I used to think that whether or not a woman was attracted to me depended on playing my cards right. I used to think if I just had the right words to say, or if I just knew how to flirt the right way…

Then I could win her over.

In hindsight I realize that mindset was toxic. It drove away the women I was interested in, because they didn’t like the idea of being someone’s conquest. And the mindset made me think that if I wasn’t winning people over, I was losing. And I was a loser. And there must have been something wrong with me.

Putting It In Perspective…

I realized how those women felt when I met a guy named “Dan” while watching a football game at a bar. We had a laugh about the game, how we both played in high school, seemed like a cool guy. But things got really weird when he started insisting he could turn me gay.

Dan had the same mindset a lot of guys have; he thought he could win me over. He thought he was out looking for fun, but really he was looking to conquer people. Maybe he was watching Youtube videos of pickup artists teaching people “the foolproof method of how to seduce a straight guy.” Kind of like how I was watching things like “the foolproof method of how to escape the friendzone.”

Sure, it is possible to escape “the friendzone,” and it’s possible for guys to discover that they also like guys. But if there is any possibility that I’m into men, I’m going to want to come to that conclusion on my own. And if there’s any possibility that the last gal who friendzoned me is attracted to me, she’s going to want to come to that conclusion on her own.

Chances Are, It’s Not Going to Happen

But the chances are irrelevant: whether or not I “escape the friendzone” is completely out of my control. I’ll never see that if I insist that I can win people over. And if I think I can win people over, I’ll think there’s something wrong with me if I fail. It’s not a fair assessment by any means.

Of course, it would be absurd for Dan to think there’s something wrong with him for being a man, given that’s the primary reason I’m not attracted to him. It’s just as absurd to think there’s something wrong with me if someone I’m attracted to likes me better as a friend. If anything, we should blame ourselves for not embracing friendship. After all, if Dan had just dropped the idea that he was going to turn me, I would have been happy to introduce him to my friend, who was sitting right next to me.

It’s so much easier to just say, “No problem, if anything changes let me know” if someone doesn’t want to go out with or hook up with you. It puts them at ease, and it puts you at ease, because then you can focus on finding someone who would want to do those things with you. You can’t ever control or even understand why someone is or isn’t interested. You can only control how open you are to letting someone be attracted to you. All you can control is how awesome of a person you are, how fun on a date you are. Not because it will make you attractive to anyone and everyone, but because it will make you all the more attractive to your type.

Everyone Is and Has a Different Type

I’ve met women who are attracted to me because I’m tall, and women who were turned off by how tall I am. I’ve “ruined my chances” with a lot of women because I let my dorky side show. Other times I’ve had women chasing after me because they saw and loved that dorky side. But after going on so many dates trying to be cool and not being myself by hiding my dorky side in hopes of winning someone over, all it ever leads to is an anticlimactic second or third date. Or it leads to fighting and resentment over the course of a two or three year relationship as opposed to ending things early and spending that time happily with someone else.

Trying to change someone is an awful lot of effort for very little reward for both of us.

Why Settle For Compromise?

In the ancient days of arranged marriages and being geographically restricted to the few people who lived in your village, I suppose the mindset of winning people over made more sense. My mother was expected to marry into the Jewish community like her grandparents did–they didn’t have a choice because they lived in a time and place where Jews weren’t allowed to marry outside their community. No wonder everyone looks so miserable in those old family photos.

But in America my mom wasn’t into the guys she knew in Hebrew school, and because she was open to meeting other people in college, she found a better match in my dad. They hit it off and have been married for almost thirty years and counting.

Today online dating makes it faster and easier to meet people to date than ever before. You don’t have to compete for the best people in your area or within your ethnic community; you can find the people who are best for you.

So if someone’s not attracted to me for whatever reason, it’s really not my problem. It’s not her problem either–it’s not a problem at all. There are more than enough people out there who want the same things that I do, and the best way to find that is to look for it where it already exists.