[IceFire]

Originally posted by icespeed
advice for you guys from personal experience: don't look for girls, make friends. it's heaps better when you start going out with someone you've been friends with for yonks on end because no one's being fake and trying to impress anyone. and obviously if nothing happens, you've still made heaps of good friends.

oh yeah, if you want date ideas... coffee's always good. picnics with views. beach. ice skating. movies. shopping. there's stacks of stuff to do. don't know why guys always want to take girls to the bar.

I've heard that advice before...just never heard of it actually working.

[EtherShock]

Originally posted by icespeed
advice for you guys from personal experience: don't look for girls, make friends. it's heaps better when you start going out with someone you've been friends with for yonks on end because no one's being fake and trying to impress anyone. and obviously if nothing happens, you've still made heaps of good friends.

I'm just going to play Devil's Advocate here.

For most guys (not me though) there is no "friends." You know what I mean? Nothing more has come of friends with me. No big deal though. There's always their friends. ^_^

[Solatar]

Worked for me actually...Went on a school field trip to DC, made friends with a girl on the bus ride up, had a date planned by the time I got back...

We've been going steady for about 4 months now. But then again...I'm 16, so I hardly expect it to turn into something lifelong (at this point, it'd be nice, but I'm not naive enough to think that I can tell how we'll feel about each other a year from now).

[Kosh]

advice for you guys from personal experience: don't look for girls, make friends. it's heaps better when you start going out with someone you've been friends with for yonks on end because no one's being fake and trying to impress anyone. and obviously if nothing happens, you've still made heaps of good friends.

Tried that. Didn't work.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by IceFire

I've heard that advice before...just never heard of it actually working.

[color=66ff00]Number one tip of all time: Never ask a girl for advice about dating. They tell you what they are interested in.

There's a whole lot of variation and it's rare that using one 'strategy' will get you anywhere fast. Not trying to offend icespeed, this one's pretty well known. Girls on the other hand are excellent judges of style for the most part so advice on clothes and the like is generally good.

Cinema's not such a great idea for early dates, neither are loud disco's or bars. You want somewhere where you can talk.
[/color]

[WMCoolmon]

Well, I think I destroyed all my chances with one girl

On the plus side, I do have something of a litmus test...if she calls back when she gets back, she doesn't totally think I'm a tard.

Ahh, well. At least there's the hot girl at CompUSA.

[SuperCoolAl]

Originally posted by Nuke
you know you dont have to drink on a date.

I know. It wasn't exactly a date, we just both happened to be at this party.

Originally posted by aldo_14
AFAIK Uk legal limit on alcohol is a strict over-18s only.

Below is a summary of the main age restrictions relating to drinking in licensed places (taken from http://www.youthinformation.com/infopage.asp?snID=822):

 * Under the age of 14 children are not permitted into the bar area of a pub unless the pub has a children's certificate. In this case they can enter if they are accompanied by an adult.
    * At 14 you can enter a bar or pub but only if the landlord agrees and if you drink soft drinks (this can include low-alcohol beer).
    * At 16 you can buy beer, cider or perry (made from pears) in a restaurant or eating area of a pub where there is no bar, if you are ordering a main meal.
    * At 18 you can legally buy drinks in a pub, bar or off licence.

Originally posted by icespeed
advice for you guys from personal experience: don't look for girls, make friends. it's heaps better when you start going out with someone you've been friends with for yonks on end because no one's being fake and trying to impress anyone. and obviously if nothing happens, you've still made heaps of good friends.

Cheers cos that's exactly the direction I've been heading in recently.  I don't mean I'm making friends in order to have a better chance later on, I'm just enjoying the friendship but who knows?

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
Well, I think I destroyed all my chances with one girl

I know how you feel

[Nuke]

well i watched sci-fi friday but im still pretty much crushed. it always makes me suspiousous when the 3rd date gets canceled.  i think ive decided to drop off her flowers tomorrow. il either leave them on her doorstep, or just ask if i can hang out and hand em to her in person. its still too early to know for sure.

[SuperCoolAl]

Good luck

[Nico]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
You know, it's nice to hear a girl actually saying that. It seems too much like you can either choose to go "all-or-nothing", or just be friends.

But that's bull
You know; I live in some sort of real life soap opera, my friends (both guys and girls, mind you) seem on an eternal quest to get a G/Bfriend. And I have many friends, both genders, so I've seen quite a lot of combination. Well going out with someone after being friend for long ends up bad one time out of two. But usually, granted, you get the good old "nah, we've been friend for so long, I don't want to break that" bull.
The whole thing being the reason why I'm not hunting after girls, after seeing so many pathetic failures, and that makes me the only guy ion the whole goddamn region (I kid you not ~~) who's still friend with about everybody (the ones I'm not friend with, has nothing to do with someone going out with someone else or not).

[WMCoolmon]

Well, I should've put that my quote is entirely conditional on it being supported by the speaker, that is, I'm assuming icespeed actually practices it.

From where I'm standing, I'd start ending friendships with girls if they saw me as a friend, and not actually as me. Being reliable is one thing, being taken for granted is another.

I've no idea if I'd actually carry through on that - when I'm being an *******, I'm pretty good at it, but I'm usually not that good at deciding to be one. In some ways, I'm far too tolerant.

[Col. Fishguts]

"Welcome to the friend zone ....there's no escape."

Seriously, when one of your female friends starts talking to you about her sex life (or something similar personal), you know there's no chance in hell that anything will ever happen between you . Because when she's that open to you, she considers you as a completetly non-sexual object.

On another note, reading through this thread, I'm somewhat relieved to see that I'm not the only one who always gets interested in completetly unavailable women.

[karajorma]

The problem is that icespeed's advice is good for icespeed but not for the vast majority of us. Guys will easily re-evaluate a female friend as a possible girlfriend. All she has to do is wear a bikini or low cut top and we'll start thinking about it.

Sadly women aren't as...ummm... flexible?

[Nico]

Originally posted by Col. Fishguts
On another note, reading through this thread, I'm somewhat relieved to see that I'm not the only one who always gets interested in completetly unavailable women.

I think that's a male feature, being interested in unavailable women The chalenge, you know The "whoa!" factor, I like to call it, here, that would be "whoa! I managed it!" ^^
Sadly, as for me, the whoa factor always goes with the "no way in hell " factor

[Col. Fishguts]

Originally posted by Nico



I think that's a male feature, being interested in unavailable women The chalenge, you know The "whoa!" factor, I like to call it, here, that would be "whoa! I managed it!" ^^
Sadly, as for me, the whoa factor always goes with the "no way in hell " factor

But I always get interseted before I know that she's already seeing someone.
Typically I find that out several weeks after meeting her, when I'm thinking "Oh, this I going rather well, this might lead to something" , and then KABLAM!, I somehow learn that she already has a significant other.
And this happened to me a LOT lately.

If I would believe in a higher power of some sort, I'd think someone is having a whole lot of fun on my costs.

[Nico]

That's another reason why wasting time and making friend is a bad idea Better find out if there's someone else fast than building and feeling much more sorry later. There's a lot of ways to find that right away, but important is to make sure that not only there's no boyfriend, but that there's no "I wish" either. If there's one, it's bound to fail too, sadly.
Oh, and back to the drink thing, well, bringing the gal to a coffee might not be the most original thing ever (well, the glacier is a must, I suppose ), but I've never seen it fail either, so...

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]There's a whole lot of variation and it's rare that using one 'strategy' will get you anywhere fast. Not trying to offend icespeed, this one's pretty well known.[/color]

Wisdom there. Receiving advice like that as if it's the law on relationships is foolish and shallow - as if the end itself is all that's desired, and any means will be accepted to reach that. Anyone should be able to see through that sort of ploy.

I can't help but think that a relationship like this can only be birthed properly from a position of contentment. If you can't accept your present circumstances and thus seek this sort of relationship merely as a form of escape from your currently desperate situation (if that's how you view it; I hardly think it's that true in most of our lives), you'll be set up with all the wrong motivations going into the relationship, and the wheels will inevitably fall off eventually. Not to say that such contentment is easy to achieve; but that seems to be a pretty consistent issue with the way most of us here are trying to approach the matter.

[Nico]

Aw, man Why do you need to think such things so deeply? It's a matter of feeling and mood, not of calculations and goals I believe most guys here just see that chick and go "I like how she is", and will try to ask her out some way or another, nothing else
What you call an escape, it's just another level to the original motive: having a relationship. Coz face it, if you don't try, you won't get, because there is at least one law on relationship, like it or not: if the guy doesn't move, the chick will not move. In my whole life (I'm 24, I'm like right into the middle of that period), I've been asked out by a girl one single time, just once, so that makes the exception that proves the rule rather than break it, if you ask me. Restraining because it feels like desperation is counterproductive and frustrating, so I must, for once, disagree with you, Ed

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by SuperCoolAl


Below is a summary of the main age restrictions relating to drinking in licensed places (taken from http://www.youthinformation.com/infopage.asp?snID=822):

 

I never knew that.  Fascinating.

[EtherShock]

Originally posted by Nico
You know; I live in some sort of real life soap opera, my friends (both guys and girls, mind you) seem on an eternal quest to get a G/Bfriend.

This is because society has conditioned most people that they need to be in a relationship. Wrong, people want to be in a relationship, but they don't need to be in one. Wants and needs are very different. OK, there's the whole instinct to procreate thing, but I'm not talking about instinct here.

Originally posted by icespeed
advice for you guys from personal experience: don't look for girls, make friends. it's heaps better when you start going out with someone you've been friends with for yonks on end because no one's being fake and trying to impress anyone. and obviously if nothing happens, you've still made heaps of good friends.

Icespeed may be one in a million women that actually practices what she preaches.

I met a girl through the net one time. I was friends with her cousin. I was over there one day and her sister had taken a picture of me. She in turn saw this picture and was immediately interested. She lived far away from me, other side of the country far. We really got to know each other well over the Internet. She helped me get over some *^%@& and I helped her deal with some guy; we were friends. Eventually we were talking on the phone. Clearly, we were (at least mentally) attracted to each other, and we decided to meet. I didn't meet her until last year, and when I did, there was nothing. No chemistry whatsoever. We only spent maybe half a day together, due to circumstances beyond our control.  We are still friends though, best friends. You might say I have someone to...practice on? Not in a using sense; I mean until someone else comes my way, so I have a good idea of what a girl likes and doesn't.

The moral of the story: Yes, you can be friends.