The Truth About Coffee Dates

Intimacy, fear, and how capitalism warps connection

The truth about coffee dates? It’s never been about the coffee. It’s not even about the cold metal chairs that replaced the big cushy couches of the early 2000s.

Coffee dates are low effort. Coffee dates show low investment. But coffee dates are for people with character who care about character.

To no one’s surprise, I’ve been on more first dates than I’d like to admit. A friend once tallied the survival rate of someone making it to a second date with me. It was less than 2 percent. I’m a discerning woman.

But in a world full of grifters disguised as dating coaches, people are being swindled out of real connection by overanalyzing the first date. More attention is placed on what you do than who you’re with. To me, this is just capitalism in stilettos. Intimacy has become a performance, something to be optimized, monetized, and curated instead of something felt. Dating today feels less like connection and more like LinkedIn in disguise, with love reduced to a value proposition on a spreadsheet of desirability.

I have my own rules, and I think everyone should. If I meet someone, they have to come to my area to start. If we’re out late, they should offer to walk me to my car. No matter how well or awkwardly the date goes, they should check that I made it home okay.

Living in central LA, I hear the conversations. “If he doesn’t pick me up in a certain car and take me to Nobu, it’s never going to work.” That kind of mindset triggers the down-to-earth girl in me. Honestly, I’d hate that level of posturing on a first date.

I’m impressed by people. By conversation, wit, and kindness. The first thing I usually ask someone is what they do for a living, but not because I care how much they make. I’m independent, and money is not the first thing that crosses my mind, though maybe sometimes it should. I ask because I’m a live-to-work person. I care deeply about what I do. I’m passionate about it, and I tend to be passionate about a lot of things. I know I couldn’t be with someone who doesn’t align with that.

A few years ago, I had a doctor. He was in his mid-thirties, married, with two young kids. He was dying of cancer. On our last visit, he offered dating advice out of nowhere.

“Never end up with someone you can’t imagine having a good conversation with when you’re ninety. When everything else stops working, the one thing you’ll have is good conversation.”

Too ill to work, I never saw him again. He passed a couple of months after that. But I carry his words. One of my best and worst connections have come overseas, hours talking on the phone that felt like minutes. You don’t find those connections readily in the world, time is its own currency.

So when people dismiss coffee dates as low effort, I want to tell them: take the seat. Have the coffee. Have the conversation. If you need activities and distractions to connect with someone, maybe that says more about your ability to socialize than it does about the other person.

Because if you can have a good chat over a cup of coffee (or tea, in my case), you’ll know pretty quickly if you share something that actually matters. Like a sense of humour. I like the idea of earned experiences. One of my favourite celebrity couples eloped in a quiet ceremony 10 years ago. They said if they got to their 10 year anniversary, they would have a full fledged to the nines wedding, and they did. It was beautiful not just because they were somewhere in Italy with 200 close family and friends, but because they had put in the work to get there. It felt deserved.

But the panic around coffee dates is really just a modern mask for fear of intimacy. You’re either afraid of being seen, or afraid of seeing what you actually attract. Maybe it feels safer to dismiss something simple than to admit how vulnerable real connection makes us. A coffee date, stripped of spectacle and distraction, leaves you with only yourself and another person, no expensive ambiance to hide behind, no itinerary to fill the silence. Just two humans, face to face, figuring out if they speak the same emotional language. It’s a wonderful and rare thing when it does happen. And that’s terrifying for people who’ve never learned to sit with who they are, let alone reveal it to someone else. Love doesn't require a big production. Sometimes it just needs a quiet table, a good laugh, and the courage to be real.

Relationships don’t need champagne. They need presence. And that starts with showing up for a simple cup of coffee… and meaning it.