Q. I always seem to stumble when I try to have conversations with women. What should I do ?
A. Many, many men have this problem. Fortunately, there are a few traits you can develop in yourself that will help you converse with women:
– Curiosity. Curiosity happens naturally, but many men stomp it out because they are afraid if they get curious, they will lose control of the interaction, and something bad will happen. You must learn to notice and follow up on the little flickers of curiosity you will get when you are interacting with someone. She may mention that her job involves working with children, and you may notice that you wonder, what age are those children? Ask her.
Men often worry that they have to come up with some brilliant conversation, but because a woman’s favorite topic is herself, all you really have to do is be curious and ask questions about her. That will carry the conversation a long, long way.
– Admiration. Most people don’t see themselves as special and are not used to other people seeing them as special. When you’re able to see the passionate and special parts of a woman and appreciate them, she will feel a bond to you. If she says her friend declared bankruptcy, but she could never do that, you can admire her by saying, “I can see you are a person to whom integrity is important. I think that’s cool.” If she says that she is really into recycling, you can say to her, “I can see that you are a woman who cares about the environment. Most people don’t, I think it’s pretty amazing that you do.” By noticing what she cares about, and admiring it, you both compliment and showing that you are an insightful person.
– Listening. Whether or not you are listening to a woman makes no difference if she doesn’t think you are listening. You show you are listening by doing three thing.
- Saying “helping phrases” like “Yes,” “Uh-huh,” and “I see,” while she is talking. This shows her that you are paying attention.
- Feeding back what she said to you, in your own words. If she talks about how she had eight meetings the day before, and it exhausted her, you can say, “Wow, eight meetings! That’s a lot. I can see why that would be exhausting.” That sums up what she said, and shows that you “got it.”
- Being curious and admiring. When you are curious about something a woman said, and ask a question about it, it shows you were listening in the first place. When you admire a woman, you also show that you’ve been paying attention to what she has been saying.
– Not Complaining. It’s amazing how often men’s “talk” to women is all complaint-oriented. Recently we witnessed a guy trying to get a woman to like him. His approach? Complain, at great length and with significant anger, about how his credit card company screwed him over by not letting him have the logo of his favorite football team on his card. Believe us when we say, the woman was not impressed. At least, not impressed in the way he would have liked.
“Not complaining” comes down to something your mother probably told you: If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. You are better off sitting silently than you are complaining about your life. You are even better off talking about something positive, or listening to her and admiring something positive about her.
– Doing the Flirting Moves. If you are curious, admiring, listening, and not complaining, you are probably building a connection with the woman that will be unusual in her experience with men. At the same time, that is not enough, because it can still put you in the “just friends” zone. You also must be doing the “Flirting Moves”
These moves will help the woman decide, at least tentatively, that you are in the “potential lover” category.
If you want to know more about talking to women, then you’ll be excited about our next book, “How to Talk to Women“.
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Ron Louis and David Copeland are dating coaches and authors of the best selling “How to Succeed with Women” and the creators of Seduction Techniques |
