The monkey made me do it

How To Find Love And Talk To Girls

I just typed a gi-normous letter to a friend of my brother who I've only met a couple of times about how to date, specifically in and around church-land and internet-land, and now want to share my finger cramping with the world. Why he's asked me this stuff, I'm not sure (see the first sentence of my advice), but now that it's out of my brain you are all welcome to it. My head hurts.

Here you go:
"You also realize though that (brother) is currently single, as am I, so my relationship advice is quite possibly a load of crap?
Just thought I'd warn you.

How you approach a girl:
Step 1.
Get into the mindset where you don't care if she likes you or not. Girls can smell desperation and nervousness a mile away. We're like bees. You can be interested, but in the back of your mind your thought process should be more like "hey, she's cool. It would be nice if we could hang out more" than the typical "I'm going to go in my room and cry if she says anything that I can possibly misconstrue into a critique of my character and personality" or "this is the woman God wants me to marry. I have to make her realize this in the next fifteen minutes". Or the almost audible "pleeeeeeaaaase like me please please please pleeeeaaaaasssssssssuh" mantra.

Step 2.
Say "hi" (this only works in the physical realm. If you e-mail someone with just a "hi" she will ignore you unless she is an attention whore and wants to talk to anybody). Say something else, hopefully related to the situation you are currently in or related to a detail you have noticed about her person (NOT her body or physical appearance, I'm talking about if she's carrying a book or if she's currently balanced on one hand twirling a fire baton.
How this might work:
You are at church, which is a dodgy place to pick up women since a large percentage of "Christian" single men only attend church to get tail. You see a pretty girl who looks like a possible Def Leppard fan. It's after service and you are both milling around in the foyer looking lost.
You: "Hi."
Her: "Hi (smile)" (If there is no smile or a chill wafting your way, move on at this point)
You: "So did you agree with the sermon, the part where he said that God will only forgive your sins if you learn to pray in Cantonese?"
etc.
Be careful approaching people at church. Lots of women have their guard up (me included, I have to admit. "Christian" men I've met at church have ended up to be the worst of the lot, dating-wise). DO NOT tell them they are good looking until you are dating! It immediately tells them that you are mainly interested in their appearance and the intelligent, talented women you're looking for will be completely turned off by your shallow approach. That said, once you're dating you better tell her she's pretty and how wonderful she is very often (just not too early or it gets creepy). Girls like that crap.

I'm getting a little scattered.
I'll try and focus.

Once you get a conversation going (oh yeah, Step 3:), you have a couple of options. If it's going well, make sure you know her name and tell her you'll see her next week and you really enjoyed meeting her. If it's going REALLY well, ask if you can sit with her next week and get a more real-time discussion of the sermon. If she's giving every "I LIKE YOU" signal (laughing at unfunny things, touching your arm, making crazy long eye contact, blushing, leaning into you), ask her if she'd like to continue talking over coffee. Meals are a 2nd, maybe 3rd date thing. Work up to those - that's a lot of time together and girls like to be prepared for them. Once you've seen her again, in any form (coffee, the next week at church), and had another good conversation, then you are free to move up a level.

For reference:
Level 1 = chatting at any event the both of you happen to be attending
Level 2 = deeper conversation, possibly 1-on-1
Level 3 = going to a seperate location for a 1-on-1 event (not necessarily a date)
Level 4 = DATE. You've asked her to do something, she's said yes. You do something. Together.
Level 5 = Date-ING. You've gone on multiple dates and both enjoyed each other's company.
Level 6 = Exclusive dating. You have to talk about this with her, and make sure she knows that you're not dating anyone else and that you want her to do the same so you two can get to know each other better. Sometimes it takes months to get to this point (it SHOULD take at least a few weeks - don't jump into things).

The internet sucks for meeting people. DO NOT again tell her anything about her looks except to say possibly that you were initially attracted by them but really grew to like her after reading her insightful prose on her member page or some other such crap. Unless you want the kind of girl who is only attracted to guys who think she is pretty, regardless of her other attributes or lack thereof.

What to do:
Find someone you're genuinely interested in. Find something you share with that person and write them about that, noting anything that they would find interesting about it or about you (note: biceps are not interesting). Don't stress about getting a reply, but don't write "Gee, I bet you get letters all the time and probably won't even write me back, but..." If they live near you, suggest meeting up at a good location (church, that old standby coffee again) and having a conversation about whatever topic you're both interested in."

I didn't tell him that half of my date conversations devolve into some random topic-grabbing chat fest, and that I kind of like the non-specified conversations. He was asking about those "normal" women-folk, so the advice is a little skewed towards the center. Unless their shared interest is shooting midgets from a cannon. Sorry, technically that should be shooting DWARVES from a cannon, and I've had that date conversation too (sadly, the interest was all on his side so we couldn't get married and have babies).

posted by LadyJay @ 6:49 PM