12 Steps to Asking Someone out on an Old Fashioned Date

There’s no denying that dating in today’s world is tough. Between hooking up and hanging out, going on a date can be emotionally exhausting. Dr. Kerry Cronin is hoping to change that.

Dr. Cronin is the Associate Director of the Lonergan Institute at Boston College and the Faculty Fellow in BC’s Center for Student Formation. Over the past twenty years, she’s spent time teaching in the Boston College Interdisciplinary Perspectives Program, a Philosophy and Theology program in the “great books” tradition. She also works with undergraduate students in retreat programs at Boston College. She’s a regular speaker on college campuses, addressing topics of student culture and formation.

For the past twelve years, Dr. Cronin has required her students to ask someone out. She teaches her students how to ask someone out on a real date, explaining what their time together should look like, and giving her students steps to follow to ensure a successful date.

“It’s almost like the structure of manners,” Dr. Cronin told The Chicago Tribune in an interview earlier this year. “At their best, manners are supposed to let us know how to act and how to work around social awkwardness, but at their worst, manners make people feel excluded and that there’s some secret way that they’re supposed to act that they don’t have access to. Dating is the same kind of thing — at its worst, it can make you feel like there are normative ways you’re supposed to act, and if you’re not doing that, you’re excluded, you’re out. So at its worst, it can be a really rigid system that only rewards people who are in certain circumstances, but at its best, what it can offer us are ways to navigate social vulnerability and social awkwardness.”

You can find out more about Dr. Cronin’s dating challenge in a new documentary called The Dating Project. The film follows five singles on their journey to find love.

Are you intrigued by the prospect of a real date? Click over here to Catholic Singles and read my take on Dr. Cronin’s steps to asking someone out on a good, old-fashioned first date: