Tom and I approached things differently. He had the English gentleman thing, strong storytelling and very good verbals. I was more physical, more direct and more interested in making something happen quickly. In the early days, I was also less calibrated than I later became.
That difference gave us something to learn from each other. We could both get results and still see problems in how the other guy was doing it. More importantly, we could recognise those problems in ourselves.
This is why the episode is called what I learned with Tom. We were figuring things out together.
Once she is interested, shut up
When you first get better at approaching, it is easy to become intoxicated with your own performance. She responds, so you give her another line. Another attraction spike. Another story. She tries to speak and you talk over her because the show is going so well.
Except now there is barely room for her in it.
My version was too much Attraction-Escalation. Tom could stretch the conversation out with another thread and another story. We needed to learn to stop once there was enough attraction, let her contribute and establish some ordinary common ground.
Ask something open-ended. Listen to the answer. Give a little of your own background. You don't have to keep winning her attention after she is already giving it to you.
Then make a clear invitation. Continuing the approach for another quarter of an hour doesn't necessarily improve it. At some point you find out whether she wants to join you, rather than producing more conversation to delay finding out.
Don't write off the opportunity in your head
We had days when we had been out for hours, were tired and went for a beer. Then something happened. We met somebody or an opportunity appeared when we had mentally started winding down.
The lesson I took was to remain willing to act when the opportunity is there. Sometimes a woman gets back to you later because that is when she becomes available. If you want to meet her and the timing works, make the arrangement instead of mourning the fact that she didn't fit the schedule you imagined earlier.
This doesn't mean ignoring a refusal or living without sleep. It means noticing the difference between an opportunity that is over and one you have dismissed because you expected it to happen differently.
Give her the whole shebang
Our contrasting personalities also showed us the limitation of being one-dimensional. The nice guy, the wild guy, the sexual guy and the man who can have a serious conversation are not mutually exclusive characters.
You can be considerate and adventurous. You can flirt and listen. You can have fun without making the whole date a performance of how outrageous you are.
Tom used different settings and activities to let a date develop. The point wasn't to run an expensive sightseeing itinerary. It was to let more of his personality appear. The woman had a fuller experience of who he was.
Look at your own dates. Do you talk past the moment when she wants to contribute? Do you postpone the invitation? Do you hide behind one narrow role because it feels safe? Those are useful things to review. You don't need to become Tom or me. You need to stop getting in the way of the parts of yourself that could make the interaction work.
