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What makes a man choose you? What makes him say, she is the one for me, and want to commit to you and only you? You probably aren’t the only woman he finds attractive. To be real, he may even find somebody else more attractive. In spite of all that, when you come to mind, he thinks you are “the one.”
I was reading an article in the Huffington Post about two men in a bar who had their eye on one particular woman. One man criticized the other for not having any game for missing out on an opportunity to “give her a (pick up) line.” This guy had all the answers, and all the game, according to him. Only at the end of the night, only one of them, the one with “no game,” walked out with a phone number.
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Here are a handful of reasons he might think you are “the one”:
1.) You are real.
You are who you are, and you are consistent with it. No matter the setting or who you are around, he sees the same genuine person. And he likes this person. He knows exactly what or who he is going to get when he is with you. I remember when dating my wife, that she was the same in all situations. That meant she was true to me.
2.) You are a lady.
I can remember when my wife and I we were interested in dating each other, how much of a lady she was. Poise, posture, and all of that. We hung out in clubs, with friends’ places, or at Denny’s, and she always commanded the respect of a lady. She made me want to open up doors, and pull out her chair, just by the way she carried herself. I soon thought she was “the one.”
3.) You don’t need him, but you want him.
It’s cool when she is all over you, but that might not make him think you are “the one.” It actually may make him think you are desperate or needy. Neither of which he wants. What he wants is someone who doesn’t need him but wants him. When he knows you will still be okay without him, but you still want to be with him, then he might think you are “the one.”
4.) You aren’t afraid to speak your mind, but you are respectful when doing so.
My wife has always been quiet, until she has something on her mind. Then she’ll say what she has to say. But she always has respect for me and whoever she is speaking her mind to. That made me think she might be “the one” because I dated some girls who spoke their mind constantly, which was cool, but it wasn’t always respectful.
5.) He trusts you with his heart.
If he doesn’t trust you, he will never think you are “the one.” Men have feelings too. We typically don’t let them be known, until we think she is “the one.” At that point, we are so wide open that a breach in trust can do some serious damage to us (and our male ego). When he trusts you completely, he might think you are “the one.”
6.) He hasn’t quite figured you out yet.
To this day, after being married for more than 12 years, and knowing one another for over 20 years, I still learn new stuff about my wife. And I love it! It seems I still don’t have her completely figured out, which makes it fun and exciting. I like learning and I really like learning new stuff about my wife. When there is still something for him to experience with you, he might think you are “the one.”
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If I offered you a crash course on dating that would reveal the secrets for your success in a simple strategy that goes beyond winning in love, to include winning in the business, and in life, would you try it? Moreover, if I challenged you to examine your concepts of dating and your perception of failure and rejection, would you accept the challenge? Let's find out.
They are immediate, long lasting, and usually permanent. Regardless of how great you are, and no matter how sweet you can be once someone gets to know you, the reality is, your dating success will be based almost entirely upon the other person’s initial sense of who and what you are. Do you have a second chance to make a positive first impression? The experts say, no.
Lesson 2: If you want the part, look the part!
Statistics show that how we appear speaks more about us, and is more important, than what we say verbally. Moreover, though it may not get you all the way to your objective, it will get your foot in the door. Remember the old adage, ”Dress for who you want to be, not who you are.” It is as true in business as it is in love.
Lesson 3: Act the part
It is a fact that in our personal affairs, as in all our business dealings, success, just as it will negatively affect your success in we sell ourselves first. Poor attitude, image, and behavior will adversely affect your dating business.
Lesson 4: Be the part
The initial impression you make on a prospective date predicts whether she (or he) will take the time to get to know you. Dating, as well as business, is all about sales. You must think of yourself as a product and the person you want to date as the buyer.
Lesson 5: Dating is about sales and sales is a numbers game
If you want to multiply your success immediately in dating (or just about anything else), learn, understand, and embrace the concept behind ”the numbers game.” It supports the fundamental dynamics of dating. You will save a lot of time and heartache if you are willing to accept, grasp, and follow its tenets. They are:
▪ You are a product. You are the product’s salesperson, its packager, and its advertiser.
▪ The person you're trying to attract is your customer. They make their buying decisions based upon presentation, packaging, and advertising.
▪ The world’s best salespeople don’t have a 100 percent sales rate, a 75 percent rate, a 50 percent, or even a 25 percent rate. The world’s best salespeople are lucky to maintain a 10 percent sales rate. Thus, the best of the best put their best product forward and count themselves lucky if one out of every ten they are interested in, is also interested in them. See where I'm going?
Lesson 6: Confidence = Success
The number one quality both men and women seek in a date or a mate is confidence. Confidence is also the key attribute that all professional salesmen must possess in order to be successful. People do not buy products or services from someone who has no confidence in themselves or the products they represent.
Lesson 7: Establish a goal
A confident person is one with a plan and a goal. What’s yours? Let's assume that it is getting a great date for Valentine’s Day. Now ask yourself, what will it take to get that date? What steps do you need to take? Create your to-do list. Then accomplish each item on your list, one-by-one until you reach your goal.
Lesson 8: Know your target market and give them what they want
Understand to whom you are trying to sell yourself and what they are interested in buying.
Lesson 9: Analyze the competition and do things better than they do
Just as you would study a competitor in business or a rival sports team, study your dating competition if you want to win!
Lesson 10: Take action and follow through
Nothing happens until you do something.
1. Deal with your fear of rejection:
▪ Stop investing your energy and self-worth in outcomes. Instead of thinking of "misses" as "failures," think of them as "practice shots." Dating is a process.
▪ Stop placing so much importance on what the person you are interested in thinks of you. After all, you don’t know if you would even like them once you get to know them, do you?
2. Set small goals and accomplish them, one by one.
3. Get passionate about your life. Take a class, travel at home or abroad, become a Big Brother/Big Sister, get involved with politics, learn to Salsa, get out of a job you hate and into one you love. Enthusiasm is contagious, if you are excited about your life, people will be excited about being with you.
4. Dress for success. Always put your best foot forward.
5. Perfect your sales pitch. If you keep doing the same thing, you will keep getting the same result.
Lesson 11: Know yourself well enough to get the relationship you want.
Most people don’t! If you’re reading this column, it’s probably because dating hasn’t worked for you. You want a better outcome. The reason it hasn’t worked is because you don’t know yourself well enough to get the relationship you want. Who are you really? I’m not talking about who you want people to think you are, but the you that you actually are. Before you can be ready to be in a relationship with someone else, it's crucial for you to know yourself and what you want.
Lesson 12: Know what kind of person you want to date.
Most people spend more time thinking about the kind of car they want to buy, then about the kind of person they want to date. Are you more interested in a high-achieving, big-income earner, or do you see yourself with someone who wants quality time with their loved ones—and with you, more than bringing home big bucks? Do you want an active person who likes travel, adventure, and recreation or do you prefer a someone who likes to putter around the house and rent a movie to watch together? If you live in a fast-paced city and you have an urbane, high-powered lifestyle that you enjoy, you probably don't want to date a sculptor who doesn't own a car and lives with their parents. Do you like nightlife, clubbing and being seen at the latest hot spots? If the answer is yes, then don’t date the quiet
Finally, live as if there may be no tomorrow; realize there are no guarantees, no dress rehearsals, and (usually) no second chances. Make each day ”your special day,” one in which you did all that you could do. You will never look back with regret.
In the light of morning, I feel like I should explain a few things. Please don’t take this to mean I am any happier or more at peace. I’m not. In fact, I feel physically ill. Still, this bears saying.
I’ve known Big for a year and a half. We have been together in various forms for that long. During that time, I’ve often been less than happy with how things were. I have rarely told him so. Early on in our past, I told him I wouldn’t try to change him. I pledged to take everything he said at face value and only try to regulate my own reactions and actions. So, for instance, last summer and fall when I so deperately wanted more from him, I never said so. Instead I worked very hard to convince myself that every sign he may have wanted more was a trick of my imagination. I told myself over and over that he’d never want me. I wrote it all here. But I never asked him, talked to him, or gave him the benefit of the doubt. Not once.
What you see, what you read, what you know… it comes from where I am. For better or for worse, that’s the nature of this kind of writing. You know what I choose to show you. And most of what I show you is internal. So what you know of Big, it’s colored by my issues, our miscommunications, and everything I’ve bottled up for so long.
I’m trying to be better.
Last night I told Big things have to change if we’re going to make it. What I didn’t tell you is that he agreed. I said we have to spend more time together. He agreed. I said I can’t do things the way we have been and we won’t make it without that change. He said everything will be okay.
What you see here is my fundamental belief that nothing will ever truly be okay. But that’s not so much about Big as it is about me. I know it, but maybe you don’t. So I figured it bears saying out loud. Many of you have developed very unflattering images of what Big is. But those are built on my own hurt. And that hurt hasn’t always been his fault. I am to blame too. For not speaking up when I should have. For not telling him what I need. For convincing myself he will never care enough. For telling myself it’ll never work. For doing those things instead of opening up and letting him in. I am as much to blame, if not more.
Yes, I feel like everything has been on his terms since I met him. Yes, I am resentful. No, I have never been clear about that with him. So in some ways, it’s not fair for me to get angry since I never told him it was a problem in the first place. (And yes, in some ways he simply should have known better.) My point is that he’s not a villain. He’s not perfect, but he’s also not a complete ass.
The move to a new apartment was not about me. Our time was a perk but it wasn’t the reason. And that was at my request. So the move back, it shouldn’t be about me either. He hated the apartment, hands down. It wasn’t aimed at me.
And yet, we all know it hit me. We all know how I feel. And yes, Big knows too. Today I am going to try to open up more with him. I’m going to try to tell him why I’m hurting. I am going to try to get concrete solutions to these issues. I’m going to ask for the change I need. And I’m terrified, but I’m going to do my best here. I don’t know what will happen. As always, I assume the worst. So what I really need is for you to hope for the best. Because I’m a little too broken to manage that right now.
I optimistically thought we might head down to the courthouse together to sign the papers or some equally uniting yet unlikely scenario. Meet for coffee, scrawl signatures on whatever we need to sign and take the divorce documents to the bored government employee who pronounces the time of death on our ten years as husband and wife. Enduring the difficult day together in a nod to how it began a decade ago when just the two of us clutched shaky hands in the home of a judge willing to hitch us for $100. A tip of the hat to our past and a demonstration of our commitment to continue positively leading the family we created together.
I was naively aiming too high, I now realize. Because life is life and nobody is ever on the same goddamn page, no matter how badly you want or need them to be. Hell, that’s why we’re divorcing in the first place, so why would I think our divorce would play out differently than our marriage? Just as our notions of marriage vastly differed, our ideas about how divorce should and shouldn’t unfold could not be more disparate.
“That’s not how divorce works.” I’ve heard that sentence a lot over the past few months. As if he’s secretly consulting some kind of "How to Divorce" handbook and keeping me honest with the official process. And yeah, OK, I get it. Kind of. We’re divorcing. We are dissolving our togetherness so that means no more togetherness. But, not really. We have three children to parent. We’ve accepted that we don’t work together so why not make it the best damn divorce ever? Why make everything harder than it needs to be? But I’m increasingly realizing that while I view spending casual, family time together as a good thing for both the children and us, he views those same moments as uncomfortable and difficult and therefore unnecessary. I get it, I do. Why should he be forced into a relationship with someone who chose to leave? He wants to move on and his way of moving on is different than mine.
Now that my positive divorce bravado is wearing thin, I am starting to comprehend how some people never come back from broken hearts.
Still, with the renewed respect for each other that our separation seemed to bestow upon us this past year, I arrogantly thought we could transcend all that "avoiding each other, unless it involves the kids" nonsense that seems to be standard in other divorces. I mistakenly assumed that everyone who experiences a bad divorce just didn’t try hard enough to make it good. If we just tried hard enough and respectfully communicated our feelings, I thought, we could forge some new kind of modern divorce wherein we accept that we don’t work well together but that we like each other very much, so we make the best of this newly reorganized family. Except those parameters of what constitutes a successful divorce are mine and not something he was ever totally on board with—therein lies the rub. We couldn’t agree on much when married and we can’t agree on much while divorcing. "Positive divorce" was always more my mantra than his. Maybe borne of the guilt I feel for being the one to finally pull the pin on the grenade that was our marriage. It’s almost like I was holding him hostage in my idea of divorce and he had a more realistic notion of how it would go down.
The way I saw it, you could let your anger take over, arm yourself with a pit bull attorney and engage in outright battle, exhausting yourselves and your finances, or you could grab each other by the hand and tiptoe down the potholed road of separation with the hope that once you crest the mountain of divorce, you ultimately end up as friends. Except someone trips on a pothole when the other person is in a groove and the one who tripped gets upset that the other one appears to be moving seamlessly forward and an argument ensues. That’s when you realize that in addition to the monumental heartbreak that is sorting out separate lives — custody of children, new living arrangements, finances — you also have to agree on what constitutes the positive divorce you’re desperately trying to will into existence. Before you know, it you’re arguing about the right way to divorce on good terms and the arguing leads to bad terms—is your brain imploding yet?
My divorce will be final tomorrow. As I wrote on my personal blog, The Girl Who, “When I think really hard about all of it, my mind kind of caves in on itself and I start to freak. Like trying to contemplate forever or infinity or whatever. You know what I mean. Your brain just skitzes out and shuts down. The panicky dread that infuses your body immediately upon waking up from a nightmare before you realize it was just a bad dream. That.” I spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking, analyzing. If my brain were powered by electricity it would’ve short-circuited long ago, cartoon smoke tendrils spiraling out of my skull and into the dark cloud hanging over my head. Am I weak or strong? Was the decision to divorce made from strength or weakness? Sometimes both, I think.
You hear people talking about their divorces all the time — some of them throwing silly divorce parties to camouflage their pain, others wearing their torment on their sleeves, hitting the bottle and falling into an abyss of grief — and you feel for them, but unless you’ve experienced it firsthand, you can’t entirely comprehend the stark horror that descends on a person’s world. It's like dealing with a death in the family.
Now that my positive divorce bravado is wearing thin, I am starting to comprehend how some people never come back from broken hearts. That, or the experience changes them so fundamentally they’re never the same. They know too much, have seen how completely life can change, how delicate the threads of the lives we weave truly are and how quickly it can all unravel into nothing but haunted hearts.
It’s all so consuming, especially when kids are involved. Your mind, your heart, your guts: the heartbreak is bigger than you can handle on most days. Not just a broken heart over rotting love but a shattered yet still pulsing heart over the tragedy of all of it: regret, missed opportunities, the life you imagined in your future shot down in a blaze of torment and anguish, trying to make it work then giving up, trying again and giving up again, finally letting hope die a slow, torturous death and always the blindingly bright light of the beautiful souls you created together observing you with innocent eyes, spotlighting your defeat.
The fact is, I pretentiously told myself that I’ve been writing some kind of manifesto about how to have a positive divorce, but the raw truth of it is that I’ve been deluding myself this whole time. I suppose it was my way of surviving the immense pain of the past year.
Perhaps this whole time I’ve been deluding myself about a "positive divorce." The term shrieks OXYMORON, doesn’t it? I had this vision of us maintaining a friendship above and beyond co-parenting but I’m starting to wonder if maybe that’s just a ridiculous lie I told myself to ease the pain of separation. Because just as it takes two people to destroy a marriage, it takes two people to maintain a friendship. If one person isn’t into it, if one person doesn’t really even want to see you anymore, what can you do about it? I naively thought that if we successfully negotiated all the usual contentious suspects — custody, finances, new relationships — we’d be able to move forward as friends. I didn’t anticipate someone I still love and respect wanting to pretend like I don’t exist unless it relates to parenting and that hurts. Heartbreak anew.
The fact is, I pretentiously told myself that I’ve been writing some kind of manifesto about how to have a positive divorce, but the raw truth of it is that I’ve been deluding myself this whole time. I suppose it was my way of surviving the immense pain of the past year. What I’ve really been writing here isn’t a novel approach to divorce at all; it is, in fact, the very typical demise of someone’s marriage. That initial notion of positive divorce is something everyone strives for, before it all goes to hell.
As the deadline on my marriage pants its fetid breath in my face and the demise of our relationship continues to unfold in voyeuristic divorce chunks, splattering monitors all over the Internet, the cold, hard truths about life after divorce are slowly revealing themselves to me: that, as much as two people try to stay friends and be cool together, it doesn’t ever really work that way, that I’ve been wrong, there is no such thing as a positive divorce.
The joke was on me the whole time, wasn’t it? Those of you who have been through it indulgently received my positive attitude with a wry smile because you already knew what I’m just now discovering. There’s no such thing as a positive divorce.
So that guy? From the last entry? Is coming to visit tomorrow. Yep, tomorrow. And here, in no particular order, are the things I am currently worried about:
I think I can smell my cat’s litterbox every time I walk into my apartment. Not good.
What if he sees the mess on the bottom of my closet?
Or the weird way I stash things in the kitchen?
(Note to self: Now must clean kitchen and bottom of closet as these are no longer secrets. Argh.)
I’m 31. My body just isn’t the same as it was 7 years ago. I have wrinkles, and spots, and saggy things. I looked in the mirror this morning and looked 31 to myself. That’s never happened before. Now is a really inopportune time for such a thing. Ugh.
That cat litter thing is pissing me off enough to warrant two bullets. Seriously.
Should I try to dig extra pillows out of the closet upstairs?
I have weird moles now. I never used to have weird moles. I’m filing those away with the wrinkles and spots…. so unfair.
I still honestly believe that guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses. Never mind that he already knows that. Just never mind, you know?
What if this is actually what I’ve been waiting for? What if it isn’t?
I need to go to the grocery store. I have the refrigerator of the bacheloriest of bachelors. It is actually a joke amongst my friends. Not lying.
Must clean. Because…. CAT LITTER.
Just for the record, I’m not even fully awake yet. Just wait until later.
