While many women wait for it to simply "happen," in "Get the Guy," Matthew Hussey discloses the secrets to meeting more men in a more proactive and effective way. Here's an excerpt.
How many guys do you meet in an average week?
And when I say “meet,” I refer to a genuine social interaction, where you engage with a man, eye contact and all, for anywhere from five minutes of chatting to a full two-hour conversation. But it has to be a conversation, not just collecting your mail from the postman (unless of course he’s new and you turn him into a social connection).
If your answer is none, or even one, how long do you think it’s going to take you to meet the guy? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt: let’s say you meet one new man every week. How long will it take to meet Mr. Right if you are meeting only one new man in an average week? I’m not a mathematician, but the odds are pretty long. What makes them even longer is that these interactions are probably happening by chance, and certainly not because they are men you have selected yourself.
This isn’t the case for only you. If I asked the same question of a male reader, the number would be just as small. Both sexes are guilty of leaving their love lives to chance. Blame it on the fairy tales we’re read as kids, blame it on Hollywood, but the fact remains that we’ve come to believe that true love is the product of fate. We’ve all been led to believe that someday it will just “happen,” that one day fate will drop the person of our dreams right next to us while we’re standing at a stoplight. The fate-will-bring-me-love approach lacks urgency, which leads to lack of action. You assume that “when the time is right” the right guy will come along, and in the meantime you focus on your work, your ambitions, your family, your friends, your hobbies. That’s not to say that these are not all highly fulfilling aspects of your life in their own right, but I want to help you understand how within these essential parts of your life are opportunities to find the man of your dreams. When people put aside their love life to focus on these other areas, years pass, and one day the lack of urgency turns into panic. We become frantic as we realize that not only is nothing happening in our love life, but we are at a loss as to how to make it happen, which of course leads to more panic, creating a loop of frustration, at best, or worse, hopelessness. You may be reading this book because you keep asking yourself (and perhaps your sisters, girlfriends, and coworkers), “Where are all the good men to be found?” If you’re gradually coming to the realization that fate isn’t cooperating, you might be on the verge of seeing that you’re going to have to be proactive. You are going to have to go out and find him.
And how do you find him?
It’s a very simple principle:
To meet more men you have to, er, meet more men!
Waiting or Creating
A word of encouragement before you set out to meet the man of your dreams: Life is full of people who wait. They wait for the right moment to approach someone, or wait for someone to approach them first. They wait for someone to show enough interest that they don’t risk being rejected, they wait to be invited, and they wait to make a move. They wait to feel confident before taking action. Wait, wait, wait, for everything.
“Waiters” imagine they are playing it safe, but more often than not, only two things come to those who wait: the wrong thing or no-thing.
Ask yourself: Right now, at this very moment, am I waiting or am I creating? Am I taking the positive steps which will give me results in my love life? (If your answer is no, take heart; simply by reading this book you are already taking action, seeking the knowledge that will enable you to make the changes necessary to make rapid progress.)
There’s an added benefit to taking your life into your own hands: when you know you are doing everything in your power to improve your situation, you can be content even if the results aren’t immediate. The knowledge that you are moving forward, improving, and developing in a significant way is what makes humans happy.
Wherever you feel you are right now, you still have a choice: you can wait or you can create.
There is only one way to wait: just do nothing. But there are thousands of ways to create, so the opportunities are endless.
Throwing the Net Wide
I know your goal is not to meet as many men as possible, but to meet your man, the one who is going to add more meaning to your life. Setting aside for a moment the logic that you can’t meet your man if you don’t meet any men, there is another reason to throw the net wide.
Let’s say that you meet only one man in three years. You might think he is fine—or, even better, perfect for you. But since you have nothing to compare him with, you risk settling for less than you deserve. No one is perceptive enough to call it correctly with only one choice.
As much as you might love to act like a marksman, picking out a single target, taking aim, and shooting, you can’t just pick your ideal man out of the crowd with Cupid’s single shot. I suspect you’ve already discovered on occasion that even when you think you have hit the bull’s-eye, you have instead missed the mark completely! A single shot does not allow you to choose the best for yourself. And, you never, ever want to settle.
If you want to have a better chance of finding the right guy, you have to begin with meeting more men. Not one more, not two more, but a lot more. The more men you meet, the more you increase your chances of finding the right one.
Imagine attending a party where there are two hundred men in the room. Out of these two hundred guys, how many would you feel even remotely attracted to? Maybe twenty? Out of this twenty, there might be only ten to whom you felt enough attraction to consider a first date. From this remaining ten, how many would you feel sufficient chemistry with to want to date again? Five? And from these five last men standing, there may be only one with whom you could deeply connect. Many might say that even these figures are wildly optimistic. In which case, how long will it take to find your guy if you’re meeting only one new man each week? Anywhere from four years to . . . you won’t live that long. In this scenario, you’re left relying on fate, which is like hoping to get rich playing the lottery.
Time Out: Reality Check
I’m not a mind reader, but I do have quite a bit of experience hearing directly from women some common complaints about men that simply are not true. I want to share a collection of stubborn myths about guys and love that refuse to go away. These mad and bad beliefs do you no good and only hold you back:
✦ There are no good men out there (“All the men I meet are either gay, taken, or weird”).
✦ Guys only want someone hotter and prettier than me.
✦ Guys don’t like women who approach them first.
✦ Guys only want a low-maintenance woman, not someone who will challenge them.
✦ Guys don’t want to commit, they only want casual flings and sex.
Every single one of these is a myth. Sadly, they are not only false, but they are dangerous to hold on to and often become excuses for all that is wrong in your love life.
Most of us have had painful experiences in love. It’s one of life’s biggest, most unforgettable experiences. Love hurts, as the song says. But when we have been let down by someone, we have to be careful not to let that experience, however awful, become our sole reference point for future relationships.
I’ll make you a deal. If you set aside all the myths and generalizations, if you set aside whatever bad experiences you may have had with men and refuse to allow them to color your judgment, I will reveal to you all the facets and secrets of the male mind, the good, the bad, and all the things he desires from the woman in his life.
The Philosophy of the Funnel
Now that you are committed to expanding your options by meeting a lot more men, I am going to offer a proven system, a method to all of this man-meeting. It is a process best visualized as a series of funnels.
The first funnel is the largest, into which you pour all the new men you meet. (We’ll get to the part about how you are going to meet all these new men in a few pages . . . stay with me.) The funnel acts as a filter, and only the guys you’re attracted to pass through to the second funnel.
The second funnel then filters out all the guys you don’t want to date. These would be the guys who may seem attractive at first glance, but you don’t have any immediate chemistry with them for you to want to make real time for them. Only those guys you’re genuinely interested in spending time with drop into the third funnel. Of those, only a select few will pass into the fourth funnel, those who are worth more than just one date. Of course the final filtering will result in finding the guy with whom you want a relationship. We will dig into that process in the second and third parts of the book. For now, we are simply getting you to the place of opportunity.
The process is clear and obvious, but there is one important principle I want to emphasize: the first funnel is where we are least selective. The first funnel is not about attraction. It is about meeting new people, both men and women.
The first funnel is about getting out there. It’s about joining the human race. It’s about practicing conversation and flirting. It’s about interacting and entertaining and allowing ourselves to be entertained. Out into the world you go, with the goal of meeting as many guys as possible, so that you have more guys to pour into the first funnel. Pouring only three guys into that first funnel makes it highly unlikely that the right guy will come out the other end. Pouring in every guy who doesn’t strike you as a potential serial killer makes your chances much higher that at the end the right one will emerge.
Part of the reason you’re tossing every guy into the first funnel is to create the habit of giving a lot of guys a chance, early on. Most of us are so focused on meeting The One that we wind up not meeting anyone. If I could, I would tattoo this on your palm: every interaction with another human being is a possible gateway to some new world or experience, which could, in turn, introduce you to the love of your life.
There are other good reasons to meet as many men as you can:
Abundance, not scarcity
When you meet lots of men, you put less focus on any one man. Approaching your love life from a position of abundance rather than scarcity helps to put the odds in your favor. It is making simple economics work for you.
As much as you might be agonizing over one guy, always remember, men are 50 percent of the population. You are not the luckiest woman in the world when you meet one you like, and you aren’t the unluckiest woman in the world when the guy you like doesn’t like you back. Scarcity makes us settle. If you believe that there aren’t many good guys out there, you’ll invest far too much in the first decent man you do meet, even if he’s far from being the right one. Abundance, on the other hand, leads to choice and confidence. Abundance comes when we start increasing the number of men going into that first funnel. As soon as you heartily believe that there are plenty of men out there, you can adopt an easy come, easy go attitude and begin to have fun with all of this.
Creating new habits
Make a habit of talking to new people. It will do wonders for increasing your basic social skills, which will in turn boost your confidence. You will find yourself creating attraction simply by becoming more at ease engaging with someone you don’t know or whom you’ve just met. This happens simply by doing it more often, and applies not only for men but for anyone at all: women, children, young and old. If you are in the habit of meeting more people in general, it will by default lead you to meet more men. Why do you think you revert back to a being a blushing, nervous schoolgirl when that hot guy approaches you? Because you’re out of practice. You can’t instantly summon your best, most confident self for the hot guy if you’ve never developed your skills by talking to everyone.
Because you’re choosing
The more new men you meet, the more you’ll have to choose from. This will allow you to be selective. We should all be extremely fussy when it comes to love. The person you spend most of your time with, are intimate with, share your life with, and whom you trust the most needs to be extraordinary for you specifically. There are extraordinary people everywhere, but it will take some filtering to find that certain someone who fills your particular needs and desires. Logically, then, to find that special person, you will need to increase your chances of success by meeting many men.
The idea of treating our love life like a large filter system might not seem like the most romantic approach to the dating process, but as we’ve seen, leaving it to fate also leaves us with no sense of agency in our lives. The fact that we can apply workable strategies to create the results we want doesn’t make our love, once we find it, any less real, meaningful, sexy, or romantic.
Yes, I know. Some people do get lucky.
I once knew a young woman named Jane who, while sitting in her first college class waiting for the lecturer to arrive, met the love of her life. An attractive and friendly young man happened to sit down right next to her. They joked together, and went for coffee after the lecture. A month later they were seeing each other regularly and ultimately began a relationship that lasted throughout her university years. She told all her friends that he was The One. She envisaged getting married at twenty-five, with kids to follow a couple of years later. She had it all planned out. Her friends were a little envious. They wondered how it was so easy for her.
Then one day, Jane’s boyfriend, The One, tells told her he needed to do his own thing for a while. He wasn’t ready for marriage, and though he loved her, there was so much more he felt he needed to do before settling down. All of a sudden, at age twenty-five, Jane found herself back in the dating game, heartbroken and wondering where and how she would ever meet someone again.
She patiently waited for another Mr. Right to come along, but nothing happened. She daydreamed that perhaps the guy sitting at the next desk at her new job would be attractive and friendly and introduce himself, just as her first love did. Then, when she began the job, not only was the guy in the next desk neither friendly nor attractive, he didn’t even bother to make conversation. She spent Friday and Saturday nights going out with her friends, talking about how impossible it was to find someone like the man she once had. She had won the lottery of love at eighteen and spent seven years enjoying the winnings. But at twenty-five she was bankrupt, and now she was seven years older without any idea how to get back out there. Because her limited experience had taught her that the right man was supposed to sit down next to you and start a relationship with you on an unexpected day, she had no skills to make it happen.
Most lottery winners (even those who win millions) find a way to go broke again. And when they do go broke, they don’t know how to make that money again because when it happened the first time it was by pure chance. They have no formula they can replicate. Those who are successful in business, on the other hand, know that going broke isn’t the end of the world. They have the skills to get back into the game and create something from nothing, and know that waiting will get them nowhere. Likewise, those who know how to go out and find a relationship don’t panic when they’re single.
Jane thought her only option was to sit around and wait.
Nonsense.
Excerpted from GET THE GUY. Copyright © 2013 by Matthew Hussey. Excerpted with permission by HarperWave, a division of HarperCollins Publishers.