How to Be the Geek of Her Dreams

I think that every guy who has some dorky habits dreams of finding the perfect woman, beautiful, fun, loving, and loves all of our geeky habits. She reads Spider-Man comics, loves anime, has a Slave Leia outfit, and may or may not speak Klingon (at least a few words).

I actually do have a friend who has found himself the perfect geek woman. One of the stops on their honeymoon was to a comic book convention, he had a Green Lantern ring made of Amethyst and Diamonds for Valentine’s Day, and they can actually use both the sentence, “we talked about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for an hour”, and “we weren’t expecting things to go so well” to describe their first date.

I am very happy for them, and they are very happy together.

It is pretty rare though for a man to find a woman who shares his love for all things geek.

Have you been to a comic book convention? The guy to girl ratio is pretty darn high. It is not a place to go to have good chances of finding love. I hear Star Trek and Sci-Fi conventions are even worse (I’ve never been to one – honest!)

Most of the time, the geeky guy ends up dating a less geeky woman, just as a result of numbers. And that’s great! I’ve never dated a woman that was really into any dorky stuff. One of them said she really liked Star Trek, but she never really acted on it. She may have just been trying to impress me..

So now you’ve got a girlfriend, or a woman you are dating, because you have followed all my other awesome advice on this blog, and you are wondering how you can share your love of all things geek with her.

It makes sense, after all. I love comics. I really really love comics. I think the medium is incredibly fun, amazing, and has incredible potential for storytelling and communication. I also just love geeky comics of Batman kicking butt (or just making drawings on the walls of caves way back in time, as he seems to be doing now).

Of course I would love to share my love of this with a woman. It’s important to me.

But then again, there is reality

I came to a stark conclusion after a few desperate attempts to share with women just why comics are so cool: They don’t care. No matter how much I love comics, that isn’t going to transfer over to her. She’s not ever going to love Star Wars even a tenth as much as I do. It just isn’t going to happen.

An even more important conclusion for me was when I realized that not only was she never going to be really interested in what I like, was when I realized that I was OK with that. I don’t mind that she doesn’t love my geeky stuff. I still enjoy it just as much.

Of course, if she does show an interest, I am prepared to share some stuff with her. I’ll give her a Strangers In Paradise book, Sandman, or Bone, and see how she likes that. If she likes it, I’ll give her more. If she shows any interest in Anime, I’ll watch Totoro with her, or some other Miyazaki film. If she is interested in some Sci-Fi I’ll take her to the latest Star Trek movie, or give her Stranger in a Strange Land to read. I’ll test the waters to see if she groks it. What I won’t do is overwhelm her with the stuff I love, or put any pressure on her to try it out.

Maybe she won’t ever be interested though. That is fine. I actually am not too interested in dating a woman that likes comics or Star Wars. I like having my own hobbies and interests. I’ve found ways to allow that side of me, those geeky hobbies, to flourish, without the need to share them with the women I date.

For one, I do them on my own time. I would never sit around and read a comic when spending time with a woman, or when she comes over to hang out. I enjoy my time with her, and leave the geeky stuff for my own time.

Also, I have found like minded guys who also love the stuff I love. I get to share this with them. I’ve got a decent group of comic geeks that I know in my area. Every now and then we will get together for a day, maybe go on a crawl to a bunch of comic shops, or go see some geeky movie, like we did when Wolverine: Origins came out in the theater. I got to really relish in my geekiness, without the need to share it with any women.

Keep it in perspective

back in college, my girlfriend was talking about some of the guys in her dorm building, and how disgusting she thought it was that they just played video games all the time. They just wasted their time on silly games.

What I didn’t tell her was that I wished I could just play video games all the time.

What women want is a man that has passions and inspiration in his life, and works to do and achieve stuff in line with those passions. It is one of those qualities of a man that is almost universally attractive. It goes back to the saying that the best way to meet women is to have something better to do than to meet women.

This goes back to the second post in this series about dating for dorks, when I wrote about having other things in your life besides your geekeries. If all you do with your time is read comics, or play video games, or perfect your Klingon fighting technique and language pronunciation, then yes, you may have a hard time finding a woman who finds that attractive. When it is just a small part of the overall picture, then you are in good shape.

Sometimes, at the end of the week, I want nothing more than to hop on my Xbox 360 and play Call of Duty with some friends and decompress from a week of working. I don’t do that every night though, nor would I want to. Nor would my women want me to either.

When you’ve got the rest of your life under control, then spending your extra time on your geekery of choice is no big deal. Better yet, you can do what my friend Dave does, and align his passions with his geekeries. Read his web comic, Space-Time Condominium. Dave is a geek at heart, but his passions are in making and drawing comics. He does both, and it shows in what he does and how he behaves. Plus, I mention him because he is an amazing wingman.

Don’t stop loving your geeky stuff, just find the time to love it, and don’t push it on the women in your life. Live and let live.

Coming up in the next post: I have no idea what.

Your Attitude Will Create Her Attitude

Dating for Dorks continues. See the last couple posts for more on this subject.

Often times, us dorks think that we have to hide our nerdiness from women.

If we could, we would put all our toys, video games, comics, DVDs and D&D books away in some iron clad chamber where they would never be found.

For the non-geeky reading this, I want you to understand what it feels like.

Believe it or not, most people think geeks are lame

The stereotypes of people that like geeky stuff are pretty bad. Imagine comic book guy from the Simpsons, or a D&D nerd, or some weird kid that watches too much anime.

The thing is, geeky fanaticism for comics or star trek is just as geeky as going to a football game, dressing up in your team’s colors, and playing fantasy football. It is the same as a woman getting dressed up with her friends in dresses and heels, going to watch the Sex and the City movie and drink Cosmos.

D&D and Star Trek get looked down on by society far more than football and Sarah Jessica Parker do however. Us dorks have years of social retards and [fairly true] stereotypes that helped shape what people think of our hobbies.

All of this can make a guy fairly defensive or cautious with this stuff. I have read threads on comic book discussion forums about guys that were scared to tell their girlfriend that they read comics, and threads asking other people if and how they hide their hobby from people.

The key to making women comfortable

What I have discovered is that women will be just as comfortable with my dorky hobbies as I am. That is really all you need to know.

I’ll expand on this anyway though…

My dorky hobbies are just one part of my life. I have plenty of other stuff going on in my life, as I talked about in my last post. I don’t hide the fact that I have these dorky habits. I tend to keep a couple graphic novels laying around on my coffee table, I’ve got an awesome Batman with a Green Lantern Ring action figure on top of my fridge, a Cobra Commander figure in front of my computer monitor on my desk, and I even still have a copy of Iron Man #128 in my liquor cabinet.

Like I said, I don’t hide it. I don’t, however, flaunt it outrageously. I keep all my comics put away in my closet, along with most of my other stuff. I’ve just got a few of my favorite things out around my apartment, but most of it is put away where it belongs. When a woman walks in to my apartment, she isn’t walking in to Sean’s Amazing Dungeon of Comics and Toys.

Clearly, I’m not hiding all of this stuff from people. I don’t even talk about it unless they ask. If they do, I don’t make a bigger deal of it than it is.

The important thing for her to know isn’t that I am a geek, but that I am secure with myself, and that is why I don’t make a big deal about it. If she asks about it, or it comes up, I mention it, and maybe joke about it a little bit.

Her: “You read comics?”

Me: “Yeah, I love all that geeky shit”

~or~

Her: “How many GI Joe figures do you have?”

Me: “Well, I have to have enough to recreate the assault on Cobra Island [with a smirk]”

The 2 things NOT to do

There are two things I don’t do, and that is to try to downplay it or explain it. Both of these responses display a little bit of insecurity about your habits and hobbies. The insecurity is far less attractive than liking comic books and GI Joe ever could be.

When someone downplays something they will try to excuse it, or make it seem like an accident. They might say something like, “oh, that’s just some old junk”, or I tried it out, but I don’t really like it that much” or something like that. Don’t downplay your habits.

The other response that shows some insecurity is to try to explain it. If a woman asks me about my comic book hobby, and I were to try to explain to her that comics have really matured and that there is a lot of really good stuff out there and it’s not all just kid’s superhero stuff, then I would be trying to make excuses or explain it.

This is just a way of being defensive about something, and defensive behavior is almost always insecure behavior.

If you like something that is pretty dorky, or have a collection of the geekiest thing imaginable, be secure about it, and drop the need to defend, explain, or downplay it.

What if she doesn’t give up on it?

Often times, just being comfortable with your loves and hobbies will be enough for a woman to be comfortable with it.

From time to time, a woman may push the point though, and really dig into you about it. They may challenge you, call the hobby immature, whatever. The trick in these situations is to banter. In particular, the two types of banter I would use would be to self-deprecate and to exaggerate on the point.

When I say self-deprecate, I mean to take what she is saying about you that may be thought of as lame or dorky, and make it worse. Take it to the next level of dorkiness, and describe yourself as that. Exaggeration does pretty much the same thing. Here are a couple of examples of what I mean.

Her: Why do you have that figure? [pointing to Cobra Commander]
Me: Oh, that’s Cobra Commander. He’s there as a reminder that I should be taking over the world.
~or~
Her: Wow, you are a dork!
Me: If you think this is bad, you should see my place when I have the Star Wars bed sheets on.
~or~
Her: You know these kinds of toys are for kids, right?
Me: Well, they were out of the special limited edition variant, so I had to get this one.

All in all, the point of all of this is that you should be secure with yourself, secure about what you like, and not let anybody throw you off of that.

In the next post I will talk about sharing your dorky habits with women, and whether you even should in the first place.

You are not your toys and your comics

This is the second in a series of posts on Dating for Dorks. I admitted a lot of my geeky indulgences yesterday. I am a dork.

For the few years after I graduated college, I was kind of, well, depressed. I was dealing with the sudden realization that my life would be no more than what I made of it, and that was coupled with the pain of losing the love of my life.

I got into this funk, and a lot of how I spent my time was reading comics and watching anime. Not very cool.

I eventually got out of my funk, but a lot of my geeky habits stayed.

I learned that obsessing over these hobbies of mine would not really be the best of ways to meet women. I got this idea from the fact that my female friends would roll their eyes whenever I brought up comics, cartoons, or Gundam.

My love of comics is a part of who I am, and I am happy about that. I love comic books, and believe in it as a medium for entertainment, storytelling, and art. But that’s not all I am.

If you took away my comics, kept me from buying more, and stopped me from ever seeing my comic geek buddies, I would still be a full person, with plenty of varying hobbies and interests. While I do love comics, I do not let that define me.

I think that where some guys go wrong is that they let their geeky habit define them to the point that they seem obsessed with it. If your geeky hobby were completely taken away from you, would you be left with other things in your life to define you?

If you would still have a fun, fulfilling life, then no problem. You’re not a hard case. If, without these things, you have trouble figuring out what you’re all about, then I suggest taking a look at that. That is a sign that maybe you could fill up your life with more stuff other than your geeky hobbies.

I don’t want anyone to change who they are, particularly not so that they can meet women. What I do want is for us to grow, and become fuller people with richer lives.

I’m saying all of this based on an assumption. I’m gonna assume that you, being dorky like you are, aren’t interested in dating a woman who is as much of a geek as you. If you are looking for that, then go out and find it. Figure out where women that like what you like are, and go meet them.

If you have trouble talking about something that excites you in your life without talking about Blackest Night, or how the new Trek movie was a travesty to the former glorious Star Trek legacy, then I think you will have trouble talking to a woman who isn’t interested in these things.

Any man that wants to meet and date women that are not interested in the same geeky stuff may have some trouble relating to a non-geeky girl.

(On a side note, women have their own geeky stuff, it’s just called Sex In The City instead of Star Wars)

The first thing that you’ve gotta do when you’re a geek is to move beyond your geeky habits, and add more to your life so that your geekeries are just one part of an overall full life.



Coming up next: How, and when, to share your love for all things geek with women.

Does this sound like you?

You’ve read The Lord Of The Rings more than once. You may even make it an annual tradition.

You have stacks of comic books laying around your apartment that you haven’t read or put away in your boxes yet. In fact, you are a top 20 poster (by number of posts) on an internet comic book discussion forum.

You have made a joke about someone wearing a red shirt, and how they probably won’t survive long.

You can name all 13 original members of the G.I. Joe team (without reference), and you know who the “14th” original Joe was, and who he was a reference to.

You have used “frakking” as a swear word.

THACO. You know it.

Of course you have seen Cowboy Bebop, in the original Japanese with subtitles, of course. None of that dub crap.

You have lost an entire night’s sleep due to Starcraft.

Transformers? Best toy ever.

You’ve thought about what you would do if the Zombie Apocalypse happens. You’ve got Mad Max contingencies too.

You have a batman action figure on top of your refrigerator.

You have painted Warhammer miniatures before. In fact, it is possible you painted an entire goblin warhammer army. Possibly.

Just being a few feet away from Leonard Nimoy was very exciting. Heck, even Brent Spiner was pretty cool.

You number of times you have seen the Star Wars movies is a 3 digit number. In fact, you camped out overnight to see Episode 1 at midnight the day it came out. Oh, and you own a few Star Wars t-shirts.

You have flown across the country to go to a comic book convention, and San Diego Comic-Con was a blast this year!

Who is this loser?

I am describing someone I know very well.

In fact, I’m describing me. Everything above describes me. No exaggeration.

I am, for all intents and purposes, a dork. My specialty within the geeky genres is comic books and Star Wars. I have about 3,000 comics in my closet, carefully stored away in plastic bags and boxes. My most prized book is my copy of Showcase 22, the first appearance of Green Lantern from 1959.

There was a time when I had read pretty much every Star Wars novel that had been released, and I once played Star Wars trivial pursuit, and you know how if you get the answer correct you get to keep going? Well, I won on my first turn.

If you want to discuss the merits vs. the weaknesses of Superman, you should sit down and get comfortable. This might take a while, and I may ask you to read Action Comics 775 to prove my point.

Who needs women when you have Trek?

Dorks are stereotyped as being pretty bad with women. It doesn’t matter what kind of dork you are: Comic geek, D&D nerd, Trekker, Star Wars dork, Otaku, or gamer, the stereotype is there, and often times fairly true.

I like all this geeky stuff, but I don’t let it get in the way of meeting and dating women.

I have never hid any of my geekeries from women (except Warhammer), in fact the huge pile of longboxes that hold all my comics has been pretty hard to ignore. This has never made a woman decide to leave my bedroom though.

I got the full 3 day pass to Wondercon this year, San Francisco’s biggest comic book convention, but I also met a woman out at the bar after the convention with all my geeky comic nerd friends, took her home that night, and dated her for a while. Yes, she knew I was going to the convention all weekend.

This week’s theme is dating for dorks.

I have read about folks that have dated a woman for years without telling her that he collects comics, out of a fear of how she will react.

Some dorks will not let their freak flag fly, or just resign themselves to believing that no woman could love them because of their nerdy indulgances.

You don’t have to give up on your beloved comics, or movies, or games. You can date fantastic women too. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

All week I’m gonna have posts about how to have your cake, and eat it too.

Because after all, there will be cake.

And this cake is not a lie.

My Decisions Kick Your Goal’s Ass

Go ahead, set your goals. Plan it all out. Figure out what you want to accomplish.

I will kick your goal up and down the street, all day long.

I don’t set goals anymore. I don’t set resolutions. Goals and resolutions are meant to be broken, not accomplished.

I came up with something better.

I used this method to quite smoking

Last New Year’s Eve I was thinking about what I want to change in the new year, as usual. One thing I wanted to change was smoking. I wanted to stop smoking.

I wasn’t a heavy smoker, mainly a social smoker, but in the last couple months of 2008, I found myself smoking more and more, to the point where I was smoking pretty much every day.

So I decided not to smoke any cigarettes in 2009.

It is five months later, and I haven’t had a cigarette since New Year’s Eve.

Decisions are different than goals

There is something very different about making a decision than setting a goal.

  • You decide to go grocery shopping, you don’t make it a goal.
  • You decide to go to work each day, it isn’t a goal.
  • You decide to buy a new pair of running shoes, you don’t set a goal to do it.

The difference is that decisions get done. Goals? Maybe.

When I decide to do something, I do it, and this is fundamentally different to me than setting a goal. When I stopped smoking, I got a lot of cravings for cigarettes. The first month or so, I reaaally wanted one. I knew, however, that I had decided I wasn’t going to have one.

It didn’t matter that I wanted the cigarette, because I had decided I wasn’t going to have one, so I didn’t. After all, why would I do something I decided not to do?

Give it the Decision Test.

If you are setting a goal, you are probably setting action items to go with it.

A goal without actions to achieve the goal is going to be hard to achieve.

(It is better to figure out what kind of results you want, and then figuring out what actions are necessary to make that result happen, but I digress)

Once you have these action steps, no matter what it is, put it to the decision test. Just decide to do it. See how that feels. Once you have decided to do it, it is a part of your life. You’re going to do it, because you decided to.

You can’t fail now!

If there is something you want to accomplish, see if you can just decide to do it. If you can’t decide to do it right now, then maybe it isn’t the right time yet to make this decision. Scale it back, wait a while, and make a smaller decision.

Art of Rapport students get results

At last weekend’s Art of Rapport workshop, I had the pleasure to work with two very motivated and hard working gentlemen. Our Pickup 101 workshops are no easy class. When you take a workshop with us, we will push you to do things that make you nervous, because that is how you grow.

Josh and Simon and the other six men in the workshop spent the morning learning how to walk up to a woman that they don’t know, make her laugh or smile, and convey their natural personalities in a compelling way.

Josh and Simon pushed themselves to approach and meet women in ways they never had before, and it works.

Simon had a natural ease about him, but needed to get a little help sharing that personality with women.

We got to work, and he put our work into action.

He met quite a few women. Man, doesn’t he look great:

simon-photo3

After I suggested to Simon that he talk to that woman above, I was actually a little jealous. She was very cute, and I wished that I had talked to her instead.

Of course, Simon applied the lessons from the night before, and ended up talking to this woman for about 15 minutes or so, and had a fantastic conversations. He told me later that he felt like the conversation just flowed. In fact, he told me after he excused himself that the only reason he left was that he wanted to move on and meet more women! He didn’t want to spend all day talking to just one.

So what did he do? Simon walked across the square and met another woman sitting, watching the passers by:

simon-photo2

I was proud of Simon, and he was proud of himself. He moved through his nervousness and did something that he hadn’t done before, and he grew from it.

When Josh started the workshop, I think he had some doubts about the workshop, and about himself. I don’t think he was quite sure that the material that we taught in Art of Rapport was going to work for him.

I told Asher and Megan, the two coaches that were leading the workshop, to put Josh with me went we went out to meet some women, and I would make sure he got it :)

Of course, they did put him with me.

The first women or two that Josh met didn’t spark. We were walking through Unions Square on Saturday afternoon, and kept moving around. Eventually, I saw her, and so did Josh. I think he knew he should go meet her, and I gave him some encouragement to do that.

josh-photo1

He took a breath, and walked up to her. I don’t know what he said exactly, but I saw her smile in response. They stood in the middle of the square, talking to each other. He was relaxed, and it showed in his body language.

I surreptitiously walked by them and took some photos with my phone, just for fun.

Then something I wasn’t expecting happened. He took off. With her. He just walked off and left Union Square, while walking and talking with her.

Turns out he left with her to go get some coffee at a cafe.

After an hour or so, I called him up and told him he couldn’t be a lover boy all day long. Eventually, he came back to Union Square, and he was different. He wasn’t skeptical, and he had a new found confidence about him.

He learned something from the workshop, and it wasn’t just a line to start a conversation with women, or a few tips. He learned something about himself. He learned that he was the kind of man that can meet a woman in the middle of the day and take her to a cafe on a mini date.

More than that, he is the kind of man that women want to meet, and would be happy to spend their afternoon with. That lesson is far more valuable than any tip that I could teach, and is something that can’t be read on the internet.

Following nervousness will make you a better man

Nervousness is an outdated survival mechanism that is no longer relevant.

Now, before I go on, I want to be clear that I am talking about nervousness with women. And let’s face it. Many men get nervous around women, especially very attractive women.

I asked out my high school girlfriend after I ran into her at the beach one summer between my junior and senior year. I was hanging out with my sister, and my sister had to heavily encourage me to get over my nervousness and ask her for her phone number and out on a date.

I felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest because my heart was beating so hard.

I thought the nervousness would kill the first time I approached a woman I didn’t know (the dreaded cold approach).

This was my first semester after transferring to UC Berkeley for Engineering School, and there was one girl in one or two of my classes that was drop dead gorgeous. I spent five minutes walking a ways behind her as I worked up the courage to approach her, fumble over my opening lines, and introduce myself.

Oh, the nervousness hurt. But in both of these cases, it was the right thing to do. Absolutely the right thing to do.

I dated that girl I walked up to on the beach for 5 years, and I fell crazy in love with her. The girl at I followed through campus, building up my courage to talk to ended up being very friendly, and though I fumbled over everything I did when I met her, I learned that I wouldn’t die if I approached a gorgeous woman.

Why was I even nervous? Neither of these situations ended poorly, and really, neither of them could have gone really poorly. The worst that could have happened would be that the girl tell me she wasn’t interested. No real harm there.

So why was I so nervous?

I’m hardwired to get nervous around beautiful women. We all are to some degree. What’s going on in these situations is that we are doing something a little bolder than we are used to doing.

We get nervous when we do something outside of our comfort zone. All sorts of things push people outside of our comfort zones:

  • Public speaking
  • Parachuting out of airplanes
  • Job interviews
  • Asking for a raise at work
  • …and talking to beautiful women

Often times, there is some sort of risk involved when something makes us nervous. When jumping out of an airplane, there is a risk of the parachute not working. When going for a job interview you might not get the job. You might antagonize your boss when you ask for a raise.

There isn’t much risk in meeting a woman though. Even the risks that people often think exist don’t really exist. “What if everybody sees me get shot down?” In reality, most of the guys will be respecting the man that takes that risk to approach the woman, something they didn’t have the guts to do.

“What if she shoots me down?” Well, you won’t have any less than you have now.

With women, often times nervousness points out the right thing to do.

  • If approaching a woman makes you nervous, then you should probably approach her.
  • If talking to a woman makes you nervous, then you should probably be talking to her
  • If asking a woman out on a date makes you nervous, then you should ask her out.
  • If kissing a woman makes you nervous, then it is probably the right time to kiss her.

If you do these things that make you nervous when you are around women, it will expand your comfort zone, and increase your comfort with meeting women, dating women, and moving your relationships with women forward.

If you want to get better at meeting women, better at flirting with them, better at dating the women that makes your hair on your arms stand up, there will some things that you will have to do that will make you nervous.

You will have to do things that make you nervous. You will have to do things that you don’t want to do because it makes you nervous when you think about it. When you do it anyway, you will grow, and become a more confident, self-assured man.

Recognize nervousness for what it is, the path to greatness.

Should you buy her a drink? When to, and when not to buy a woman a drink at a bar

Buying a woman a drink can be a nice part of the dating ritual as the two of you get to know each other and discover more and more that you like each other.

It can also be a way to lose money trying to be nice for a woman who is using you to get something (wow, that sounded harsh). Or it can be a way to bribe a woman into spending time talking to you.

No man likes to be used for his money and taken for a ride, which is what it can feel like when a man buys a woman a drink, then she takes off after 5 minutes of talking, or worse, leaves right after you hand her the drink you just bought her.

There are women that will go out just to have guys buy drinks for them. They like to find a guy who will buy them drinks, and in some cases, that is even their M.O. when they go out.

And I think that’s fine. More power to them. If a woman wants to put her womanly charms to work, then she should go for it. This blog is, after all, all about putting our masculine charms to work for us. I may have plenty of double standards, but not about this.

Women have every right to get drinks bought for them by men that want to buy them drinks.

I’m just not going to be one of those men.

I will buy a drink for a woman when things are moving along, and we are getting to know each other more and more. I believe that this is part of being a gentleman, and just as I would open the door for her and make sure she is safe, I would buy her a drink.

Knowing the difference between these two situations is important. I’ve screwed this up plenty of times, and learned from it. This post is about what I have figured out.

Also, as a special bonus, I’m gonna give you the best choice when a woman asks you to pick a drink for her. If you have asked a woman what she’s drinking and she says, “just pick something for me”, you’re gonna want to read this part. That’s at the end, so make sure you read all the way through.

As a second special bonus, I am going to give you the best answer when a woman offers to buy you a drink.

Don’t be an infomercial salesman

Don’t exchange a drink for a woman’s time.

If I ever catch any of you approaching a woman and asking to buy her a drink right off the bat, I am gonna slap you.

Lead with personality, not bribes. I have a whole category on this blog about leading with personality.

So how is this a bribe? When a man offers to buy a drink for a woman right away, there is another request going on, and that request is that she talk to him for a while, so he can work his game get to know her.

In terms of first impressions, however, you can do better. It is much stronger to make women want to spend time with you because of your personality, energy, and humor than it is to have her talk to you because something is in it for her.

For some reason, I think of infomercials where if you order now, you will get a free set of steak knives! Talk to me for the next 10 minutes and you will get this free cosmo for no added charge!

Girls just want to have fun (and drink for free)

It’s been done before, and it will happen again. A man will approach a group of women, and one of them will ask him to buy them drinks.

Ouch.

Deep down, you know that this is a sort of a test. She’s either trying to use you, or poking at you to see if you will lose you cool and give in to what she wants.

I think most guys know at this point that she is not asking for a drink because she really likes you. She isn’t gonna hang out with you for the rest of the night and spend a lot of time getting to know you.

I have felt that bad little feeling in my gut when a woman asks me to buy her a drink right after I meet her. I feel like I would lose some of my dignity if I did buy her a drink, but there is this fear that the woman won’t like me if I don’t buy her the drink.

It’s a lose-lose situation, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

So what do you do? The thing to do is to banter. If you can poke her right back, that is the best sort of response to this sort of thing.

A couple quick banter lines that can turn this around:

  • Oh, I could never let business come in between our friendship like that.
  • You know, they say Hitler bought girls drinks at bars before he started World War 2.
  • Sure, I’ll buy you one of every drink they have, but only if you promise to be a good girl and finish them all.

Or the ever popular (and stolen from my friend Joe):

  • You’re a drink.

By bantering, you keep the interaction moving in a fun way, but without giving in to her (unrealistic) request.

There are going to be women out there that are interested in men buying them drinks, for whatever reason. It’s fine that they do that, but you have to remember that it is fine that you aren’t the guy to give that to them.

As the romance builds, a little drink goes a long way

So when can you buy a woman a drink without it being a bribe for her to spend time with you or you caving in to her demands?

If you and a woman have talked for a while, you are getting positive responses, and the conversation has moved away from just surface level stuff and is moving further along, a woman asking you to buy her a drink is probably inviting you to spend more time with her.

She isn’t trying to use you or take you for a ride now. At this point the conversation probably feels like it is the two of you together on a date than it is two people at a bar that don’t know each other.

If a woman asks me to buy her a drink at this point, what I really hear is, “would you like to spend more time with me?”

She is not asking in any sort of judgmental way, or not to size me up, but in a way that conveys that she wants to spend more time with me.

Keep in mind that if you are at a bar, then the thing to do is have a drink. That is the primary activity that binds everyone together at the bar. If the two of you have finished your drinks, the obvious thing to do is get another.

A drink isn’t that expensive. It is probably $5 to $10, depending where you are. At this point in the relationship, the drink is a token. It is a step in the mating dance, the step when you show a little investment in what is developing between the two of you.

How much do you make her feel she is worth?

To get some perspective, imagine this from a woman’s point of view. You have met a man, you have shown that you are interested in him, and he seems to be interested in you in return. You would like to spend more time with him, and continue to get to know him…

… but he doesn’t even buy you a drink. He won’t even spend a few bucks on a drink for you. His $5 is more important to him than you are.

You aren’t even worth $5 to this man. How do you feel about this man now? Is he rude? Is he inconsiderate? Is he a cheapskate? Will he take care of you?

If you can tell that this woman is interested in you, treat her well. Show her that you are willing to invest a little back into this developing relationship.

Even better, lead the interaction, and offer to get her a drink if you are ready to get one for yourself.

If you are done with your drink, and you are ready for another, ask her what you can get for her when you go to the bar. If your interaction is moving along as far as it should be after this much time, that is a very appropriate thing to do.

“You choose a drink for me”

I’ve run into this, you are spending time with a woman, and it is time to get drinks for the two of you. You ask what she is drinking, and she says, “pick something for me,” or “I’ll have what you’re having.”

Not a lot of women like what I like to drink (Bourbon and Scotch). Buying her what I would like for myself probably won’t work.

What do you get her? Something fancy like a cosmo might be a little try hard or cliché. Wine is usually out of place at a bar, especially if you or she’s been drinking other stuff. Not all women like beer.

When I get this response, I feel like I am being tested. Am I going to be able to make the right decision? Do I know enough about women to know what they like?

Here’s the answer: get two Coronas.

Most people like a Corona. It is a lighter beer, and easy to drink. It comes with that lime stuck in the top, which is cool.

Also, there is a bit of a counter challenge in that. Can she hang with out and is she cool enough to drink beer with you?

What to do if she offers to buy you a drink

It is a wonderful thing when a woman buys you a drink.

Women, if you want to impress a man and make him like you a little more, buy him a beer.

If she offers to buy you a drink, say yes, thank her, and enjoy that drink, player.

Good things come in small packages

Mini, but super!
A little Friday fun.

A friend of mine went to Panama, and sent me some of her photos from the trip.

I’m not gonna share the pictures of her looking cute in her dress, but I thought this one was pretty good.

It may be mini, but it sure is SUPER!

My only wish is that I could pick up some chick at this store, so that I could write a book about mastering the Mini Super Fuk! 

Have a good weekend, everyone, I’ll be teaching at an Art of Rapport workshop for part of the weekend, should be fun!

Nice guys are manipulative bastards

The “nice guy” that we all know and recognize is a manipulative prick, who only does nice things to guilt trip women into liking him.

How’s that for laying down the gauntlet?

I’m not down on being nice, even if I am sometimes a little mean. It is wonderful to be nice to people, and I may even write an upcoming post about that very subject.

But what is not nice is when a man does something that seems nice, but is in fact not very nice at all. In fact some things that seem like they are very nice can have ulterior motives, and that is definitely not nice.

What do I mean by that?

  • A man that takes a woman out to a fancy dinner, because he expects her to like keep dating him or to “put out” after that, is not nice.
  • A man that does favors for and hangs out with a woman, hoping she might come around and like him back, is not nice.
  • A man that goes overboard and brings a woman flowers on a first date to go get coffee, in hopes that that the flowers will make the good first impression, is not nice.

None of these things are nice, because the nice thing is done with the expectation or hope that the woman will give the man what he wants in return. If you do something nice for a woman, with no thought of anything nice in return, that’s great. So often when a man acts nice towards a woman this is not the case though.

Story Time

Back in the day, I was out one night at a bar with my sister and one of her friends. We were having a grand ol time, and the drinks were flowing. We were sitting in the middle of the bar, plenty of folks around, so of course some guys started talking to us.

A few guys were hitting on my sister and her friend, and it was all good. They were nice enough guys, and everything was friendly.

Eventually the three of us got tired of the bar we were at and decided to take off and go to another bar. My sister went to settle our tab, which was pretty hefty. Over 100 bucks (we weren’t being shy with the drinks).

Something surprising happened. One of the guys that had been talking to my sister offered to pay for our entire tab. All three of us. My sister declined, but he was really insistent. It took a while for my sister to get it into his head that, no, he wasn’t going to pay for our tab.

Now, that could seem like a pretty nice thing to do. He offered to cover our entire tab. I wish people would pay for all of my drinks all the time. Very nice thing to do.

Behind that, however, was a certain agreement he was trying to force into place. He wasn’t offering to pay out of the goodness and kindness of his heart. He was not practicing random acts of kindness or anything like that. He was buying the drinks to make the two women I was with that night like him. I’m pretty sure that in his mind, he was thinking that he would pay for the drinks, and the women would go out with him because of that.

The *nice* thing he was offering up was really an attempt to manipulate them into feeling obligated to spend more time with him.

Catch it before it starts

This is easy to change. Whenever you have the option to do something nice for a woman that is above and beyond what you would normally do, ask yourself if if you are hoping for anything in return.

If you hope that doing this will make her like you, or do something in return for you, then it probably isn’t a good idea.

If you are expecting something in return, then your nice action is actually going to be tainted with manipulation. Manipulation just isn’t cool. Not towards women, not towards men, just don’t do it. You don’t want to end up like this guy, calling to ask for her share of what you paid for dinner on the date, just because she didn’t want to go out again.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a woman to like you. Don’t get the wrong impression. I have met plenty of women that I wanted to like me.

Rather than go overboard trying to show how nice and thoughtful I am, I know I will get much further by actually just being nice and thoughtful.

Be good, and be nice, but don’t be a nice guy.