Calling someone over a videochat service like FaceTime or Teams opens up amazing possibilities in dating. It can be cheap. It allows to build a friendship with someone halfway around the world. It can allow more flexibility in timing. But in one big respect, online dates can also feel limiting. Online dates can sometimes feel like a glorified phone call: you can talk to the other person, but little else.
This doesn’t have to be the case. With some creativity, there are many ways you can craft a fun and memorable activity out of an online date. The following is a list of activities I’ve tried that can adapt well in an online date format.
Online Chess
Chess.com and similar services allow you to play free rounds of “the royal game” virtually.
If you’ve never played chess before, trying the game out with a date online could be a comfortable way of getting your feet wet. You don’t have to be the next Magnus Carlsen to have fun with a game that has been teaching people logic and strategy for centuries. And you don’t have to limit yourself to chess.
You can play other classics online for free like Sudoku or crossword puzzles. For resources like chess.com, you would need to either create an account on the website or sign up via your account with a service like Google.
Physical Games
Probably the most creative turnabout date I was ever part of was when a friend mailed me a copy of Bananagrams, a word game similar to Scrabble.
Ordinarily, two people would be playing with one set; in our case, we both removed half of the letter chips from our respective sets and played across screens as if we had one set.
In another instance, I played an “escape room in a box” with a date where we both had the same game and worked through the puzzles together but with our own individual sets.
Virtual Tours
Have you ever “travelled” through an area via Google Streetview, where you walked through composite photographs of city streets and other pathways? Google Arts & Culture under their “collections” tab provides a similar feature where they’ve combined photographs of some of the world’s most famous museums, allowing you to “tour” them from the comfort of your own home. The tours usually also provide virtual text boxes next to famous artworks and other displays giving more information on what you’re looking at.
Using this feature, I took a date on a tour of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, but you can walk through everywhere from the British Museum to the Palace of Versailles.
Cooking
Find a recipe that looks interesting, have both your date and you purchase the ingredients separately, and piece the cuisine together in your own kitchens over a call.
For me as a man, I never had much education in proper meal preparation at Armstrong College or elsewhere. Making a meal with a friend is a good excuse for me to hone my way around the kitchen.
Painting
Acquire sets of brushes and paints, and a canvas, and you and your date can enjoy an afternoon creating works of art.
You can decide to paint something from imagination or copy an already existing work of art from the internet. At the end, you both will have a souvenir to keep.
Reading
At the moment, I’m organizing a small online book club where we read short biographies of historical figures.
On a scaled down version, especially if there are a few weeks between when a date is scheduled and when it happens, you could have a little “reading session” with a date where you agree to have a small piece of literature like a short story read ahead of time and then discuss your thoughts in the call.
Websites like Project Gutenberg provide free access to most works of literature that are in the public domain.
Get Creative!
Philadelphia Church of God Singles Director Ryan Malone has defined “dating” as “relationship-building through sharing.” Sharing a conversation with a brother or sister in Christ should of course be a factor in every date.
But there is so much more to share than just words. Preparing and planning an activity can give a date the pleasure of a fun afternoon he or she wouldn’t have otherwise. And activities like the ones listed above can help reveal character traits like how a person responds to an unfamiliar project, how deep of a thinker he or she is, and other things.
Richard Rice in his Notebook listed seven purposes for dating. Point five is “Having fun and fellowship.” He writes that dates in the Church “should be for the purpose of breaking the routine, relaxing and just enjoying life to the full. Have fun! And strive to give others a good time.”
When Mr. Rice wrote his Notebook, the internet wasn’t publicly available. Online dating didn’t exist. But just because technology has made dating different in some respects than it was in the mid-20th century, that doesn’t mean the principles behind godly dating have changed. Taking the time to prepare an online date to be as stimulating as an in-person date is an act of service. With many activities, it would cost no more than a simple conversation would.
Get creative with online dating. A few small changes in structuring a call can make impressions and friendships all the more enriching and long-lasting.
