Survey the District: Don’t Want to Miss a Connection

dear date the district,

after college, a bunch of my friends and i moved to dc. most of us have been hanging out together on the weekends. recently, i've become really interested in this one guy from my college-- we were more like acquaintances in college, probably having a handful of conversations over a couple of years. i don't have his number or anything and i've only seen him one time really briefly since we both moved to the city. i think he's been hanging out with more of work friends than college friends. from my minor facebook stalkage it appears that he is still single. i'm debating talking to one of my friends who is a better friend of his about my infatuation, but not sure if that's the best thing to do. i think anything related to facebook or umm buzzing him on google is also a terrible idea? i am usually a fan of playing hard to get but i first need to find this guy before i can start the whole game playing process. any advice?

Hopefully yesterday’s post shed some light on how you could go about seeing him.

The most important thing is not letting him know that you’re interested, it’s spending more time with him.

In fact, the worst thing you could do is have your friend (or Google Buzz—speaking of, is anyone still using that?) spill the beans about your crush.

Mutual friends often seem like a good way to get in with a guy. Like we talked aboutbefore, a guy’s girl (space) friends almost never have your best interest at heart.

Even if this mutual girl friend swears she’s not interested at all, and even if she has a boyfriend, she still has feelings for this guy. They might not be romantic, but they’re almost certainly territorial—after all, we all know what it feels like to have a guy friend drop off the face of the earth thanks to a new girl(no space)friend.

And if this mutual friend is a guy, do you really want him as your advocate? Think about how guys talk to each other. When you say, “Just tell him that I think he’s cute,” there’s a good chance that the message he relays to your crush will be more on the lines of, “Julie’s, like, in love with you. I think she wants to bone you.”

Even if you’re just asking the mutual friend for advice or confirmation of his marital status, he/she’s gonna get the message. No girl asks if Johnny’s single because she wants to set him up with her friend.

Play it cool, and realize that you’re not going to get the chance to hit it off with every guy you like.

Sometimes the timing just doesn’t work out, and as much as it sucks, there’s not much we can do about it.

The more you force it, the more you hurt your chances of actually getting the guy. It’s hard to play hard to get when he knows you’ve been stalking him for the past few months.

The best thing you can do in this situation is stop obsessing about him.

We all do it. We all imagine that the quiet guy in our senior history seminar didn’t talk because he was harboring such intense, profound feelings. We start picturing ourselves on dates with him. We mentally plan our wedding day. Our first child is born in our minds and—surprise—the quiet brooder is still madly in love with us, pregnancy belly and all.

But these fantasies do way more harm than good. Because you know so little about this guy, you’re free to imagine him as being totally perfect for you. But if you did get to know him, you’d probably realize that he talks too much about sports or never washes his socks or has a thousand little quirks that would irritate you to no end.

The more we obsess about these ideal crushes, the more we close ourselves off to reality. And if you’re sitting around waiting for the chance to run into this guy, you might miss out on some real-life guys.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have a crush on this guy. And that doesn’t mean you can’t “happen to show up” at events you know he’ll be at.

But don’t waste too much time thinking about something that, logistically, might not work out.

Keep your feelings to yourself. And who knows? You might hit it off at homecoming weekend.