How to be a Cheap Date: Ideas For Free, Creative and Frugal Dates

[Jin+Guice]

What are your free/ cheap/ excessively fun date ideas?

[mountainFrugal]

viewtopic.php?p=64776#p64776

[Henry]

Internet scavenger hunt

[mathiverse]

Geocaching is basically a scavenger hunt which might pique someone's interest.

There are some activities where the fun is due to the personality of the person you're doing it with. Some friends are great to have around when you take a long walk somewhere without anything planned because their conversation and excitement-making skills are great. Some friends it's good to have an activity to center the fun around. If you are the former, maybe emphasize your "fun anywhere" skills rather than focusing on making the environment "fun" by paying for access. How do you get someone to start having fun right away even when you just met them and you don't have any external fun inputs like a paid activity?

[7Wannabe5]

Work towards this look (with a bit of modernization of the blouson) and you'll get all the cheap dates you could possibly want.

Seriously, I've recently been amused/frustrated by the fact that my public library app seems to becoming more of a "romantica porn-hub for the ladies" outlet than a means by which I might check-out any book that recently won a literary prize. But, if I was a heterosexual guy, I would pay attention to the fact that this does represent what a great many women like enough to purchase and spend their time reading. So, my suggestion for being more successful with dating would be to read a variety of popular romance/erotica novels and deconstruct/reconstruct why so many of them feature Dukes, Scottish Warlords, Rogue CEOs, mansions/lavish gowns/lovely gardens, and independent-minded/resourceful/plucky females who resist their ultimate fate to be swept off their feet. HINT: It's not the money, even though it's almost always strongly featured.

[zbigi]

Jordan Peterson mentioned that the modern female romance genre has male characters that mostly fall into on the following categories (IIRC): billionaire, surgeon, vampire, werewolf, pirate.

[7Wannabe5]

@zbigi:

Yup, that's about right, although a wee bit on the "sharp" end of the dominant spectrum with the "scalpel", "fang", "fang", "cutlass", and maybe "crisp Platinum Card" imagery.


ETA: I really shouldn't be offering advice, because I am currently in some kind of post-post-dating mode. If/when I fully recover from Crohn's disease and manage to get out of my current Mrs. Santa Claus brain-in-box slump, I think I am either going to just be "dating" trees and other aspects of nature and/or experimenting with being the one who approaches men first and plans the outing.

I know what the old boys like, so I just need to dangle the possibility of some really sweet Harbor Freight coupons after I pick up the bill for the $3.99 diner breakfast special and bottomless coffee. Oh, just imagine the look on his face, when I slyly slip right in next to him in the booth, and then give his thigh a little squeeze as I pick up the check, wink and declare, "Sit tight, Babe, I got it."

[Henry]

Jordan Peterson mentioned that the modern female romance genre has male characters that mostly fall into on the following categories (IIRC): billionaire, surgeon, vampire, werewolf, pirate.

We just finished The Crown season that focused on Princess Di. She died in a car crash with a billionaire to get back at her surgeon boyfriend to get back at her blood sucking husband.

[Jin+Guice]

@zbigi/ ALL WOMEN:

Wait. I get the rest but why vampire and werewolf?

@7:

Ok I just discovered Harbor Freight through my very own network of 1 grouchy old man who has helped me immensely and I need to know if you seriously have access to coupons bc I need to buy exactly 1 thing.




Also... FUCK... I did check to see if there was a cheap date thread but missed that other one.




ETA: Ok, after skimming the previous cheap date thread, it's mostly about how to meet someone frugal. This is not what I am asking. I am asking for ideas for dates! There are some good cheap date ideas scattered throughout the other thread.

[chenda]

Sculpture park. Subtly phallic.


Tom Sharpe wrote a great satire on the romance novel called The Throwback.

[Seppia]

Since I am an idiot and posted in the wrong thread I’ll copy here lol

Back when I was younger, I would invite girls at home for dinner and cook for them.
Depending on the level of intimacy that would either be a tête a tête dinner, or something more casual like invite her with a couple friends.

I’ve always loved to cook and it’s a more relaxed experience.

Another favorite of mine (I lived in Paris at the time) was a museum. They’re beautiful (my favorites are the Pompidou and Orsay) usually cheap and there is one day per month when they’re free. I would usually go the very day before the free day to have essentially an empty museum (which is fantastic).
As per WRC, I am not sure I’d be able to date a girl that had no interest in history and art

[Scott 2]

I dunno anything about casual dating.


With my wife I've preferred to setup recurring events:

Hike a new forest preserve each week

Sunrise bike ride every Thursday

Swim on Tuesday afternoons

See the yoga teacher for her Wednesday class

Cook a new food every Friday

Pre COVID - hit the museum on super bowl Sunday

Monthly parents lunch

Volunteer work together

Play a co-op video game

I'd much rather build habits of activity. Nobody has to think of new stuff every week. With repetition there's also more opportunity for depth.


There's cheap community events too. Stuff like Summer concerts, farmers markets, craft fairs, air shows, highland games, fests, movies in the park, etc. I don't like the crowds, but if I was into that sort of thing, it's constant.

With the fests - volunteering is a way to get involved without paying too.

You can rent stuff to do from the local Forest preserves too - snow shoes, bikes, kayaks, etc.


For me this all starts with the life you want to live, then getting someone to be your accomplice. I have zero interest in tasking myself to be someone's concierge or entertainment.

[OutOfTheBlue]

Have a picknic (combines with most everything)
Go for a hike or run together
Go to a cool secret or previously unknown spot (in the city or otherwise)
Do something slightly risky and exciting, like staying in the castle past closing hours, do some urban or cave exploration
Go to the sea (and swim too)
Feed a horse
Rehearse a theater dialogue
Immerse into poetry (just the two of you or at a slam or other poetry event)
Attend a free or donation based concert/event/improv/movie night
Cook together or cook for them
Play some music/sing together
Skill share

[7Wannabe5]

Ok I just discovered Harbor Freight through my very own network of 1 grouchy old man who has helped me immensely and I need to know if you seriously have access to coupons bc I need to buy exactly 1 thing.

Here you go. They also have an app. I also qualify for the senior discount, so I can very inexpensively exploit the strong erotic potential of browsing the aisles in person with my date, if I can persuade him to get into my Smart car after we meet for coffee. I think if I was willing to throw down $8 for the Comfort-Grip Knee Pads, the likelihood that I might get first-date-lucky would be quite high, but $3 for the Camouflage Elastic Stretch Cords might even prove sufficient.

https://go.harborfreight.com/cpi/digita ... hru-12-24/

I picked up a copy of Catherine Hakim's "Erotic Capital" mentioned by riparian on the other upbooted cheap date thread. Highly relevant to this topic at the level of abstraction I like best. She offers a good deal of evidence that even in the climate of increasing sexual freedom since the availability of decent birth control methods, the male "sexual deficit" remains high for reasons that are likely innate (testosterone, etc.) than cultural, and this combined with the fact that most women are more practiced at making themselves attractive and the still strong majority tendency towards heterosexual orientation, results in the median female holding a good deal more erotic capital than the median male.

She describes an experiment performed on an American campus in which reasonably attractive people approached strangers and asked them for dates, to go to their apartment with them, or for sex that evening. The success rate was around 50% for both male and females asking for dates. However, 67% of the men agreed to the female's apartment, and 75% agreed to meet for sex. Only 6% of the females approached agreed to go to the male's apartment, and no women in the study agreed to meet for sex.

I don't completely agree with Hakim's thesis. For instance, I think it will take more than a generation or three to completely overcome the sexual double-standard which tends towards repressing free sexual behavior and expression of preferences in females. But, if this experiment reflects reality, then it indicates that the desire to date towards relationship formation is much more balanced between men and women than the desire to date towards brief sexual encounter. Therefore, Hakim would argue that men should trade other forms of capital in alignment with their greater economic demand for brief sexual encounters, sexual entertainments, and secondary primarily sexual relationships. IOW, if a female feels like you ripped her off, because you signaled "dating towards potential relationship", but you never contacted her again after obtaining sex, then she is probably being economically rational.

Therefore, I am going to have to think very hard and creatively about how a frugal heterosexual male could possibly make a casual date with brief sexual encounter as goal add up in varying forms of other capital (social, cultural, intellectual, etc.) to the going rate on the open first-world market for a sex worker. Quick research reveals lowest rate in Amsterdam being 50 euros for 20 minutes of "basic sex" with condom.

[Jin+Guice]

@All:

Thanks for the great ideas!

For my personal use I'm looking for ideas of dates with someone I'm already dating. I usually ask to go on a walk w/ optional booze or meet at a bar for a first date. I welcome first date ideas though too.

[Henry]

I like ice skating. And unless she's a professional figure skater, it's most likely she'll fall a few times so it guarantees physical contact under the ruse of chivalry. Doesn't guarantee you'll get laid but high probability you'll see what her ass looks like when it's wet.

[chenda]

Therefore, I am going to have to think very hard and creatively about how a frugal heterosexual male could possibly make a casual date with brief sexual encounter as goal add up in varying forms of other capital (social, cultural, intellectual, etc.) to the going rate on the open first-world market for a sex worker. Quick research reveals lowest rate in Amsterdam being 50 euros for 20 minutes of "basic sex" with condom.

Ummm...I think the paid 20 mins probably has a much lower value for heterosexual male than awkward 7 minute fumble with women he managed to swing date with, as it provides him with the social validation he has some market value. So there probably had to be some sort of discount rate applied.

[7Wannabe5]

@chenda:

The median consumer of sex work services is a middle-aged, middle-class married man, so the rate wouldn't necessarily have to be adjusted to reflect lack of social validation. The male "sexual deficit" that Hakim documents is prevalant regardless of relationship status. A large percentage ( over 20% in the U.S.) of marriages are celibate or functionally celibate (sex less than once/month), across all age groups. Approximately 40% of men report that they would prefer to have more sex in their current steady relationship vs. only around 15% of women.

I can't think of any form of "sexual entertainment" that women do pay for besides "bodice ripper" or similarly erotic romance novels. Obviously, romance novels that don't include any overt sexuality are also very popular, so it might just be a "distinguisher" rather than a "feature." IOW, what is being purchased is the ice cream of the "romance" and Amish Romance vs. Bodice Ripper is more analogous to Vanilla vs. Chocolate Peppermint Stick. Still, it seems likely that the variations to be found between sex scenes in popular romance novels and sex scenes in popular pornography might serve as rough models of differing gender preferences. Ergo, my suggestion that reading some of these novels might be of value to heterosexual males, whether single or married, would likely have merit. For instance, the observation that a lot more "sex" happens while the characters still have their clothes on in "bodice-rippers" could be applied to many dating scenarios, as in these very good suggestions by OutOfTheBlue:

Go to a cool secret or previously unknown spot (in the city or otherwise)
Do something slightly risky and exciting, like staying in the castle past closing hours, do some urban or cave exploration

[chenda]

@7w5 - very interesting, I shall have to give this book a read.

[7Wannabe5]

@chenda:

It is a very interesting book, although I think she oversells the concept a bit, and some of the studies she cites are already fairly dated given the ever changing landscape. It's like she's attempting to be in alignment with Third Wave (Sex and the City) pro-sexual feminism by bashing the more sexually neutered/puritanical Second/Fourth Wave feminism, and this sometimes results in her anecdotes/examples sounding like they were cut/paste from a pre-feminist "Miss Bunny's Rules for Charm" type manual. However, the basic question "Do individual women fully own their own sexuality and erotic capital?" is critically important and borderlines on a lot of hot button issues and is therefore deserving of the degree of abstraction that would allow for rational consideration. For instance, once we have the term "erotic capital" to play with, if we read an article in the NYT which suggests that grocers are already beginning to see some reductions in their sales numbers due to the proliferation of the new generation of highly effective weight loss/appetite reduction drugs, we could theorize that this might also represent a significant enough uptick in "erotic capital" in the U.S. to influence the earnings of popular dating apps.

I think Hakim might be more than usually clear-eyed, hard-nosed, on this concept in part due to her multi-cultural perspective as a female academic hailing from Beirut. Familiarity with how marital, extra-marital, casual, and professional contracts for access/exchange of erotic capital vary across traditional human cultures and into modernity/post-modernity lends objectivity. For instance, the qualities a Parisian woman shops for in a lover in her 40s might be more fully in alignment with "erotic capital" than the qualities she shops for in a husband in her 20s.

The 6 elements of erotic capital according to Hakim are:

1) Physical beauty: mainly facial, photogenic.
2) Sex appeal: mainly the body, inclusive of movement.
3) Social: grace, confidence, charm, etc.
4) Liveliness: energy, fitness, good humor, etc.
5) Presentation: dress, style, scent, grooming, etc.
6) Sexuality: competence, erotic imagination, playfulness, etc.

So, circling around to the topic at hand, in any dating situation towards erotic encounter or sexual relationship, success would likely be maximized by striving to improve these qualities/skills as an individual and also by creating a situation in which they might be best displayed. For instance, I have had the experience of dating two different professional photographers who explained to me in some detail why I am NOT photogenic and more attractive in person, but I have never acted on their advice. Also, since I sometimes lapse into completely neglecting my appearance towards other priorities to the extent that I will put on 50 lbs., wear nothing but sweatshirts and overalls, and chop off all my tangly hair, my appearance/experience has been varied enough over the years that I fairly strongly agree/empathize with Hakim's assertion that the social world is a different, more brightly lit, place for those with higher levels of erotic capital and that the male "sexual deficit" is generally promotive of a darker world view with negative consequences. That is why I am in favor of the practice of polyamory, legalization/legitimization of sex work, and more open discussion of all topics related to sexuality, including how heterosexual men can alter their behavior and appearance to better provide the sort of erotic capital best appreciated by heterosexual women in a buyer's market.