“Where Do You Want To Eat?”

Level of Concern: Moderate-High

By the time you hear the question, “where do you want to eat?", the clock is ticking. You have a limited amount of time to determine the type of food, location of the restaurant, and if you will you need a reservation. Most importantly, you must allow enough time for her to prepare for the outing. Often, it may appear that she is seeing this as her last meal.

Although, you may want to stay in and eat cereal or forage for food within your refrigerator, this will not provide proper sustenance or proper scenic stimulation for your significant other. The correct response will require a location that involves leaving the comfort of your home and spending money that doesn’t need to be spent. Another problem with this question is that it’s repetitive nature may cause the response, “I don’t know, where do you want to eat?”. As learned in the section, "Hunger", answering a question with a question could cause dire affects. A common statement heard is that your significant other has to make decisions all day and they don’t want to have to think about this one. You don’t want to go out but please know that this will ensure your significant other remains emotionally content or give the appearance of being so.

Immediate Action:

It is important to act relatively quickly because every second spent on deciding where to go means the restaurant is one second closer to closing or changing from the breakfast to lunch or lunch to dinner menu. This requires the quick process of elimination. Breaking the outing down by cost, food type and geographic location, will assist in determining a restaurant that will appease her appetite.

(25 Year study over the course of >5000 meals)

By examining the chart above, we can see a couple key takeaways that seemingly trend with each meal that is eaten out. At first glance, Mexican is the sure bet, as price and proximity to the home are within an acceptable range (and the fact that it’s Mexican). However, at closer look you’ll notice her appetite for Mexican is considerably lower than those with a higher cost and further distance from the home. With this information in mind, starting with the lowest cost and closest to home is always worth a shot, however, the odds are that you will have to expand your options, wallet and comfort zone to find her uncommon ground. Approval or disapproval of recommended locations will be made through facial gestures. A scowl or yuck face is an immediate disapproval. A neutral expression or eyebrow raise means you are on the right track. You may not know it, but you are probably already producing this chart in your head. If not, please utilize this for future meals. And rarely should you jump to high cost, distance, and hunger unless you are looking for redemption from an unfortunate man-misstep. This will save you time and money. Understand that you may have to get your taco fix with others or during a solo outing.