potential romantic or sexual interests. It can be challenging to gauge the chemistry you’re going to have with someone through texting prior to a first date. A great option is to have a quick video chat with someone before deciding to meet up — this gives you both the chance to ask a few questions and get a feel for the other person's energy. From there, you can decide if you’d like to meet up in person for a date.
Keep Your First Dates Engaging
When casually dating, it’s likely you will find yourself going on many first dates. Some of these will fuel a spark and others will fade out before the date is over. Instead of automatically asking the same questions on every date, try to keep it interesting and engaging by asking unique first date questions. For example: what was the best part of your day? Who inspires your style? What is on your bucket list? What’s your favorite pizza topping? What’s the last show you binged on? By staying curious about your date, you allow for memorable conversation. If you are interested in a second date, you can text them following up afterwards remarking how you couldn’t stop thinking about a particular joke or cute moment shared.
Discuss Your Desires
What do you want out of this casual dating experience? Get as specific as you’d like. Are you looking for someone to go salsa dancing with on Saturday nights? Do you want a rock climbing and sex friend? Are you looking for movie nights and cuddles? Do you want to keep things casual while having deep conversations?
When you talk about your desires within casual dating, it allows for your connections to be nourishing and everyone has the possibility to get their needs met. Before these conversations, it can be helpful to define what “casual” means to you. While some people might view casual connections as simply sex, others may include an emotional connection in their understanding.
Specificity allows for clarity, which we all deserve in any kind of relationship.
Decide What Boundaries Work For You
Maintaining casual relationships takes work, especially if you are more comfortable in long term relationships. It may take building new muscle memory to set and maintain your boundaries in keeping things casual.
Some helpful boundaries could be not having sleepovers, not inviting your date as a plus one to special events, not bringing them to your favorite/regular spots, limiting texts to making plans, keeping dates activity based, or not following each other on social media.
There is no one-size-fits-all to casual dating and you get to decide what works in keeping your lighter connections healthy and thriving.
Open Communication
Having honest and clear conversations with your casual sweeties allows for consent to be at the core of your connection. Ask questions like:
Would you like to know about any other people I’m dating?
How do you practice safe(r) sex? What does that look like for you?
Do you have any questions or concerns about the other people I’m casually dating?
How often do you want to check-in about our connection?
These conversations allow for a level of transparency while also maintaining a sense of privacy with your dates.
Open communication also creates space to talk about your feelings for one another — if they develop into more serious romantic feelings, how might you move forward? Is there space for that to happen or would you prefer to end the relationship if it moved out of casual dating?
Clarity allows people to manage their emotional expectations within the connection, which reduces the potential to hurt one another.
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