I Went on a Date. He Gave Me His Corporate Email.

How one awkward first date made me realize romance has quietly become another networking event.

There's something deeply unsettling about realizing your first date felt less like a romantic encounter than a 9am meeting. Somewhere along the way, dating quietly adopted the language of work. We optimize ourselves like startups, build personal brands before we build intimacy, and present ourselves like polished LinkedIn profiles disguised as dating prospects. Chemistry now competes with credentials, and curiosity often takes a back seat to career trajectories. I didn't arrive at this conclusion through research or psychology books.

I arrived there because I bought a box of supplements. I recently bought a box of high-end supplements online. Just a standard wellness deep dive into longevity, nothing major. What I didn't realize at the time was that I wasn't just purchasing vitamins, I was accidentally subscribing to one of the most absurd, ego-bruising first dates of my entire life. How does buying a supplement trigger a spiral involving corporate emails, unpaid consulting, and an existential crisis about modern dating? Let me walk you through the chaos.

It started innocently enough. I bought the supplements, loved the results, and followed the brand on Instagram, the exact reason any sane human follows a brand. Shortly after, I received a direct message thanking me for the follow. As it turned out, I already knew who the founder was. Within minutes, he asked whether I'd bought the product because of him, repeating the question with an unsettling amount of confidence. That was my first red flag. Not because he asked. But because he seemed genuinely convinced that women regularly bought his products just to get his attention. Or perhaps worse, that he'd convinced himself they did.

I didn't realize it then, but the date would eventually become the perfect case study for something much bigger than one awkward evening.

Then came the pivot. The moment he found out I was an entrepreneur too, something about his demeanor changed. Within minutes, he suggested we meet in person. I wasn't entirely sure what I had agreed to. Was this networking? Was this a date? Or had modern adulthood blurred those lines so completely that the two had become indistinguishable?

With those questions bouncing around my head, I showed up anyway. He was noticeably older than the men I usually dated, which, according to both my therapist and my 31-year-old best friend, was exactly what I needed. For months, they'd been telling me the same thing: "Your mindset is too mature for most guys your age. Try dating someone in their late twenties." Since he fit that demographic perfectly, I decided to give it a chance.

That optimism lasted exactly four minutes. The moment we sat down, the atmosphere shifted. As soon as he realized that, despite being six years younger, I'd accumulated almost the same professional experience, I could almost see his perception of me recalibrate in real time. Without either of us acknowledging it, the date quietly stopped being a date.

For the next two hours, I found myself explaining longevity, women's health, consumer psychology, brand positioning, and marketing strategy. At one point, he even pulled up one of my published essays and started reading it aloud across the table. By the end of the evening, I knew almost nothing about him beyond his job title, two of his allergies, and the kind of information anyone could find on LinkedIn. He, meanwhile, walked away with what felt suspiciously like two hours of free consulting.

As the conversation dragged on, a thought I couldn't shake settled into my mind: Does this happen to every ambitious woman? Every knowledgeable woman? Every woman who's spent years building expertise?

Because this wasn't the first time I'd walked away from a date feeling less like someone's romantic interest and more like a resource. Somewhere along the way, my career stopped being something men admired and quietly became something they wanted access to. That's when I realized this wasn't just an awkward date. It was a symptom of something much bigger.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized this wasn't an isolated incident. A few months earlier, I'd gone on another first date. Halfway through the evening, I had a panic attack and took my medication, which, quite unintentionally, switched my brain into its most analytical setting. The moment he asked about my career, I spent the rest of the night talking about strategy, branding, and business instead of myself.

When I got home, his text read: "Work comes first for me right now. But I can't let you slip away... would you be my business partner?"

Not Would you like to see me again? Not I had a great time. A business partnership. And suddenly, this date with the supplement founder didn't feel strange anymore. It felt familiar. The company had two male founders, yet neither seemed to have a particularly deep understanding of female health or the women they were trying to sell to. So there I was once again, under the guise of a first date, explaining the female consumer, longevity, branding, and market positioning, for free.

Maybe that was the real pattern. The more experience I gained, the more often dates turned into consulting sessions. It made me wonder whether this was becoming the unspoken tax ambitious women pay. At what point does your expertise stop making you interesting and start making you useful? When does admiration quietly turn into extraction? And how many smart women leave first dates wondering whether they were seen as a person, or simply as free access to knowledge they spent years earning?

Which made me wonder: when did romance start speaking the language of work?

Somewhere along the way, dating stopped being about curiosity and started feeling like recruitment. We polish our dating profiles like résumés, market ourselves like personal brands, and evaluate compatibility the way hiring managers evaluate candidates. In a culture where people upload their CVs to Hinge, look for summer internships on Raya, and optimize every corner of their lives, perhaps it was only a matter of time before first dates started resembling unpaid consulting sessions.

Maybe that's why so many conversations no longer begin with What excites you? But with What do you do? We ask about career trajectories before passions, productivity before personality, ambition before affection. Somewhere between LinkedIn endorsements and dating apps, chemistry started competing with credentials.

So when did a first date stop being about discovering another person and start feeling like a pitch meeting over overpriced cocktails? And if we're leaving dates with networking contacts instead of butterflies, are we still looking for love, or just expanding our professional network?

When we finally stood up to leave, he began recapping the evening, not by mentioning the conversation we'd shared, but by listing, almost in bullet-point form, everything I'd taught him and promising to "research all of it."

I couldn't decide whether I'd just been on a date or accidentally hosted a free strategy workshop. By the time I got home, my ego was fighting a losing battle. My best friend called immediately. "So," he asked, "how did it go?" "I honestly have no idea." "Did he even compliment you?" Well... technically, yes. He told me I was "unlike any woman my age" and "exceptionally smart." But somehow, it didn't sound like flirting. It sounded like the kind of feedback you'd receive during an annual performance review.

The real plot twist came the next day. Still trying to convince myself the evening had contained at least a hint of romance, I sent him one of my published essays and asked what he thought. Instead of replying like a normal person, he sent me his official company email address and told me to send it there instead.

A corporate email.

After a first date.

Not his personal email.

Not even a casual "Send it over."

A corporate email address.

In that moment, Carrie Bradshaw's infamous Post-it breakup suddenly felt almost... intimate. 

Are Emails the New Post-its?

Carrie Bradshaw was dumped on a Post-it because relationships had become disposable. It was memorable not just because of the breakup, but because of the medium. Two decades later, perhaps we've found an even colder medium. Not a handwritten note. Not even a text message. A corporate email. If the Post-it symbolized emotional detachment, then the business email symbolizes something else entirely: the complete collapse of the boundary between our professional and romantic lives. 

I wasn’t being ghosted on a Post-it like Carrie Bradshaw. I was about to be corporate ghosted.

Naturally, my ego took over. If he wanted to keep things professional, I was more than happy to oblige. Instead of replying from my personal inbox, I drafted an impeccably polished, mildly sarcastic email and sent it from my own business domain. Some victories are admittedly powered by pettiness. But after the laughter wore off, I couldn't shake the feeling that the email represented something much bigger than one disappointing date.

Perhaps this is what happens when productivity culture spills into our personal lives. We become so fluent in the language of work that we bring it everywhere, even to dinner. We network instead of flirting. We assess instead of discovering. We exchange expertise before vulnerability. Somewhere between LinkedIn profiles, personal brands, and dating apps, romance quietly started behaving like another professional opportunity.

Maybe Post-its haven't disappeared after all. They've just evolved into corporate email addresses. I didn't find love in a box of supplements. What I found instead was a reminder that modern dating sometimes feels less like searching for connection and more like interviewing for a role nobody actually wants.

We've become so obsessed with extracting value from every interaction that we've forgotten some encounters aren't meant to be productive. They're meant to be personal. Not every conversation needs to become a collaboration, and not every impressive woman is an untapped business opportunity.

And if I keep leaving first dates with business contacts instead of butterflies, perhaps the only thing left to do is start charging consulting fees.

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Photo © Loli Bahia Photographed by Théo de Gueltzl for a Love Magazine