What is the discomfort? Are you afraid something will happen?
You should probably talk to a professional about this. I am not a professional, alas.
I once has a girl follow up 2 weeks later asking why we didn’t go on a date? I told her that was the first question she asked me and I felt she wasn’t into the conversation.
I do wonder sometimes what they're thinking. Like, do they think the conversation is going well when I have to keep resuscitating it?
I'm told people have "different communication styles", which is fine, but "not asking questions and giving really short answers" doesn't seem like an effective style here. Like, if someone's chatting you up at the bar and you're not interested, then giving short answers can make a kind of sense. But in a dating app where you both showed interest? If you're no longer interested just unmatch.
No class consciousness. Too many tech workers think they're rugged individuals that can negotiate their own contracts into wealth.
Working for free on nights and weekends to "hit that deadline" is not good. You're just making the owners rich, and devaluing labor. Even if you own a lot of equity, it's not as much as the owners.
And then there's bullshit like return to office mandates and people are like "oh no none of us want to do this but there's no organized mechanism to resist"
Side note: small talk plays important roles in socializing and is an important skill. Use it to steer the conversation to interesting topics.
No one's going to be perfect. People are going to be nervous on a first date. Give them a chance.
Conversely, sticking with a relationship too long. Contrary to the above, sometimes you really should call it. If the guy isn't treating you with respect, you don't have to keep going. If you realize you never look forward to seeing them, you should probably end it.
Chatting too long before meeting. You're not a real person to them when you're just over text. You're missing body language and tone. You want to meet in person quickly.
The general flow for me is like
If the online chat ends and you haven't scheduled a date, but you want to, that's bad. You don't want to be having a second "hey what's up?" tinder chat.
If this doesn't come naturally to you , that's fine. Just remember with your brain "always ask a question". You need to give them something to work with.
And a last thought that ended up stranded at the bottom of this post, and I'm writing on my phone so editing is hard:
"But what about people who want to take it slow?" Do you want to date someone who doesn't want to date? I don't.
edit: minor error from autocorrect
I have never ever ever wanted to "just be friends" first. I am not looking for a new friend. I have friends. I am looking for intimacy that's not typically available for friends, and sex.
Furthermore, the timeline and transition points for "just friends" to "dating" are not defined. If I want to kiss now but we're on a "just friends" track, what do I do? Probably pursue someone who wants what I want, and not spin my wheels hoping the other person will come around
This does not sound like a very common experience.
What is it that makes you uncomfortable? Is it all scenarios? Coffee date? Bar date?
Yes, you can make players pre-plan. You nudge them.
No amount of nudging will make some players do anything. Some players are obstinate and frankly not very good, but honestly the solution to "this player won't stop looking at their phone and their turns take forever" may be to remove them from the group.
Why does it matter how much time everyone takes?
I don't want to wait 5 minutes for someone to dither and dither and finally decide "I attack"
Pray to Saint Luigi for guidance
I didn't vote for him and neither did anyone I know :(
This was a weirdly aggressive comment.
The solution is the pre-planning, which does not need a timer, nor is it a guaranteed result of a timer.
You cannot make players pre-plan. The timer encourages pre-planning, or at least rapid decision making on the fly. Both have the desired result of the game moving at a quicker pace.
It also has the benefit of creating an impartial tool for measuring, instead of relying on subjective "You're taking a long time." It is harder to argue with a clock. This is an advantage.
There was a problem, and in trying to fix it, the DM created a second problem.
What is the second problem?
I think people have radically different ideas about what "minimal background information" is.
Some people think the Silmarillion is a suitable primer for their setting.
Some people have like one paragraph for the big picture, and one paragraph for each major faction.
There are players that would say both is too much.
I think a couple short paragraphs should be enough for a quick start for a custom setting, but I've had players that just refuse to read anything at all. As someone else said, it's makes it really hard to do some sort of stories if all the players are utter neophytes/amnesiacs/from-another-world/etc
I tried to do a game of Vampire once, but the players refused to read anything about the setting. All the political intrigue fell completely flat because they didn't understand what the different factions were looking for, nor did they understand how vampires worked.
That group might have just been kind of bad players, but I feel like bad players are more common than good. By "bad" I mean "doesn't think about the game very much, doesn't retain anything about the story or rules". They couldn't really do anything more complex than a simple dungeon crawl.