After just reading a post on a dating subreddit about a woman who’s soooooo excited she met a guy who took her out to dinner (once) and emailed her two months later, and is now going to wait 6 months for him to be back from his deployment... I figured I needed to share with you guys an ACTUAL HVM dating success story :-)

I met a guy, a fellow ice climber, and after realizing we had a couple mutual friends who could vouch for his safe climbing abilities we planned a first date... on ice :-)

Or more importantly, he planned it! Not only had he taken the lead on texting, phone calls and face-timing, he also took the lead on planning the date (and leading the climbs!) He drove an hour out of his way to pick me up, 3 hours up to the climb, opened the car door for me when we got there and laid out a nice squishy changing mat so we could put our gear on in style. Made it up the first few pitches and got back to the base around noon. He surprised me with warm cider he packed, but also a vegetarian gumbo he made the night before! He even found veggie chorizo knowing I’m a vegetarian (but he is not) and we’d want protein on the climb.

Conversation was amazing, we had tons in common, he was polite, charismatic and chivalrous. After a few more climbs We got back to the car and while I taking all my gear off, he started the car and wiped down/organized all my stuff without me even noticing. Once I was done he told me to wait in the nice warm car while he did his. It was then that I realized the playlist we’d been listening to on the drive up was named for our date and filled with all the songs he and I sent each other via Spotify in the last week or so since we’d been talking.

He took me out to a nice dinner after, and obviously drove us home. I offered to split the bill or help with gas and he chuckled and reminded me chivalry is not dead.

This was on Monday and we already have a board game date planned for Wednesday (again an idea he came up knowing my love of board games) and another climb on Sunday. Swoon.

He’s attractive, attentive, kind, thoughtful, both to me but also with and about all the other people in his life. At one point we we talking about sexual preferences and he mentioned he has a strict rule about not having sex without (a) exclusivity and (b) each of us getting an STD test to protect both of us. DOUBLE SWOON.

I have no idea how this will pan out buuuuut it’s easily the best first date I’ve ever had and wanted to share if you stick with FDS and do NOT tolerate LVM you open the door for a HVM to maybe walk through instead :-)