For many on dates, the prospect of an awkward silence is terrifying.

It’s like everything has stopped, as though someone pressed pause on a movie.

A moment in time frozen.

And worse.

You are stuck in a never-ending loop, as you struggle to come up with something to say.

In this never-ending loop of a moment, you are racking your brain to come up with something to say that hopefully kickstarts a new conversation.

You can’t.

This is when your breathing gets hollower and you are now thinking about crawling under the table at the restaurant and rocking yourself to sleep.

This is awkward and embarrassing.

Yet, no matter what you do, you can’t come up with what to say next.

Your date is sitting there too, and you are anxiously wondering about what she is thinking.

You asked her out on a date, and here you are, boring her to death.

She is picking at her food, waiting for you to come up with something else to talk about.

You know she is getting uncomfortable too.

This is your worst nightmare.

Two people at a date, not talking, listening to themselves chew on their food.

The chewing in your ear is louder than ever.

This pause has to end, but the harder you try to come up with what to say next, the more you draw a blank.

By this stage in your mind, you are replaying previous times in your past where you hit a blank and got into an awkward silence on a date.

The fear creeps in as you recall that these dates never led to consequent ones.

There is a knot in your throat, as you internally panic over the prospect of messing up on yet another date.

Here is the good news.

It isn’t hard to avoid awkward silences on dates.

Whenever you reach a moment on a date where you draw a blank on what to say next, use the environment you are in as your source.

If you are in a restaurant for dinner and you draw a blank, use the restaurant as your source.

The environment you are in becomes a placeholder topic, before naturally transitioning into a better topic of conversation.

It’s a conversation-filler so to speak.

Think about what you want to talk about in reference to the restaurant.

The restaurant’s architectural design?

The pictures on the wall?

The design of the restaurant’s menu?

The unusual outfits the waiters and waitresses are wearing?

The couple a few seats down who are celebrating a birthday?

Conversation-fillers are immensely effective in buying you time and creating a bridge to a new topic of conversation, as your brain rewires.

Do this exercise whenever you fall into an awkward silence on dates and you never have to worry about awkward silences on dates again.

This bolsters your confidence on dates, knowing that you have a remedy to combat any awkward silence that occurs.

Finally, you no longer have to keep reliving the nightmare of never getting past first dates.