Please help me melt his heart ❤️

[Heybearu]

So having had a really not great time on online dating...I've finally started to speak with someone I would like to impress. Ladies he sings, he bakes bread, he reads he's the main parent. I'm in heaven.
Id like to give him a book at our first date....he likes most genres...nothing like super seedy tho as he's quite wholesome...what can I give him that will melt his heart so I get to keep him forever?
Or at last so he looks back and thinks that was cool.
Help please x

Oh god get over yourself. Let OP just be romantic for Christ's sake

I really didn't enjoy that book, and neither did my daughter.

Thanks for the laugh! 😂

Your thread has reminded me that I was given "Travels with Charley" on a first date. He bought it for me as my love of travel was an early conversation we'd had, and it was his favourite travelogue. We discussed why he loved the book for a short while, and I saw his passion for the title and a glimpse of how he behaved when something moved him.

I spent the next 8 weeks trying to read that bloody book. I found it so dull, but kept going. He asked regularly if I was enjoying it. I blagged as much as I could, but it really wasn't a writing style I engaged with. I was finally honest, and he took it well.

On reflection, it was a really sweet gesture of his. The more I knew about him, the more I realised he was a hopeless romantic. We dated for a few months, but his work commitments meant he wasn't for me. The book had very little impact on me, and 3 years on, I needed to Google a while to find out what the title of that book was called, as I'd forgotten.

If you insist on this purchase @Heybearu , get a title which means something to you. It tells him something about you.

But...what if the bread tastes terrible?!

Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
Both wonderful books, however, so he may well have read them.

Why would you give him something on a first date? never heard that before! Just meet and see how you get on. Remember, 'it's just a date'!

Nope. It's dire!

Dear lord don’t go to a first date with a gift. 110% sure to fall flat on your face. Gifts are for people you know.

🙌

Lovely idea, but maybe you should wait a few dates. Get to know him and what he might like. There’s definitely some suggestions here that might put me off because I disliked them. My husband and I did bond over a shared author, but much of our reading is very different so I would have got it wrong/sometimes still get it wrong (thought since it was fantasy he would like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell but he only enjoyed the tv series not the book).

With the greatest of respect. Figuring out how to get him to buy you
a book is the key to " keeping him forever..."

I think your idea is very thoughtful, but at the same time I would advise against trying to impress him. You need to be yourself, and us all suggesting good books is kind of you not being confident that just you yourself are more than enough for him. Personally if I went on a first date and someone gave me a book, however much we'd talked before, it might put me off a bit. It could come across as contrived and a bit strange. But then you've had the conversation, so it is your instinct to go on in the end. Having said that, if you've had the contact with him, then you would know best what kind of book to give him. I think you've set yourself an unnecessary challenge with this book. And remember you might take one look at him and think omg who is this guy and not want him. So I would just be yourself, be genuine, he likes you as you are. Don't get over awed by him baking bread and being a good parent. Do you like how he talks to you? His tone of voice? Does he excite you? Inspire you? Is he kind? ... just go and meet him. No book, I think, is my advice. This is not an interview. Well, maybe it is, but the book won't win it - you will. Or not. And that's the scary thing about first dates, but there's no way around that test. Good luck xxx

If I am to take this seriously...
why gift a tragic love story that's not a straight-forward read? I'm looking at you, Wuthering Heights, suggesters. Is that really the foot to start off on? 🤔
Wouldn't a cookbook be better? No pretence, or subtext, for that matter?

Id like to give him a book at our first date....

CAUTION. CAUTION. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. ALARMS SOUNDING.

It's a bit much to give someone you don't know a gift. It is too 'try hard' and shows your hand. You don't know this man at all. Giving him a gift shows you are KEEN which is not a good thing too early because of many many subliminal aspects of human psychology which apply to us all.

Everything in your post is ringing alarm bells. I used to be like this. You have a scarcity mindset - so when you hit upon the rare man that looks half normal, you mentally run away with excitement planning a future together - which makes you go half mad.

Think about it. You've not met him. He may have a smell you hate. He may turn up in flipflops with dirty toenails. He may be a narcissist putting on a good front.

You just don't know.

your scarcity mindset will cause a lot of trouble in online dating.

Just turn up. DO NOT take any gift. See how it goes.

As Taylor Swift would have it, you need to calm down.

This HAS to be a wind up surely?!

I went out with a man who brought a small box of chocolates on each of the first few dates. It didn't carry on very long but it was nice, if fattening.

No book, OP! But I think you know that now.

Have a great time.

The key question no one has asked yet @Heybearu is

What does he like reading
And what does he sing ??

Not for a first date. You might not see each other again. On paper people can seem great. There might be no chemistry on meeting him.

Leaving aside all the don't do it....

When my H and I first met, one of our earliest 'dates' included a trip to a bookshop. We each had to choose 3 books for the other to read. At that point, we were only seeing each other occasionally as we in different countries a lot of the time. It gave us a really good insight into each others tastes in books and talk about as we got to know each other.

So instead of a book, I am suggesting an entire date for you.

How to lose a guy in 10 days?

Jokes but don't do it, slow down.. you may not even click.

I've been on dates with men that have told me they've received gifts on first dates.. it never goes down well.

Not rude... just truthful.

You sound ridiculously desperate

I think you’re getting way over invested in someone you haven’t met, you seem a bit intense. He sounds lovely and I’m not trying to put a dampener on it, but as they say on here ‘’manage your expectations a bit’’, just enjoy yourself, relax and don’t put a stranger on a pedestal! He could be telling you anything or have some deal breaking negatives yet!

It’s also a really obvious way of potentially showing yourself up as having appalling taste in books! Literary taste is highly subjective. If someone gave me a copy of The Midnight Library, The Notebook, The Kite Runner or a Stephen King novel, it would be very clear that not only did you not know me or my tastes at all (hardly surprising on a first date), but that we had very, very different ideas about what constitutes a good novel, and the date would probably end in horror.