My classmate, Leslie Kwok (the national swimmer) once said: “For every girl or guy, there is a perfect mate for you out there. But whether you find them in this lifetime…that’s your problem!”

Perfectly flip answer from a fifteen year old (this was some years ago), though the quote has stayed with me through the years, meriting a mention during my wedding about 3 years ago.

A friend dropped me an email about his ‘interactions’ with the opposite gender:

—BEGIN QUOTE
I have approached a handful of girls since the seminar and have been pretty successful in chatting them up, carrying out the conversation and getting their contacts so far. However one thing i realize is that i kind of lost the momentum after a few days. I feel that i have no
purpose to approach them as I am not looking to get laid. I question myself what is the point of approaching so many girls and then not establishing any meaningful relationship with them? Yes it would widen the cirlce of people I know but that what is the purpose of having so
many acquaintances but none i really know well and knows me well in return?

I still could not find any answer. Do you have any insights on this? 🙂
—END QUOTE

My reply was:
—BEGIN ANSWER
it sounds like you may wish to consider what your purpose in talking to the ‘girls’ is.

maybe after answering the question, ‘what will approaching girls do for me?’ will you gain more motivation to do what you do.

maybe you dont want to get laid, maybe you want to make new friends? expand your business contacts? find that girl who was like your dream girl that you know in primary/secondary/jc/uni that you wanted to approach, but didn’t and subsequently lost touch?

maybe you did answer your own questions also. you said you didnt know them well. do you want to get to know them better? if so, what are the things to try out? maybe different questions, or a different approach would work.

actually all these steps are not that useful yet, until you answer the question ‘what will approaching girls do for you’.

if you do set the goal of getting to know a girl really well and are able to answer the following questions:
1) What is her favourite colour? Why?
2) What is her favourite food? What is it about that food that she
likes?
3) What is her favourite book or tv programme or film? What does she enjoy about it? What would she do different if she was the director?

(sample questions only…you can come up with different ones).

it might help you go beyond the surface to have a feel or an idea of what the true person beneath the skin is really like.

from my past experience, knowing a person (whether male or female) in terms of their ambitions, dreams, fears help me better understand the person better and is a much more interesting or attractive or seductive (take your pick) experience than just being able to chat them up whether for friendship, romance or business.
—END REPLY

in all honesty, i’m not sure about the degree of ‘insight’ in my reply.

meeting people (male or female) has always been exciting during the first few encounters, especially when you’re getting to find out more about the person.

more importantly i feel is that the feeling has to be reciprocated as well.
else the object of your attention might as well be a blow-up doll.

i believe the feeling of ‘clicking’ comes when both persons feel the same way, and hence there is ‘feedback’ from whatever we do or say (see Newton’s third law of motion: action=reaction).

else without any perceivable feedback from the person, it’ll be a fairly empty exercise.

there’s a quote from the movie City Slickers that was pretty useful/relevant for me.
It goes:
“Do you know what the secret to life is?” asks Jack Palance in the 1991 movie City Slickers.
“No, what?” says Billy Crystal.
“One thing, just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shit.”
“That’s great, but what’s the one thing?”
“That’s what you’ve got to figure out.”

Which just about sums up what the quest to finding the ‘perfect one’ is like.
Sorting through a lot of fodder, erm, make that ‘non-perfect’ ones and finding that special someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with. for tomorrow, the next week and the next 50 years. if you can’t imagine the person 50 years from now, it’s better to cut your losses and get the hell out.

you’ve been warned.