Good Advice

In the Mixed Signals Blog we talked about ways you could spend time with a guy just as friends. But why is this even important? Why not just blow right past BFF and make him your BF as quick as possible?

Now every girl I’ve ever known, be her 16 or 60, has felt her heart beat faster at the sight of the perfect pair of shoes, yummy handbag, or appealing guy. And if you are honest, you’ll admit that when your heart picks up speed sometimes your brain goes dead. Don’t believe me? Just look in your closet.

Impulse decisions, whether they are the shoes you buy even though they pinch, that big slab of chocolate cake that blows your diet, or jumping into a relationship with a guy you barely know almost never pan out in your favor. Shoes can be returned. Cake calories can be wiped out with a little exercise. But time wasted on the wrong guy can never be recouped.

And the only way to find out if he is Mr. Right or Mr. Wrong is to spend time with him as a friend first, before all the romance and hormones haze your brain. How do I know that this is the correct order of things?

Along with the women before me, my generation, for the most part, was not taught this truth. We were taught instead that our focus should be on attracting and keeping a mate-also known as reeling him in. Whether the guy we “caught” was worthy of us was little discussed. And so we learned by getting our heart broken and life thrown way off track.

In high school we cared about three things. Was he popular? Was he an athlete? Did he have a car? All shallow and superficial gauges of the type of person he was. What should we have been looking at instead? How does he treat me and those around him? Do we have interests and beliefs in common? Would I enjoy his company if he were a cousin or brother? Does he have life skills that match mine, like paying bills on time, treating people with respect, setting and achieving goals? If I ran a business would I hire and trust him to always have its best interest in mind? Do I like his family, how they interact, and how his dad treats his mom or stepmom? Keeping in mind that, whether he loves them or can’t stand them, his family has had a profound effect on who he is as a person.

Does all this analyzing seem cold? I know this isn’t the way it goes on the big screen or in love songs. But trust me on this—finding someone to fall in love with is easy. But love alone won’t do it. Getting through the long haul of life requires you to like him too.

So make it your personal motto that, just like in the dictionary, for you “like” has to come before “love”.