36 / M / Germany

Pretty much spot on.

They don’t owe you anything. Not sex, not a kiss, not a hug, not a second date, not even a smile. If the date goes well, you will get some or even all of those but if you try to force them, you will get nothing. Sure it can be disappointing if you put in a lot of effort and get nothing back but you will have to live with that. Sometimes people just aren’t compatible and sometimes a date just goes wrong because of a weird coincidence.

Be nice, even if the date doesn’t go as you wanted. Open communication goes a long way and chances are that the person you’re talking to is just as insecure as you are. Explain (not accuse) why you don’t think this situation will work out. If you’re lucky, you can turn the conversation around. If not, at least you’re ending the date in a civil way. That also (and especially) applies to talking on online dating platforms. Sometimes you can tell just from a conversation that things won’t go anywhere. Way too many people just drop the conversation and move on which can feel pretty rude. Be nice, explain what’s up, give them a friendly goodbye and then move on.

Those rules apply to both sides. You don’t owe them anything either, especially if they get rude. You should still try to be friendly in case there is a misunderstanding but try to get yourself out of an uncomfortable situation before it gets worse. Your safety is still priority number one.

Edit: some more

Don’t expect a relationship to last. Chances are it won’t. But this isn’t as pessimistic of a tip as you might expect. Even a single day of joy can be worth it if you manage your expectations. I’ve had a relationship crash and burn after seven years, I’ve had ones that lasted a couple of months and I’ve had someone ghost me after the second date. And still, all of them gave me amazing memories that I wouldn’t want to miss and they helped me grow as a person. Allow things to grow on their own and enjoy the process. Maybe you will marry that person. Maybe you’ll date them for a few months or years. Maybe you will never get past second base but stay platonic friends. Maybe you will spend the most amazing day of your life with them and then never see them again because you accidentally spilled something over their favorite t-shirt.

Sure. I use it as a structured place to keep notes on anything that may be important later, not specifically tasks:

• Important people in my life (friends and family) with a short bio, where we met, favorite food, allergies, ideas what I could get them for their birthdays, links to their social media profiles, plans for shared vacations, maybe a few photos.
• Recipes from all kinds of sources. If they are from a video or one of those “scroll past three pages of sentimental nonsense” sites, I summarize them and translate them into German with metric units.
• Lists with interesting links about 3D printing, software development and so on. Keeping these in a wiki instead of just my browser’s bookmarks list allows me to better categorize them and add notes.
• A list of open questions and project ideas that I can’t research right now like “Where is the best place to get custom printed LEGO minifigs?” and “Why do the zfs drives in my home server sometimes have problems waking up from sleep?”
• Lists of interesting products/books/movies/… that I might buy/read/watch/… at some point
• Some writing stuff: D&D campaigns, short stories, diary-like entries
• A list of all computers in my household with hardware specs, operating system and so on

All of those get put into categories and the categories are displayed on the main page via the categorytree plugin. The nice thing about having a wiki is that you have a lot of options for linking or embedding related content while still keeping it somewhat organized.

Polarion. Wouldn’t recommend it but it’s what my employer wants me to use.

For personal stuff, I use a private MediaWiki instance (same software that runs Wikipedia) as my external brain.