Want for Immediate Romantic Connection/Spark Is Ruining Early Dating

Need to vent about this. Took a woman out Friday before last for drinks and I was treating it as a casual get-to-know you type meetup that I wasn’t expecting to last longer than a couple of hours. We were there from 8pm-12:30am… Covered everything including work, family, travel, where you’re from, music, interests, even had a longer than needed discussion on parking tickets. Usually I would see a first date running so long as a good sign and there wasn’t any indication that she was having a bad time. We flirted a little, hugged at the start and end of it, conversation didn’t feel like an interrogation. Went our separate ways, checked that we made it home okay, no friction on wanting to set up a second date.

Next morning, I suggest a restaurant for a second date and hours later I get a masters thesis in response on her “not feeling a romantic connection.” I didn’t really think much of it at the time because I can handle a rejection and deleted her number and moved on. But as time went on I was wondering if she really went into that date with some crazy expectations like our first date was going to be something out of a movie. Also worth mentioning that we had to reschedule twice and the only reason I entertained the thought of taking her out is because she proposed alternative times. So in reality, I had to make/cancel plans twice over the span of two weeks just to be left with disappointment.

Why are people acting like a first date/the first few shows them all there is to see about a person? Like I said, I treated it as an introductory thing. Connection is something that has to build for me and I’ll do the honors of cutting things off if I’m not feeling things after 3-4 dates if necessary. This issue isn’t specific to this one woman and the same thing has happened before. You don’t know me and I don’t know you, but am I an idiot for at least wanting to try to know you? I don’t care to diagnose people, whether their reasons are they’re not swept off their feet from an attraction standpoint (I’m decent looking enough to get dates with some of these women that are gorgeous) or I’m not the perfect 10/10 that checks every box for the ideal man they’ve built in their heads is none of my concern. I’m happy with myself, in therapy, all of that shit that gets parroted on this subreddit, but it’s getting hard to not take this kind of behavior personally. I’m not the first person to complain about this either but I’m seeing and hearing this a lot from friends and on social media that people (mainly women, sorry) aren’t giving things the chance to develop and grow because they want their instant gratification. The window shopping attitude surrounding dating is really pissing me off. Rant over.