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Some Fundamentals About Dating (Communication)

Let's examine the fundamentals by asking the question: How do I let someone know I'm interested in them?

If you are sincerely interested in mastering relationships read all 7 paragraphs. If meeting someone is not a problem for you go to another Dating Topic.

1) You must be willing to choose to be uncomfortable. This means you must visualize yourself in front of them being uncomfortable and nervous and tongue-tied and not knowing what to say. The word "choose" is used to draw your attention to the fact that you get what you resist. Resist being uncomfortable and you'll be uncomfortable. On the other hand, choosing to experience uncomfortableness disappears it.

Put another way, the way to create space for communication to take place is to start from nothing. You begin from not-knowing. You know the result you want but you begin by standing before the person not even knowing what will be your first word. In that way you have a chance to look and see what, if anything, is in the space. They may have something they need to say first. They may even be having an upset. For more about the difference between communicating from your mind vs. communicating from your experience go here.

2) The more energy you exert trying to maintain your cool the less space there will be for an experience of communication. Notice the next time someone around you tries to act, say, superior, or intelligent. What's your experience of them? You'll produce a similar judgment if you try to act cool. You'll come across especially dorky if you act cool and say, "Hey! How'd you like to go out ... " and they say, "I just found out my father died." Duh! Isn't that 10 on the insensitive meter? Were you so unconscious you couldn't see that there was something in the space? If you're in-integrity you'll know the answer before you even ask. They are communicating the answer already.

3) Check your integrity to make sure you wouldn't cause yourself to blow it because you were punishing you for being mean to your mom or for cheating etc. The problem with trying to make something work when your integrity is out (an unacknowledged perpetration, deceit, or withhold) is that if you fail, you can't be absolutely certain whether the failure had to do with your perp or your communication skills. Come clean with your mom, or pay the merchant for the stolen whatever, and then introduce yourself. If you do it this way, you'll be whole and complete. Your aura will be one of honesty, the guilt that was there will be gone. You will have created space for things/life to work.

Note: The majority of adults who are still having relationship problems are still experiencing the consequences of ignoring their integrity when they were your age. They still have to go back and clean up the mess, fess up to their mom, pay the merchant, or whatever.  I have yet to meet a client with a communication problem in which we could not trace it back, to before their relationship problems began, to a lie/deceit or a withhold with their parents. They told their mom they were going to the library to study and they honestly and arrogantly thought that lie didn't have a consequence. Once, as an adult, they acknowledge the childhood lie to their parent both the adult, and their parent, begin to generate different more desirable problems in life.

4) Make a list of all your fears. What are you afraid they will think? What are you afraid others will think if they see you walking up to this person? What are you afraid your mom and dad would think or say if she/he saw the person to whom you were attracted? What's the worst case scenario (and are you willing to have it happen)? Unacknowledged fears affect outcomes. Acknowledged fears, especially those you are willing to talk about, make you very real, very honest and very attractive.

5) Decide up front if you are intent of being totally open and honest with the person or if you are you going to hide some things/thoughts for fear that if you told the truth they wouldn't like you or want to go out with you. Totally honest means spontaneity, no mind monitoring. Zero significant thoughts withheld (if this is what you'd like to try, be sure and get their permission, their support, else you'll come across as a weirdo). 

6) Decide up front (before even asking the other out) whether you want to go Dutch-treat or not (each pay their own way) on a date. Quite often boys will offer to treat a girl because they have a job and the girl, for whatever reason, doesn't have any spending money. Quite often the boy who pays has no business dating because they are so horny and lonely that they will ask a girl out, who, if the girl were left to her own choice, would never have asked the boy out) but they (the girl) accepted the date because she was lonely or bored or she thought of it as a "mercy" date (not wanting to hurt your feelings). Then, during the date, both find something wrong with each other (an not share it verbally) and never date each other again. Over a period of time this can become a pattern in which the "asking" boy will come to resent girls for being users and the girl will come to disrespect men for being so easily conned. There's a certain confidence about a boy who's confident enough that he waits to see who chooses him [she simply starts hanging around him and his friends]. The reason it's important to have made this "Dutch-treat" decision up front is that the certainty will support your confidence and success. Even the boy who is sure they will pay just to have a date, will come across as confident. However, they communicate non-verbally during the date-asking communications, "I'm so pathetically lonely. I know you have not found me attractive enough to save your money and come up and ask me out, so I'm resorting to buying a date. I'm afraid to insist upon Dutch-treat right now because I know you don't find me attractive enough to spend your money with me."

7) Put one foot in front of the other and walk up to them. Don't forget to stop a few feet from them (this is important). Then say, "Hi." And take what you get. If they reply with a warm smile then you're on a roll. Your intuition about them in was right-on. If they give you the cold shoulder, get away fast. They are stuck in an abusive communication model. They haven't been shunned enough in life to appreciate the courage it took for you to make the first move. In short they are lacking compassion. If you press through (ignore/reward) their rudeness you'll have an indication that you may be addicted to being abused. A healthy well-adjusted teen, not having any need for abuse, does not attract nor hang around abuse.

Bonus tip for reading the above:

The ideal way to let someone know you are interested in them is to be friendly to everyone, especially the not so popular students. The person you are looking for will notice you. You are in fact giving them space to choose you. They will admire your friendliness. They will find a way to interact with you. They'll join your club or track team just so that they can bump into you more often. You'll come across as confident and not desperate and that's cool. They'll admire the fact that you haven't hit on the one's they know to be socially immature.

Note: If your fear is such that you are unwilling to ask the opposite sex out then it's not time for you to be dating yet. In truth you need to have quite a few more conversations, specifically about your fear, with your parents.

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