So after another wonderful night of FreeForm (the monthly party thrown by The West Bank Duo of Jeff Ziskin and Iyad Kaddour), my friends Suha and Courtney and I ran through Ruby Skye to Hernan Cattaneo. It was the first time I have been into Ruby Skye and I lasted about 5 minutes. Definitely not my scene.
We then popped into Anú but that was slow so we cruised over to Mars for a glass of wine. Our talk turned to why such fine women as these two did not have boyfriends and I launched into my standard reply of “You must not want one.” I went on to extol the virtues of two ladies being accompanied by a wingman (any male who is not dating them).
As if to prove my point, I was saying how Courtney is in a different space than Suha and that she is more open and accepting of “The Fantastic” in the universe, when a very nice gentleman walked up and asked for a light. Seeing as how none of us smoke, we were not able to help him.
“If the two of you were sitting here on your own he probably would not have had the cajones to walk up and chat.” They laughed it off and said he just wanted a match. “No man is going to walk up and speak to strange women unless they hold some interest for him. I am not saying he wants to sleep with you… but he is definitely interested.” Courtney says; “But I am not attracted to him.”
And that is when it hit me…
“That is the beauty of our Karmic existence. It is rarely a one-to-one relationship. Suha said earlier tonight that we were going to meet your boyfriend tonight. Well we just did. It was not that guy… but it was his friend. You were one step removed from meeting the guy you were about to date.”
“You have to start talking with Mr. I-Need-A-Light in order to get to his friend. Men get that. They ask 10 women to chat and 9 will reject them. If one ends up chatting, they have had a successful run. Women want to be ASKED and then only want to talk to the one who will eventually become theirs. But women fail as often as men. The difference is… they WAIT to be asked to chat. This means they mostly end up chatting with guys who are willing to walk up and ask to chat with them. More often than not, they guy they really want to talk to… is his friend.”
Two possibilities here:
1) You talk to more of the guys who approach you even if they creep you out (or just don’t ring your bell)
2) You approach guys to talk to
Prob with #2 is then most of them treat you as being too forward and run the other way. Now me, I ‘m very forward especially when I don’t WANT anything but a chat. I’ve been looked at by a lot of guys like I’m an alien invading (ok, so they were idiots). Not so good for the self esteem, and YES I know guys get rejected too, but they’re trained for it 🙂
But #1 sounds reasonable. I mean how much do you really learn about someone based on the time it takes to ask for a light. Even if he’s only the buddy of your one true love, he might actually turn out to be interesting to chat with once you get over the always awkward and often miserable initial bar intro. And the reality is you need to meet people and be open minded to find THE ONE.
You shoulda skipped the whole bar scene and just hooked up with that guy in college who was head-over-heels about you for years and STILL is probably carrying the torch…
It reminds me of “A Beautiful Mind” – the brilliant and schizophrenic mathematician who calculated the formula for dating success based on the technique of chatting up the slightly less attractive girl in a group. I think you’re both on to something.
It is true that women wait to be asked. Our mothers drilled into our heads that nice girls don’t go boldly forth and enter conversation with strange men. Margaret, I’m sure yours did too – but you managed to escape or ignore her voice in your head, God bless you!
Speaking as a chronically single person who did the bar scene, then fell hard for the guy from college-times and earlier, only to discover he truly is the philandering nogoodnik my family warned me about, it’s just hard to strike up a conversation with a guy, even if I have intentionally put myself in a situation where I’d like to talk to someone.
In fact, I’m so out of practice that I can’t even recognize flirting anymore. Some perfectly nice guy engaged me in conversation at the farmer’s market and I was so engrossed in organic strawberries and keeping my wiggly son from darting away that it took me a full five minutes to realize he was openly and obviously flirting with me – at which point I also realized he had become discouraged, seeing no response from me and was already miles away. Sigh. Hopeless.
For the record I don’t believe there necessarily is a The One out there for everyone – not in the classic sense, anyway. I think everyone is entitled to one great romance in their lifetime, and sometimes that means being gray-haired bright-eyed high school sweethearts celebrating your great-grandchildren together, and sometimes it means one really amazing Technicolor weekend together and the rest of your lives apart.
My advice to guys: do keep chatting us up and shrugging off the rejection. We don’t mean to hurt your feelings. Half the time we don’t even realize you’re interested, or our minds are just somewhere else, or we think you’re making a joke. Be kind and charming and gallant. If we don’t have a light, stay and chat for a minute anyway. Mention your single friend who you’re meeting – if we’re not looking we know someone who is. And make sure to talk to the plainer Janes among us. We’re usually more interesting, less self-centered and in the long run, more fun.
And ladies, Ulan’s totally right – a trusted wingman is absolutely invaluable. He keeps you safe and gives you an out, while freeing you to be chatted up if you so desire. It’s the best of both worlds – even better than just going out with a galpal. Trust me. In fact, if you know Ulan you should ask him to be your wingman. He’s the awesomest.
😉
~m