I think you might be right. I asked someone who is really good at this stuff, and they said.

"Your first plan sounds fine to me if you eliminate the "just as friends" part. That seems to signal to her that you are thinking more than you're saying.
Your friend's idea sounds fine to me too. But I think your's is more to the point. I understand many people would think throwing that in there will throw the girl off "what? just as friends? is there something wrong with me? is he too good for me? i'll show him i'm good enough for him" but that won't work in this situation. That's for when you already have a girl attracted in some way but she's still testing you out"

Re: the lying incident

TBH I'm very impressed with the OP in this situation and his control/discipline in not flipping out. I dunno if I could have done that. I don't have good control over my emotions when it comes to jealousy/deceit.

I disagree with the first part (although it might be correct in this situation). A lot of times in flirting, you say stuff, but do something else. You don't really mean what you say, but you mean what you do. Girls love that mindgame stuff. Saying you are going out as friends, and then being fun and flirty... they know it's not just as friends. However, that said, in this case, it's probably not obvious, and should be avoided. so, good advice, ty

As for the 2nd paragraph, seems pretty bang on and I agree with it 100%

Nah, not the case. Basically what I meant was that I'm starting to long for a somewhat meaningful relationship.

Fryke: I get what you're saying. I do study both math and physics but I'm not sure whether most girls (at school) know this. Probably might try to come off as less than a clown from now on, but IMO being all "serious-face" is no fun and definitely removes a lot of my charm when it comes to girls. I'm not sure whether it's a sample size prob, so might just try and alter my game a bit with different girls.

Hi guys,

OK, this will be a long one. I've already posted about this girl twice in the last two years, and I am stunned that I'm posting about her again. It's kind of silly: this is by far the longest-running saga / crush I've ever had involving a girl with whom I've never even gone on a proper date!

But let me explain from the beginning. Here is the timeline of events:


Spring 2007: I meet a girl online. Well, I say "meet," but we don't actually meet up in person. We become Facebook friends and exchange a few messages. I can tell she's precisely my type in several key ways. My crush begins to take shape. I ask her out, but we never end up hanging out -- supposedly for logistical reasons, but also probably because she may not be that into me. Fair enough. I drop it, but we remain Facebook friends.

February 2008: A lot of time passes with no contact between me and the girl. Then, one night, I'm at a music show and I happen to run into her. We both remember each other. The night goes really well, in my opinion. We chat; we flirt; we dance a bit. My crush gets bigger -- I can tell I really, really like her. I get her phone number. A little while later, I call and ask her out. She agrees -- but then she backs out on the day of the date. ****. OK, I drop it again. For what it's worth, here's what I posted in the EDF dating thread at the time of that encounter: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=364

September 2008: I have a chance run-in with the girl again. This time, it's on a Sunday afternoon at a coffee shop. She sees me first and texts me from across the coffee shop. (Remember, I haven't had any contact with the girl since she backed out on the date.) So I go over and have a cup of coffee with her. I'm thinking the whole time, "OK Damon Rutherford, don't ****ing blow it this time, the gods have given you another chance with this girl!" Once again, my crush gets even more inflated as I spend some time with her. But alas, I think I kind of blow it. She caught me off guard, and I was unprepared, and I just wasn't on my game that day. We chat in a sort of humdrum way for about 20 minutes; then I vaguely suggest we should get a drink sometime, and she vaguely agrees. Here is the post I wrote about THAT encounter: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=289

Anyway, after the subpar coffee shop meeting, I never followed up with her. I thought there was a pretty high chance that she was just ****ing with me, or that she wasn't really interested in ever going on a date but that she kind of liked the fleeting attention. I didn't feel like getting shot down again, so I never pursued it any further. We've had no contact since then, but we've remained Facebook friends the whole time, so occasionally I see her updates on my feed and I'm reminded of her existence. Perhaps it's stupid, but my crush remains intact.

Present day: OK. So. Flashforward to today. You guessed it: another chance meeting! It's funny to me that I keep running into her, because it's not like I live in a very small city or something. This time, it's at a different coffee house. Once again, she sees me first, and she's the one who initiates conversation. (I would like to think that's slightly significant.) I come over and sit down at her table and chat with her for a while. This time, I don't think I blew it! I get her laughing; we have good, interesting conversation; overall, I think I do a much better job at being fun and charming and confident.

After the first coffee shop encounter, the people in the EDF dating thread told me I made a mistake by vaguely asking her to get a drink "sometime," instead of asking her to do something specific. Well, I learned from you guys! This time, I don't make the same mistake. I ask her to go with me to this music show I know about on Saturday. Her answer: Maybe. She says she may be out of town this weekend. When I ask her where she's going, she says she's going to some dance party that a friend is hosting in some backwoods town over an hour away. It's pretty clear to me that she's not just making up an excuse. She says, "Well, I did RSVP already... but I guess I could break the RSVP... but that would be kind of flaky..."

I don't really press the issue; instead, I tell her that I'll contact her later in the week and let her know the details about the show.

So, EDF dating experts, what is your assessment of this situation? How should I proceed from here? I'm thinking of texting or calling her tomorrow night (Thursday), and I could either say something like, "Hey, I think you should blow off your dance party in that weird town and come with me to this awesome show on Saturday," OR I could say, "I know you said you were busy Saturday, but would you like to join me at XXX on XXX day" and suggest some other completely different event. Or maybe there's a third option I haven't thought of. Or maybe I should just drop it altogether.

I know I said that I thought, after the first coffee shop encounter, that she might just be ****ing with me. But I really didn't detect that at all today. She seemed genuinely friendly and interested in getting to know me. But then again, one of my buddies made the point that, when she said she was busy on Saturday night, she noticeably did NOT offer an alternative day when we could hang out. So how should I interpret her actions? All I want is one real date with her, and I'm very confident I can win her over! I really think we will click! (And yes, I know it's silly to get this hung up on a girl whom I barely know. Trust me, I never do this. But this girl, I dunno. She's EXACTLY my type in every way -- physically, her sense of humor, her sense of style, everything.)

Any advice?

woopdeedoo,
uh... what no one has seemed to mention is the fact you're saying you 'like' someone you haven't talked to in over 5 years who you dated in middle school? And you're trying to make this a 'date'?

You need to take about 100 steps back. If you want to see this person, cool, grab coffee or whatever, but you need to drop whatever notion you have that you think you like her or something. I'm kinda weirded out reading your post, and if you let anything like this on to her, you'll come off as creep-city.

Jammy,
I don't think there's a problem in expressing that you're with this girl. Obv don't be pda, don't be groping each other, etc. But you should show that you guys are starting to see each other. As long as you're not keeping the whole thing a secret there's no reason for your friends not to know you guys are hanging out.

Serious guys can be boring and give off creep vibe if they aren't careful. You can be fun, funny and intelligent all at the same time.

Damon,
I sorta skimmed you post but I think I got the idea. In short, you sound really desperate.

You met her on fbook, so you never really 'knew' her, so she was never going to be 100% sure about meeting you for a full on 'date.' Each of the subsequent times it sounds like you continued to ask her on like, serious dates, which she clearly isn't comfortable with.

I'm pretty positive nothing is going to happen btwn you and her unfortunately. As a last ditch effort, invite her out way less formally; in a couple weeks if you're going to a bar or something, text her and tell her if she's around you and a bunch of friends are going there and its fun and she should come. If she doesn't and doesn't give an alternative or anything, move on.

Damon,

You've fallen in love and become somewhat obsessive with a girl you barely know. Don't do that. It will **** up your entire frame of mind and approach.

Beyond that, I'm too tired to read much more. I'm sure everyone else will have given you guidance by the time I wake up tomorrow.

For what it's worth -- yes, you guys are right, I realize I've become irrationally obsessive about a girl I don't know very well. But I should mention that I'm very careful not to come off that way at all in my interactions with her. I'm pretty sure I've been able to play it cool, especially in our little encounter today. And in any event, let's just acknowledge the obsessiveness and then move on -- I still want advice about how I can parlay this into a real date! (Thanks for your thoughts Fyte On; I have considered that approach.)

There's absolutely no way you can hide this without it affecting your behavior.

We can't. It's probably the crux of your entire problem.

Just take me at my word. It's not like I've been fantasizing about this girl every night for two years. I honestly haven't even thought about her in months. I've dated plenty of girls and had big crushes on plenty of others in the intervening time. But when I ran into her today, my immediate thought process was, "Oh. Hey. You're THAT girl. Wow. Cool." And then as we talked I remembered all the things I liked about her.

But I'm also pretty self-aware, and I'm confident that I played it cool and did not let on that I had any sort of crush. That MAY not have been the case in our previous interactions, but this time I'm sure I acted fine. For instance, at the end of the conversation, she said, "OK, well I still have your number," and I went through my phone and said, "Hm, let me see if I still have yours. Is this you?" etc etc. Even though I knew all along that I definitely still had her number. ... OK so maybe that's not the greatest example but I was definitely aware that I needed to not come across as over-eager at all.

Finally: I should point out that it's not like I don't know her at all. We've had two 20+ minute conversations, plus we've hung out for most of a night at a bar. So I think I have a decent sense of the sort of person she is, and so in that sense my crush is not entirely irrational.

Damon,

I think what everyone is trying to get at is that your approach is bad even in a vacuum because it will catch up to you. In the same way that you can't fake confidence, you can't just go about this in the way you are, where you say "I'm never like this, but this girl is perfect, so let's just be irrational and pursue this super hard." You really like this girl, cool, but you pursuing her like this constantly will show through whatever alternate behavior you will try to put forward. I hope this makes sense, I'm tired.

I think he did as well which then makes the text message an intentional play to get her caught.

No he doesn't. Having that information is critical to knowing how to play it.

That might have been a defensible position had you guys never discussed the issue but once it was discusses this no longer makes any sense.

This is one of those places where language is important. Using words like "approval" give off the wrong impression. People are sloppy with language so I'm not saying you meant anything by it but it does convey the impression of a GF needing an adult to sign her permission slip. People in healthy relationships don't need to seek approval or permission. The issue here isn't that she met with the EX but that she lied. Had she just met with him there would be no issue.

I phrase it in indefinite terms: "... lets see a movie" or over the top lolredonkulousness: "... hot date friday?"

I don't mention being friends because 1) lol friend zone 2) I'm not a liar


1) So full of win. I lololololololololooolol. Lots of chicks don't wanna look like whores. So it'll naturally help to avoid: "lol u fk Karak, me too! Vag sisters, high five"
2) Yeah... lol intelligent. More like witty/common sense/articulate than someone who can translate ancient aramaic or can do rubic's cubes in 30s. A high degree of social intelligence is all I really need. If I wanna talk about something esoteric and noob, I'll just troll 2p2 until I find some thread about it. Or talk to a man.
3) Just show them ur weiner.

Facebook stalking for the win. A couple random texts can be fine as well. Nothing is really gonna be super effective, or even moderately. There isn't really any substitute for face time.

I suggest going for both. There is no reason you have to sacrifice one characteristic for the other.

I'd replace good GPA with intelligence. Plenty of ******s have good GPAs. Academic success with respect to research and/or publication would be good but a good GPA could just be an indication of average intelligence and hard work.

Not really relevant to this topic but when people say stuff like this it would really help if they actually elaborated on how they dress. Dress well means very different things to different people. Quebec (outside of MTL) guys think a wold sweater and acid-washed jeans a size too small is the epitome of dressing well.

If you are mid-20s or older and going after intelligent girls you should be going for a style that is semi-professional looking and which is at least mid-level designer or better.

That isn't necessarily bad. Intelligence has nothing to do with attending lectures. Unless we are talking about small classes run in a round-table format there usually is no value in attending a lecture. I also don't know how anyone would know of your attendance unless we are specifically talking about dating classmates and even then given the size of most classes no one should notice that you are missing.

If you want to play the intelligence card the best way is to just not think about it and just be fun and allow people to notice on their own. It is not that hard. People who are intelligent themselves and who care about intelligence can easily recognize it in others just by normal interaction. What you don't want to do is try to force it. Trying to inject Sartre into random conversations will come off as pathetic yet that is how most people who are trying to play the intelligence card go. If you really want to interject intelligence rather abruptly you need something that makes you unique and which allows for the subject to be brought up without it being you who initiates it.

This is pure garbage and that is coming from someone who is an atheist.

Just because a girl is the aggressor doesn't mean you have a done deal. She could just see you as one of several guys she is interested in and she could also quickly lose interest if her initial assessment was off. Girls who have the confidence to be aggressive are just better options. Dating girls who are shy or lack confidence is a lot more work.

Intelligent doesn't mean emo. Usually people who are as you described are actually of average intelligence and overestimate their intellectual ability.

Woopdeedoo

Just ask her out. No mention of "just friends" and no mention of exams. Just this is going on at this place and I would you like to join me.

Damon Rutherford

I was temped to just stop reading at "no date" and the saga starting in 2007.

That she texts you when you are in the same venue is meaningless. i would expect anyone I knew to say hi if they saw me. Two people who know each other ignoring the other is a sign of fairly aggressive dislike. Even people you slightly dislike you acknowledge. My guess is that she thinks you are fine and is happy to see you but has no interest in dating you. My money is that she doesn't come to the music show.

How long is winter break? I moved to be local to my university so break didn't really register but I don't remember it being more than 2-3 weeks. Based on the 2-3 week assumption it then depends on the level of the relationship. If it is still just starting very minimal contact is fine. A Merry Christmas text and another on NYE and possibly a little facebook contact. When I still played poker seriously I would disappear for weeks without any warning and come back and things would be generally at the same stage as I left them. That was pre-social networking and actually pre-texting so I didn't have those options or I'd likely have used them. The only exception is if they meet someone else but then remote contact will do nothing in those cases either.

Wow, thanks for the good feedback Henry (and the rest of you as well). I'm 20 (21 in jan) and basically by dressing well I was only implying that I don't dress like a slob and better than most people. The reason why I saw the attendance and degeneracy things as negative is because of it making me look like a slacker I guess. Basically I do veeeery little school-work compared to most because I have a quicker grasp for it and thus have to put in less effort. Gonna try and put in some more work though, don't really want my future to slip away because I was resting on my laurels.

I totally get what people have been telling me about the intelligence part as well. A hard worker who gets good grades isn't what I meant obv, but it's always better with someone who wants to achieve something than someone who isn't I guess. Ideally she recognizes my intellect without me having to basically prove much of it, my best female friend is exactly like this. She sort of sees the genius in people.

So does the fact that the text came around 9-10pm strongly suggest he meant to get her caught, considering at that time it's highly likely we'd be together, and now that I think about it the text is pretty silly because it pretty much repeats exactly what he must have said when they parted.

He probably does not know she was seeing him behind my back, but he probably knows/thinks there is an area to exploit because she has most likely described to him some of the problems we have had in the past. Like I said, she most likely discusses the negatives of our relationship without talking much about the positives in an effort to spare his feelings.

With that in mind, I suppose he succeeded in a way. He drove a wedge of distrust between me and her, but it has also put me in the right so that she knows I am acting accordingly while she has not. Is this even a position I want to be in though? Are there any positives to being on the moral highground so to speak, and is there any best play from here on ?

Do you mean more work as in getting the ball rowling because you have to take the lead without first getting clear signals from her? I took a smart but shy girl out last night and that's how it seemed. Other than look elsewhere do you have any advice for dating shy girls?

Because they are shy it just sucks for everything. When you go out with them you have to babysit as they won't socialize without you so you always have to be aware if they are having fun. They likely have less of a social life so the Venn diagram of your social life will basically be a circle rather than a nice horizontal figure eight. If they are shy they likely also suck in bed. Even within the relationship being meek means they won't speak their mind so problems won't get addressed until they are massive rather than right at the beginning.

What I crudely meant to say is the more dogmatic the person the less likely they are to be a hardcore academic. The academic crowd is much less religious on average than the overall population. I never said christian intellectual types can't exist. Only dating women from the religious studies department for example is naturally going yield very different results than dating from the general academic population.

My point is, if you're going to belly ache on a message board about the apparent nonexistence of sane intellectual women it makes sense to specify if you have been looking within a narrow subset of the population. If you aren't discriminating based on religious persuasion, there is a plethora of sane intellectual types in the graduate programs at any half way decent university.

The last 3 girls I've been involved with have been graduate students. Please stop.