Do you ever find yourself shrugging your shoulders and settling on the “boys will be boys” conclusion? Real Live College Guy Andy is here to show you that mature men do (in fact) exist. He has an uncanny ability to sort out the good guys from the bad apples and is here to bring you the best in college love advice.
I go to a women’s college but I am not completely clueless about dating or men in general. There are plenty of guys around campus and off campus too, but I am having trouble just approaching a guy. I usually wait for them to approach me (and it has somewhat worked fine in the past) but now that I am at a women’s college, sitting and waiting is just not working. Any suggestions on how to approach a guy? – Waiting at Wellesley
Waiting,
Have you ever had a guy approach you who was super smooth? He was very friendly, conversation flowed, and everything seemed natural, right? Well, that guy definitely has practiced his moves many times before. But I’m going to let you in on a little secret: we aren’t that smooth and we wish girls would do more of the approaching. Guys think about what to say just as much (if not more than) as girls do before they actually go up to someone they like.
Now for girls, approaching a guy at all is a big step. I don’t think any average college guy expects to be approached. Therefore, going after what you want as a girl is impressive. That’s something you should remember when showing you’re interested.
As for how to make your approach, well, as Sonny from Big Daddy taught us, “initiating the conversation is half the battle.” If you see a guy you could be interested in, just start a conversation the way you would with anyone, be friendly, courteous and just talk. It really doesn’t matter what you talk about, as long as you keep a conversation going. It could be as simple as where he got his cool shirt. If there is a background story on his shirt, let him talk about it and then when he’s done share a cool related story of your own and bam you’re having a conversation.
Personally, one of the things I think that makes guys easier to approach is that we’re easier to read. If we’re not interested, we rarely keep our part of the conversation going just to be nice. If after a few minutes he’s still trying to keep the conversation going, he is almost definitely interested in getting your number. (And who knows what will come after that?)