Or: Sean Falls In Love For The 178th Time

Happy New Year!

The new year always seems like a time when we can make a big shift in our life.

But I digress.

Last night was New Years eve.  I went out with half a dozen friends out to some bars in the Mission to celebrate.  I ended up meeting Zoey, and talked to her for a while.  She was fun, cool, and cute.  Ah, life was good.

Eventually, she had to run off to find a friend, but we told each other we would talk later.  Anyway, I was in love.  Smitten.  I was into her, and I wanted to talk to her more and see where it could go.

Then my buddies told me to hit on Laura, who was getting drinks at the bar next to us.  Don’t mind if I do, so I started talking to her.  I figured it would be something to do while I waited to find Zoey again.  Then something unexpected happened.  I helped Laura carry her drinks back to her friends, and then proceeded to dance and kiss the night away with her.  I’m totally smitten with her.

This morning, I talked to one of my friends I was out with last night.  They had no idea where I had gone last night when I was with Laura, since I kinda disappeared to hang out with her.  All my friends ended up leaving to go somewhere else.  So anyhow, I was telling my buddy about my night, and about the girl I met last night.

He tells me, “Ah, you’re in love”.

Then I realize: “Yeah, but I was in love with the girl I was talking to earlier in the night right before I met her too.”  He laughed, but I realized there was a nugget of something here.

Have you ever met a woman, hit it off with her, and then couldn’t get her out of your mind?  Maybe you met her in a bar, and want to talk to her more and get her number, or you got her number, and then just think about what to say, what to text, or how to make it work out?

Because that happen last night, with the first woman I met.  I was thinking, “where is she?  I want to talk to her more.”  This lasted ALL night.  Well, no.  Not all night.  About 10 minutes.  Right up until I met the next girl I really liked.

That fixation was real though.  I experience it all the time.  I see it in men that I coach.  I see it in my friends.  Things go well with a woman, and we get fixated on her.  We want it to work out.  We want her to like us, and we aren’t so interested in any other women.

I hear questions like, “what should I text her?”, or “should I leave so she doesn’t see me talking to other women?”  All subtle variations of “how do I not screw this up?”

This fixation is a Male Pattern Irrationality.  It doesn’t make sense, but we tend to focus on the last woman we met.  We forget the ones we met before her.  There is only room for one woman in our memory at a time.

When a woman fills this irrational spot in our memory, we do all sorts of crazy stuff.  We act different, try to act too cool, or we are too eager, or too needy, or too something.  Basically, we are much more prone to getting in our own way of it working out.

This “problem” is also its own solution though.  If there is a woman you have met, and you really like her, the best thing you can do is to immediately go meet another woman.  Fill up that irrational spot in in your memory with another woman.  This will free you to think about this first woman that you really liked in a much more rational way.

Then you can proceed to get smitten with her again in a totally rational way.

Happy New Year.  One of the changes I am planning to implement this year is keeping up with my blog.  I have dozens of unwritten posts floating up in my head, hopefully I’ll get them down on paper.