After Two Dates, You’re Already Three Years Ahead

One of the more impressive things about early dating is how little material the imagination actually requires.

Two pleasant dinners can do it. Perhaps there was chemistry, easy conversation, a kiss that went rather well, and a man who remembered something you said forty minutes earlier. Nothing extraordinary has happened. Nobody has declared anything, promised anything or even established whether next Thursday is available.

And yet somewhere between date two and brushing your teeth that evening, the Romantic Time Machine quietly starts its engine.

By midnight, this man is no longer simply someone you enjoyed seeing twice. He has begun appearing in future weekends, future holidays and little scenes that have somehow been filmed without his knowledge. You can almost see the two of you three summers from now, wandering through Paris after an afternoon at the Louvre, stopping somewhere near the Seine for dinner and looking annoyingly good together in a future that has arranged itself beautifully without consulting either of you.

The man, meanwhile, has gone home and is probably looking for his phone charger.

The Future Arrives Ahead of Schedule

This little leap forward is not particularly unusual. Attraction likes a future. The present is exciting, certainly, but it contains almost no information, whereas the future has unlimited space and absolutely no obligation to stick to facts.

So the mind begins decorating.

What would he be like as a boyfriend? He seems affectionate. Perhaps weekends together would be lovely. He likes to travel. You like to travel. Excellent; apparently Paris has now been penciled in, the Louvre is waiting, and somewhere in the future the two of you are already debating whether to walk to Notre-Dame or take a taxi.

Nobody consciously decides to plan a life with a near-stranger. It happens much more elegantly than that. A few possibilities drift through the mind, one attaches itself to another, and before long a perfectly innocent second date has been extended into a limited series.

The fascinating part is how quickly imaginary familiarity can develop. You have not seen this man annoyed, sick, stressed, bored or standing in an airport after a six-hour delay, but the future version of him is already behaving beautifully through all of it.

Naturally.

Imaginary men are exceptionally easy to date.

They never reveal an alarming relationship with punctuality, leave wet towels in baffling locations or announce three months later that they do not really enjoy traveling after all. They have been cast specifically for the role, and production is going beautifully.

The Relationship Nobody Has Actually Joined

Eventually the imaginary future begins doing something even more interesting: it starts creating real feelings in the present.

A delayed message from a man you barely know can now feel strangely important because he is no longer competing only with himself. He is competing with the relationship that has already been quietly constructed around him.

This is where the Romantic Time Machine becomes wonderfully unfair.

The real man has been on two dates.

The imaginary man has attended Christmas.

The real man said he would call.

The imaginary man has already selected a side of the bed.

Obviously, these two gentlemen are operating under very different expectations.

Once that future starts feeling real, ordinary dating developments become strangely important. A third date is no longer simply a third date; it feels like progress toward the little life already playing somewhere ahead, while one disappointing message can suddenly threaten a relationship that technically has not been built yet.

Nothing has officially happened, yet somehow an entire little future is already standing there looking concerned.

This is quite an achievement for a romance that has not survived a month.

Unfortunately, The Present Keeps Interfering

Sooner or later, however, reality catches up, usually with none of the elegance of the imagined version.

Perhaps the man turns out to be lovely but not particularly compatible. Perhaps his interest fades. Perhaps yours does. Perhaps date four reveals that the dazzling conversationalist from date one has exactly four stories and has now begun repeating them.

This is terribly inconvenient when the imagination has already booked Paris, planned a weekend in the Loire Valley and selected a café near the Seine.

Suddenly, it is not only the actual man who disappears from the picture. An entire imaginary future has to pack its bags as well—the weekends, the holidays, the lovely little routines, the version of yourself who had already become very comfortable there.

No wonder something so new can occasionally feel oddly disappointing when it ends. The calendar says three weeks. The imagination has been away for years.

Perhaps that is the real trick of the Romantic Time Machine: nothing is wrong with enjoying the date or imagining what might come next. The comedy begins when the future becomes so beautifully furnished that the present starts looking like paperwork.

Meanwhile, the man is still standing somewhere around date three, wondering whether you prefer Italian or Thai.

The Romantic Time Machine has already crossed several time zones.

He has not even packed.