Wow..I Met A Cool Guy. Now What?

Since I feel it's my duty as a single woman in her late 30s to not only commisserate about bad dates but parlay hope as well, here's a great nugget for which I cannot take any credit whatsoever. It's from the Denver CraigsList.org Rants and Raves section, and was originally published in March. Hats off to the guy who wrote this post, which was in response to a woman who'd seen an amazing guy across the room but lacked the moxie to initiate contact. From what I remember, I think she saw him on her daily commute.

Personally, I think initiating contact with a prospective date becomes more difficult to do as time passes, because the older we get, the more rejections we've had to endure and the less inclined we are to face yet another (i.e., we collect more baggage than a bellhop at the MGM Grand). However, this CL poster has some solid recommendations for us. I think we could all use more advice like this!

Re: Wow I met a cool guy
Reply to: anon-65202045@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-03-23, 9:25PM MST


Here's some unsolicited advice from a guy on how to handle that situation.

Just because you feel that you currently lack the moxie to approach the guy, all is not lost! All you have to do is to apply some ingenuity.

Do you know anybody, male or female, who knows him? If you do, and you feel that they are somebody you can trust (at least to a limited degree), you can try to enlist them to be a co-conspirator in your quest to meet the guy. Be upfront with that person as to what you want to do. To entice them to help you, ask them to lunch, telling them there's a small favor you want to ask of them, and you'd feel more comfortable discussing it over lunch.

By soliciting their help and treating them to a meal, you are likely to get their assistance. Try to figure out a way so that you can meet your co-conspirator at a place and time when the object of your desires will likely be present. All you have to do is to get your co-conspirator to introduce you to the guy you want to meet and then your cohort can leave. That isn't asking too much from them, and they will probably do it for you, if for no other reason because then you'll owe them a big favor.

Don't know anybody that knows him? Well, that complicates things, but don't give up hope yet. If there is a female about your age that works with him that looks at all approachable, try to see if she wouldn't help you. It is a bit risky because she may have that guy in her sights too. A lower-risk proposition would be to try to get to know her first before you lay out your plans.

If that guy is a professional, is there any way you can manufacture some reason to ask him a question relating to his line of work? You can say that you are doing it as a favor for a friend. He may see right through you, but that isn't all bad. While I can't speak for all men, if there is a woman that I'm at all interested in that takes the time to come up with a creative way to meet me, that scores major points in my book.

All males, no matter how great their looks and personality may be, get shut down from time to time. I have female friends that have rebuffed hunks just because they don't think that they deserved that guy (which may just be a different way of saying that they didn't think the guy's interest in them was genuine).

I doubt that few males have such a thick skin that being rejected doesn't bother them at some level to some degree. So for a woman to take on the risk of being rejected by asking you out or even just starting a conversation is a very meaningful compliment to the guy. Besides taking the risk of rejection off of him, he knows that the woman is really interested in him, and if they go out on a date, it isn't just because she didn't have anything better to do that night.

I've discussed this with many of my male friends and very few of them get turned off by a woman who makes the first contact, and most are turned on by it. It certainly trips my trigger. And the males that it does turn off, they are probably not guys that you would want to date anyways. This way you find out immediately something very important about him, which you might not discover for several dates if you waited for him to approach you.

From my perspective, women have very little to lose and a lot to gain by simply making the first contact. You don't have to ask him out or do anything other than simply initiate a conversation.

It may help you if you don't have any goals when you initiate the conversation, other than to simply have a brief but pleasant conversation with a new person. If you keep your goal small, it is much less likely to seem intimidating. If you look at it from that perspective, you may realize that you have it within you already to initiate a short conversation with him without using any of the helper aids I mentioned above.

I hope this is helpful for you and that I didn't turn you off by providing advice that you didn't request. One of the reasons why I did this is because I think that there would be a lot more people in relationships if women could start approaching men as much as men approach women. It would almost double everybody's chances of meeting the person that they want. Isn't that a worthwhile goal?

Reading this over, I realize that it sounds like I'm a professional dating coach, but I'm not. (Although I could probably use the services of one.) But this is a topic that I've thought about a lot, and I often encourage women to take the initiative because most times you'll get a positive response.

Even if you don't end up dating the guy, you may become buddies with him, and eventually meet his friends. If he likes you as a friend, he will be inclined to try to hook you up with his single friends. You might be even more attracted to his friends than you are to him. I've seen that happen before.

Best of luck.

Girls…what do you think? Have you the nerve to take this poster’s advice?

And guys…how would you react if approached by a woman in this way?