My most pressing request: Holly, your dating tips for guys are awesome--why not dating tips for girls. Well, for one, like I said, the reason I started writing about dating in the first place was because my experience dating post-college has been absurd. Though I've dated quite a few guys now, I've never gone out with a guy and wanted to date him a second time, which is really horrible. So I'm not doing terribly well in this regard, either.
Oh, but I give most guys a chance. In my mind, a first date isn't really too much to ask for. It's a few hours of time spent in the company of someone you presumably find interesting or who presumably finds you interesting (flattering!). It’s a chance to see if you have chemistry and if there’s any romantic potential. Unfortunately, there are two ways to mess this up: in the asking and in the doing.
So this post is about the asking. I’ve obviously been asked out by more men than I have actually dated. I’m clearly discerning and one of the easiest ways for me to weed men out is by how they ask me out. And I mean it. If you want to date me, you’re going to have to actually ask me out.
The thing I learned really quickly in life is that women cannot differentiate friendship from romantic disinterest. How many times have you been friends with a woman you’re attracted to and have remarked, “Why doesn’t she see me that way?” The answer is fucking simple: romantic interest should be obvious. It should not be obscured under guises of friendship, because god damn, it’s 2010 and we’re allowed to have LOTS of guy friends and it’d be uncommonly stupid to assume they all are in love with us and you’re no different.
Unless you make it obvious. Oh, I know! It’s SCARY. You might get rejected! Oh noes! I know so many men from elite schools who have *never* been rejected from anything in their whole lives and the thought of being rejected by a girl is just so debilitating that they literally don’t do anything. But really, let’s face it, she’s not going to ask you out. I actually tell my girl friends not to ask men out. You might think I’m contradictory, because I’m pretty pro-gender equality, but we certainly didn’t grow up in a gender-neutral world. Women who ask men out are socially pegged as desperate or easy, and that’s enough of a reason for women to abstain from it.
But even women who recognize that such labels are baseless and stupid are not going to ask you out. Why? Since I’m in this camp, I’ll give you my reasons. Asking someone out is an obvious sign of interest. So much so, it’s disarming. Going back to my animal behavior class, biologically, women keep up their defenses around a man until they have sufficient indication that he’s not going to abandon her soon after copulation, leaving both her and their offspring to fend for themselves. Naturally, though it’s not nearly so explicit, women are looking for evidence that you’re into her and her alone. If she asks you out, she’s losing an opportunity to actually discern you’re really interested in her (and aren’t just being polite, or worse, “meh—nothing else to do and maybe I’ll get laid”). Evolutionarily speaking, women have a lot more to lose by pursuing a man than she does being pursued.
So let's assume she's not going to ask you out. That said, how you ask a girl out also matters. Lethargic gestures like “Hey you wanna hang out sometime?” do not tell me you’re into me. Like I said, it’s 2010, I have lots of guy friends and they all wanna hang out with me, too. You're not making any effort to pursue me. Worst still, that method involves negotiation, which makes me complicit in the asking out process. I’m not going to let down my defenses until I’m sure you’re into me, and this gesture is pretty half-ass. It does not make me feel special. It does not make me feel particularly desired. And in fact, it makes me think you’re a bit of a wimp. My response is probably going to be equally as half-ass, “Uh…maybe?”
Compare this to how a guy asked me out last year, with a hand-written note sent to my office mailbox. It read: “I think you’re absolutely incredible and I’m dying to take you out for dinner this weekend. Say yes.” Huge difference. It made me feel special and wanted, because he went out of his way to make me feel that way. It demonstrated assertion and confidence. Before this, I had an idea this guy was into me. (You know that moment when you're speaking to a girl and you suddenly realize she's out of the ordinary? I actually saw that happen in this guy.) But this was a sure indication and so I felt way more comfortable saying yes. (Ok, so it didn’t work out after the first date, but that’s the next lesson! How not to act on a first date when your date’s a perceptive sociologist!)
I’m not saying you have to hire a marching band, but asking a girl out on a date should be treated differently than asking your buddies out for a beer. It should make her feel good about herself and maybe a little flattered. And this goes without saying, but you should actually ask her out. The friends-cum-lovers thing doesn’t happen much after college given people don’t seem to “hang out” one-on-one enough for that to evolve naturally. So if you want to spend time with a girl, asking her out is the only way to do it. Yes, you may face rejection, but damn if that isn’t more efficient than spending seven months pining over her, only to watch her get into a relationship with someone who actually asked her out.
The vague, ambiguous "wanna hang out?" thing does work well as an intermediate step, though. If she's not keen on really spending any alone time with you at all, then there's no point asking her out. If she is, then you can do coffee or some other noncommital thing and if that goes ok *then* you can ask her out - perhaps even right after it's over.
ReplyDeleteI do this a lot because the stakes are a bit higher when she knows a lot of people you know and it might create drama within the social network. This is the case with most of the girls I meet.
I think you are mistaken about having guy friends. If a guy is hanging out with you, he at one time wanted to do you (and has since settled on friendship > nothing), or he still wants to do you, or you were doing his friend, or he's gay.
ReplyDeleteIf a guy asks if you want to hang out sometime, 100% of the time unless he's gay he wouldn't be opposed to the idea of nailing you. There's a reason married men don't ask women if they want to hang out sometime.
See http://www.laddertheory.com/ for a more elaborate explanation for how all of this works.