How To Know Someone Without Getting Emotionally Involved

Let us look at some ways we can get to know another person without giving our power away. This enables us to minimize the risk that we will get hurt in the process.

The other day, a lady asked me an interesting question. She said, 'Are you single?” What I noticed about that is that it feels like a very different question from 'do you have a girlfriend?’

I also noticed that my respect for the person went up a notch or two - even though I did not want to get into a romantic relationship with her.

The reason for this is that asking 'Are you single?’ has a refreshing boldness about it without being pushy. Whereas the "Do you have a girlfriend / boyfriend?” question has a sort of unspoken "you probably wouldn’t want me anyway" feeling about it.

At least in can drift into that if the person is not very careful how they say it.

Like anything to do with personal power it "Ain’t what you do it's the way that you do it". However, asking the right question is part of the way we do it.

One way we can make dating easier on ourselves is to change the question so that we do ask people on 'dates' at all! What I mean is go for what some call "the no-date date.” This is where we just invite the person along to something we want to do anyway. It can be anything from a favorite café, a place which has the best cakes / donuts, or place with an unusual shop or a particularly nice park and so on.

That way we can say something like, "I am going to a lovely park at the weekend. It has a beautiful path through the trees. Would you like to come?” (Or, whatever is suitable based on what you know about them). Invite them to do something fun or interesting, which does not take up too much time.

We are just inviting them along, so we spend time with them. It is not really clear to them whether it is an actual ‘date’ with romantic intentions or not. We can get to know them a bit better before we decide to go that way.

In this way we can avoid saying "Want to go out with me?", which again just gives our power away. If they turn down a no-date offer next time you meet them you can even say, "Hey, you really missed out. That park / café / shop I told you about was great (and have something to say that reinforces this (weather was fabulous, they have the best coffee etc.)". This turns even a 'rejection' into something in your favor.

We can also invite someone we want to get to know to join in with something we are doing with other friends. We don’t have to get stuck in thinking we have to invite people out one-on-one.

You may wonder whether you will give the person the wrong impression if you are interested in them, but not make it clear from the start by specifically asking for a date. You actually probably stand a better chance to get to know each other when just relaxing without any pressure. However, your 'interest' will probably be in who you think they are, rather than who they really are. Give yourself a chance to get to know them for real before deciding anything.

Besides better to find out early whether this is a person with whom you can just relax and have fun with. If the chemistry is right you will soon find yourself in real dates with them and you won't have had to give away your power to get there.