By: Billy BeerSlugger
In life as in football, you have to be sure that you are not over-pursuing your objective. As anyone who is a fan of the NFL can attest, a defender over-pursuing a ballcarrier in the open field leaves himself open to a change in direction and when that happens the defender is usually grabbing at air or on the ground ground trying to make a shoestring tackle.
The same is true in dating I have found. Playing the game is a necessary part of acquiring a worthy mate. Acting semi-interested in the girl instead of full blown will get you a lot farther a lot faster. Seems counter intuitive but since women run on emotion instead of logic that’s the way this game needs to be played.
You don’t want to go Stage 5 Clinger when you first get the girls phone number and text or call repeatedly, even if she is the best looking girl in your black book at the moment. This may be especially hard right after a breakup where you may not have any girls in your phone. I had to re-learn the lessons of over-pursuit the hard way.
Think of the movie Tommy Boy, and the scene where Chris Farley describes how excited he gets when a potential client is remotely interested in buying something from him:
Now replace the “sale” in Tommy Boy with the Girls Phone Number. It’s essentially the same principal, sales is a numbers game just like dating. anyway You gotta play it cool, too cool for school if you know what I mean.
If you ask the girl out and she has something to do let her make the next move. If you don’t hear from her in a couple of weeks try one more time and if it doesn’t happen, delete her from your phone. It’s actually a very liberating experience.
Hollywood movies would have you believe that if you put yourself out there, just tell the girl straight up you’re at least ready to explore the possibility of starting a relationship that this will work in your favor. These love stories had me a bit confused as a young adult and what had me even more confused is that watching these stories with females, they get teary eyed, emotional and tell you that’s the kind of guy they want, a nice guy, “Why can’t I find a nice guy?”. Nothing could be further from the truth. There’s a least a billion nice guys out there and all I ever hear from women is how shitty their current boyfriend treats them (though there’s always two sides to that story). Still when it comes down to it they would rather date the bad boy then the nice guy.
All I’m saying is that like football, you have to take the correct angle to make the tackle. Don’t overpursue, don’t underpursue. Be available but not that available, show interest but not that much interest. You can be a nice guy and still compete with the bad boys using other tools like being nonchalant and mysterious.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself.