It’s been awhile since I polled the male blog board for answers to help us decode the dating process.
This time I was in search of the hints that you’re a contender – that in his mind you’ve transition from “want to hook up with” to “want to date.” We’ve discussed the whole guys-place-girls-in-buckets issue to death at this point (for a primer read this), but I’ve never blatantly asked, “how do you treat her differently once you know you like her.”
From the girl end we say things like, “He’s doing _______ so I feel like it’s going really well,” or nod and smile when our friends say, “Omg he _______?! He loves you.”
So now, from the mouths of men – what fills in that blank?
- Invite her to something as opposed to meeting up
- Call vs text, and for purposes other than strategy to get laid
- “Well. In general she’ll just be on my mind more. I’ll start to think about little things I can get for her that I know she likes. I’ve definitely gotten cards – like playful flirting cards, not serious – for girls in the past and it has both paid off and also backfired. But in general I’ll think about things like that. Like if a girl tells me she loves some kind of beer or candy or whatever, or if she collects figurines of cows or needs new headphones for her ipod, or any other (random or not so random) example, I’ll try to get her something related to that.
- Remember things she says.
- I purposefully bring up stuff I know about her to prove I’ve been listening
- Take her to more date ish places
- I like to recap the time we spent together and think about all the ways I made her smile or laugh. Then I focus on what it was that made her feel that way and amplify it even more the next time around. I also love to learn, so if there is a subject shes into that I don’t know well, I will brush up on things she mentioned and ask her more about it next time. It gives her something to get excited about and I learn something in the process. Oh, and I offer her fine wine and a chance to browse through my library filled with many leather bound books.
- I’ll find myself texting her immediately after something big happens to me, good or bad.
- I’ll do a little digging into a food or neighborhood or something she really likes and then plan a date around that
- I’ll invite her out to meet some of my friends and be really good about introducing her around and making sure she has background on people.
- I wish I didn’t do this, but I’ll start asking her about other guys a lot. Guys she works with. Guys she’s friends with. Guys she just strikes up a conversation with at a bar. I believe the term is, jealous?
- I’ll find out her favorite foods and cook her dinner.
So we’ve got a lot of different examples of stuff going on here, but it all boils down to the very simple act of paying more attention – with dinner, with texts, with jealousy. Not one guy said, “I try to play it real cool and ignore her for a few weeks.” Now in fairness I don’t keep assholes on the blog board (though it would be interesting for diversity sake…), so these are the reactions of kind and mostly mature guys, but that’s who you should be looking to date anyway, so listen to them.
Tomorrow: the female response. Prepare for shock. It looks nothing like this side’s…
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I swear everytime I read your blog post it’s exactly what’s going through my mind! This is amazing insight. I was dating a guy and he did a lot of these things, cooked me my favorite dinner with wine, took me out with his friends (def. gave me the inside scoop on them) and so on..then suddenly stopped calling and texting me back, good to know that he’s not just “playing it cool & ignoring for a few weeks” and I should movce on. SO thank you & I’m looking forward to the female side!!!
Love this list, very interesting and I feel like girls do the exact same things when we start to like a guy… or when we realize we like someone.
hahaha i found the “fine wine and leather bound books” line hilarious.