Woooo... sparkkkkkkly!

“You are, at this moment, standing, right in the middle of your own ‘acres of diamonds.’” Earl Nightengale

When interested in a woman, you need to be proactive, always looking for opportunities to connect. Not connect as in ‘Look at me! I am intelligent,  good looking, and I drive a 4 door Honda Civic with side curtain airbags and car seats in the back (wink, wink.) Why aren’t you drooling all over me, fair maiden?’

I mean connect as in finding opportunities in person (or through E-Mail, Social Media, fax, telex, or carrier pigeon) to do 3 things:

1. Ask – What do you want to know about her?
   • Interests, passions, values, dreams, first/last time she barfed
2. Acknowledge – What is cool about her?
   • How she looks, what she wears, her sense of humour, her quirks
   • Don’t just think it, tell her! (Shortly and succinctly without looking like a stalker or freak.) Like this: ‘You are really funny.  Your joke about midget giraffes at the party last night made me swallow my gum I was laughing so hard.’ 
3. Help – How can you help her?
   • Connect her with someone in your network, send her an online article, link, or blog post she would find useful, suggest a restaurant, movie, or television show she might like, etc.

Sitting back and hoping that she will reach out to you is straight up lazy. Even more lazy is feeling like Ask/Acknowledge/Help is too risky, not worth the effort, or will send the wrong message. Whatever voice in your head is saying this nonsense is the same one that wants you to sit at home tonight, watch TV, and eat a bag of chips. This voice hates the part inside you that knows you have a lot to bring to a relationship – in fact, you’re a freaking catch and a half! 

The Flip Side of Proactivity

Where proactivity turns ugly is when it shows up to the party without its good and faithful friend:  Patience.  Think of Patience as the yang to Proactivity’s yin. Proactivity is about keeping your eyes open and your mind alert, looking for opportunities to engage.  However, without patience it turns into a blitzkrieg bombing (aka. Stalking), a creepy belief that she is ‘the one’ after a 5 minute conversation about disposable purse dogs.

If you’re lucky enough to have found ‘the one’ after a 5 minute conversation and now live happily ever after in wedded bliss, let me be the first to say:

‘Congratulations, Mutant! When do you go back to your spaceship hovering above Johannesburg?’

Let me pop your balloon here: love at first conversation is rare, my young, naive male friend.  Call me pessimistic but I don’t even believe the small percentage of people that claim this.  Why? Because 99% of people are acting when they meet someone for the first time. In an attempt to create a good impression, we try to come across as impressive, covering up our faults or how we might really feel about something.  Above all we are trying to come across as responsible, competent, together, and fully NOT CRAZY. This creates very difficult conditions to see if someone is marriage material or not. You need quality time in a variety of different settings on a number of different dates to figure out who she really is.

And how do you do this?  By being Proactive: ASK, ACKNOWLEDGE, HELP - I think we covered this already?