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In the world of young females, it is a truth almost universally acknowledged that female friends typically tend to be 1) the bomb and 2) the people a girl spends 95% of her time with. However, when it comes to meeting guys, sometimes a lady’s friends can act as an obstacle to enticing males with you personal brand of effortless mojo. In fact, even friends of the highest caliber can accidentally cock-block your game. So in short, if a woman wants to get a date, she should dump all their friends.
I’m kidding! I’m kidding times one billion. I do, however, suggest that girls need to step away from the comfort of their funny, awesome friends to really make it in the word of dating. How might she do that? Why, I am so glad you asked.
1) Do stuff alone. A girl doesn’t have to immediately blow off her friends to sit by herself at the bar during happy hour and tie cherry stems in knots with her tongue (though if you have a cell phone and cab fair home, then as far as I’m concerned, knock yourself out). Trying new activities alone can be scary and lonely. But that is exactly why they are such a great place to meet guys interested in the exact same thing. For some women, it doesn’t matter to some that their friends have no interest in joining a band or learning to scuba dive or fencing; they are going to go balls to wall (labia to the linoleum?) and do it anyway.
For many others, however (like myself for example), going it alone is downright terrifying. Even a few years ago, I felt so socially awkward in new situations that I couldn’t go to the gym alone without having a low-grade panic attack (yeah, sure, that’s why I never went to the gym…that’s the ticket). I relied on my BFFs to make me feel comfortable, but on the flip side I was hesitant to risk feeling uncomfortable, even when it might have paid off in new friends or new skills or, yes, new dudes to think about in the shower.
Of course, I am not suggesting women pursue random activities that don’t interest them, just to meet dudes. That only works in rom-coms, and then usually it only works for the first 45 minutes until it blows up in their faces before they learn to Just Be Themselves. In fact, if you choose activities you like, you will also have the benefit of…enjoying yourself!
Of course, there isn’t an automatic switch to make someone socially confident enough to try new things; that might only come with time and boring mom-approved factors like “maturity” and “persistence.” I’m just saying that fortune favors the bold. For example, when I started doing improv comedy classes a while ago, I would practically hyperventilate into a paper bag because I was so not excited to try something new without a friend beside me. Two years later, I’ve discovers a whole new community of people, including awesome, great men with similar interests. Now if you see me wheezing into a paper bag, it’s only because I like smelling my lunch.
However, if a lady is doing her thing, playing hockey and creating installation art and generally being amazing at life, and she’s still not having much luck when she’s out with her friends? Then girl is going to have to find an alternate route to get to the cocks her social circle might be blocking. Might I suggest she
2) Get In Their Face. Girls might not realize this, but sometimes the presence of their loud, hilarious group of friends, with their in-jokes and drunken late-night adventures that make life worth living, can also make it harder to meet guys while they’re out partying. I KNOW! I know; it doesn’t seem reasonable.
I don’t mean to suggest that guys aren’t going to ask you out because your friends are just so cool. Deal with it. But often time meeting guys is a matter of situation, especially if you have a thing for shy, nerdy guys. Don’t go invest in a neon sign that says Single-And-Ready To Mingle, but if you want to meet new people (particularly of the guy persuasion), you need to focus your social energy on those new people. If nothing else, you will have the fun of talking about them afterwards as your friends drunkenly congregate over Papa John’s is half the fun.
This goes double for a lady’s gay male friends (if you are of the straight persuasion). You might be thinking to yourself, “This is my boyfriend Jeremy. I use the term ‘boyfriend’ loosely because he is clearly a homosexual,” but a potentially interested dude might simply think, “Other man here. I go now.”
This isn’t to say straight men are morons or that they have no gay-dar; it’s only recognizing that dudes are as nervous and uncertain as women are when it comes to making that first scary step toward showing their interest. Giving someone your clear, undivided attention goes a long way for a girl trying to establish that She Is Into Him Like That. Doing things as simple as prolonged eye contact, standing a liiiiitle too close, and generally giving the other person the clear impression that you would like to more than exchange name, hometown and major info might seem simple, but often times it’s the people we find really attractive that it’s hard to interact with. Once you have presented the object of your affection with your undivided attention, then you can unleash the full-force of your friends’ awesomeness on his unsuspecting and awe-struck brain.
On the flip side, I don’t profess to have much experience on the ladies-loving-ladies side of things, but it seems to me that if you’re a girl who likes girls, and also hangs out with a lot of girls? Then girl, you need to focus your game like a sexy laser. Well, an even sexier laser, since lasers are generally pretty sexy.
Dating is awesome and a girl’s friends are even more awesome-r. But let’s face it: if a girl spends all her time in the company of people she has no interest in dating, then she has to make the effort to suss out a man from the world beyond her group. Then once she finds him (or her), she can immediately bring him to hang out with her BFFs because, really. Who doesn’t like breadsticks?
