Every time I meet a guy I like, it always develops into friendship and nothing more. What am I doing wrong?
Ah ha. The curse of the friending stick. You’ve got the stick and you keep hitting people over the head with it. Why?
Well, the answer is probably because you see yourself as “the friend”. You don’t want to be the friend, but it’s happened before and now it’s your “story”. The less you want to be “the friend”, the more you find yourself being the friend. This is because you’ve bought into a narrative of “why do bad things happen to good people?”
The above is a broad issue – to do with your self esteem. Start seeing yourself as a sexual being – someone who a man would be smart and lucky to lust after – and things will change. That is a long-term goal. Here are a few things you can do to improve things in the short term.
1. Don’t act like a friend if you don’t want to be a friend. Act like a stranger – to start off with. That is: no references to relationships, nothing too matey (ie, “Men are awful! Men are bastards!” or “So, pal, what’s YOUR romantic situation like?”).
2. Limit information you reveal about yourself. Even if you think you’re the most fascinating person in the world because of X, Y, Z, don’t come out with it. Let it be discovered. Then you get to say: “oh yeah, I DO have a phD in nuclear physics, now that you mention it.”
3. Don’t apologise for yourself. The most unsexy thing you can possibly do is be self-deprecating. This can manifest itself in everything from wearing no makeup and baggy clothes because you don’t think there’s any point (rather than because it’s your look, motherfucker), to talking about all your failures – academically, socially and crucially, romantically.
4. Wear lots of eye-makeup, get your tits out or whatever it takes to make sure you look hot. A good test is if randoms on the Tube ogle you/almost fall onto the tracks at the sight of you. If YOU think you look hot, he stands a lot more chance of thinking you look hot.
5. Restrict the communication you have after your meeting. If you get along very well, that could be the glimmer of romantic spark. Don’t kill it by being in his inbox all the time. Don’t arrange group meetings- after a period of good banter- arrange a single meeting where you have the chance to look smoking.
6. Get drunk together. The rest often follows, if the previous five rules are observed. Good luck!
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