How to Make Someone Fall in Love With You in 90 Minutes or Less

by Nicholas Boothman

  Fatima, on the other hand, would go to all the parties. “I went to bars and restaurants where thirty or so people would turn out, and clubs where there’d be more than a thousand. But I’d get there, and straight away I’d set about making myself invisible. And it worked beautifully. I’d sit against a wall, or behind a group, not with them, and I wouldn’t give out my name without someone asking. I’d say to myself, ‘What am I doing? Nobody likes me. Nobody’s approaching me.’ I’d feel like crawling back into my shell. ‘They’re not my crowd,’ I’d say, even though I knew they really were. Then I’d go home, get back on the computer, and go for those who were unattainable, the young ones, those that I knew wouldn’t be attracted to me. And my self-esteem would be knocked down even more. ‘I hate men,’ I’d say.”

  I asked Fatima what changed.

  “The loneliness set in. I needed human contact, someone to hold my hand, to go to bat for me. I told myself I had to change. One day I just said to myself, ‘That’s it. I’ve had enough. I want someone to share my life with: to share my dreams, to share my hopes. I hate being alone. I want somebody to spend the nights with.’ Then I got the simplest answer inside my head. ‘You’re not going to get that just sitting here.’

  “It was like hitting a brick wall. Like, ‘Wham.’ The next time I went to an event, I saw Omar. I wished I could be as energetic as him—as outgoing. I wished I could approach someone and just say, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ I was determined to become more personable than that girl that used to sit in the chair against the wall. Then the same voice said, ‘Stop wishing. At these parties you’re supposed to connect.’

  “So I did. I used the three-second rule. I counted to three and walked right up to Omar and said, ‘Hey. How are you doing?’ Then I heard myself say, ‘Do you want to go on the dance floor?’”

  “Did it work?” I asked.

  “Yes. We got married the following July. That was three years ago.”

  “Any advice?” I asked them both.

  They nodded in unison. “Get started today.”

  EXERCISE: My Socializing Action Plan

  Taking the Initiative

  Take a moment to consider your favorite types of social activities:

  Dinners at home with close friends

  Parties

  Casual dining

  Fine dining

  Coffeehouses

  Sporting events

  Individual/pairs sports (golf, tennis, bowling, etc.)

  Team sports (softball, basketball, volleyball, etc.)

  Nature hikes/picnics/parks

  Music clubs (jazz, rock, R&B, etc.)

  Symphony/opera/ballet

  Theater

  Movies

  Outdoor festivals (cultural, music, flea markets, etc.)

  Dancing

  Nightclubs

  Sports bars

  Local bars/pubs

  Other:______

  Choose one activity from the list to create a social event around:______

  Whom will you invite?

  Your date and time:______

  How will you invite them? (In person? By phone? By e-mail? By written invitation?)

  On what day will you do the inviting?

  Are you going to ask your guests to bring friends? (Trick question: The only answer is yes!)

  Photocopy your socializing action plan and stick copies on your bathroom mirror and on your refrigerator door.

  2. “But I don’t have time.”

  You have to make time. Sure you work ten hours a day and commute 45 minutes each way, but what do you want? Where are your priorities? Cheryl Richardson, author of Life Makeovers, recommends scheduling “breathing room” every day so you can step back, reevaluate your priorities, and be sure that you’re working on what really matters. If you’re reading this book, one of your priorities is meeting someone to love. Don’t ignore this important part of your life! Set aside at least 15 minutes a day to phone or e-mail people and make plans. Call a friend on your way to lunch. Act on some aspect of your socializing action plan every single day, working toward your ultimate goal. Practice actually speaking to people rather than messaging them. (It’s much harder.)

  If you find it difficult at first to balance your action plan with other obligations or priorities in your life, find ways to combine the two. If, for example, exercising is a high priority for you, ask friends to join you on your exercise routine. Take a yoga class together, go swimming, or go for a walk or jog. If you have to go right home after work every day to take care of your dog, find a way to make this work for you. If you have friends or acquaintances with dogs, make dog play dates—and if you don’t have friends with dogs, head for the local dog run and make some.

  If you work long hours and aren’t ready to scale back, try to have fun on your lunch break. If friends work nearby, meet them at a restaurant. If you work in a large office building, invite colleagues out for lunch and ask them to invite other colleagues—there’s a good chance you won’t know all of them. If you’re flirting with someone through an Internet dating site and they work in the same geographical area, suggest meeting for lunch—it makes a great low-stress icebreaker. If you and your friends don’t have the energy to cook for a potluck dinner after work, host a takeout potluck or order food to be delivered.

  Maybe you don’t feel comfortable socializing, and your supposed lack of time is just a cover-up.

  If your weekends are filled with house or apartment projects, arrange home improvement parties with friends in similar situations, with the host responsible for feeding his or her guest workers. Some of the projects might involve putting up wallpaper, painting a room, or cleaning out the attic—things no one likes to do alone anyway.

  Time management solutions may not always be obvious, but if you’re determined to find someone to love it’s absolutely imperative that you make time to meet new people. If you find yourself still protesting, consider this: Maybe “I don’t have time” is just an excuse. Maybe, when you get right down to it, you don’t feel comfortable socializing, and your supposed lack of time is just a cover-up. Perhaps you’re intimidated by people. Maybe you’re short of money, and you’re embarrassed by it. Maybe you think you’re missing some basic etiquette skills: You’re not sure which fork to use first and don’t want to make a fool of yourself. If any of those sound familiar, just be honest with yourself, address the problem for what it is, and figure out a way around it. A simple Web search for etiquette and silverware will teach you the cutlery trick, and who knows, maybe your matched opposite doesn’t know her salad fork from her dessert fork either—or maybe she’d be happy to teach you. Prove your excuses wrong.

  3. “But I live in a place so small that the phone book’s one page long, and I already know everybody.”

  No matter how well you think you know a place and the people in it, there’s always more to learn. Wendy and I live in a hamlet with a population of approximately 200, located five miles from a village with a population of about 2,000. Between the two there’s a lot going on: church dinners, events at the library, dances, garden parties, Shakespeare nights, three country theater groups, at least two book clubs, a ski club, the annual fair, a yearly farm tour—and I could go on for a couple of pages. In fact, my first speaking engagement took place in the house of a young woman who organized a monthly film club.

  My daughter and I wandered into her little shop in the village and we struck up a conversation. I mentioned I was in the process of writing my first book, and she asked if I’d be interested in talking to her film club over snacks before the movie. I accepted, and duly spent 15 minutes discussing face-to-face communication. Talking to that tiny group in that small front room led directly to my putting on a small workshop, which led directly to my giving a seminar in a hotel ballroom, which led directly to my talking to 1,600 people at a national business convention a year and a half later. It’s called networking, and most people these days know how it’s done. You just have to learn that it works jus
t as well in your private life as it does in your business life.

  Circumstances are always changing, and people come and go, constantly presenting you with new opportunities for networking. But if you truly think you’ve exhausted all your resources, then spread your wings and look a little further away from home and your usual surroundings. Internet dating sites allow you to select the number of miles you’re willing to travel to meet people. Instead of ten, pick 100, or even 500. Or, although it seems drastic, you could move—as Laura does in the next story.

  4. “But I’ve just moved to town, and I don’t know a soul.”

  You should consider yourself lucky—there are so many people to meet! So much potential! Again, take the initiative and get involved. Look at listings in the local paper, listen to the local radio station, talk to people in stores, or just drive around and look for places that seem interesting.

  Let me tell you a story about a young woman I know.

  A year ago Laura was working as an event planner in Boston, renting a one-room apartment for $1,600 a month and blowing $100 every day eating out and taking taxis. Her life was a constant hustle, and it seemed like every guy she met was obsessed with his work and didn’t have time for her.

  Laura decided to make a change. At 28, she quit her job, gave up her apartment, and headed for the small village of Two Elms, which she’d visited a couple of times and fallen in love with. There she rented a large, renovated, ground-floor apartment in an old country house beside a lake, less than five minutes’ walk from the center of town. Her rent was less than half what she’d been paying in the city, and she could feed herself very nicely on less than $100 a week. Outside her window was a rambling garden, and the town itself was picture-perfect—the kind of place you see in the movies. But the move from Boston was a big leap of faith: Laura knew no one, and the job listings in the weekly paper rarely ran longer than an inch or two.

  Laura was a private person by nature, but she consciously went out of her way to be friendly to everyone she met, greeting strangers with a smile and introducing herself to everyone behind the counter at the local shops. “Hi, I’m Laura,” she’d say. “I just moved here.” Her friendliness paid off. One month after she handed in the keys to her apartment in Boston, Laura began a part-time job at the Book Nook, a little bookstore squeezed between an upscale bakery and an antiques shop.

  Sit in the middle. That’s where the popular people sit. That’s where you get noticed.

  After working there for a few weeks, Laura secured a second part-time job selling wrought-iron flower boxes and light fixtures at the Ironworks, a storefront owned by an artist who did creative welding. Laura found her new work life fun and easy compared to her life in Boston, and it gave her time to do other things. She joined the theater restoration committee, and wrote a book review for the Two Elms Times. By the end of her second month, she’d made a few friends and gotten to know several of the regular customers at both stores, including Christina, an Austrian woman about twice Laura’s age, who raised horses in the hills north of the village. Laura also had her eye on a young man named Jason who worked afternoons at the town pharmacy.

  As luck would have it, Christina tumbled into the Book Nook one Friday evening just as Laura was closing up, while at exactly the same moment Jason crossed the road and disappeared into the antique shop next door. The perceptive horsewoman caught Laura watching Jason through the glass and couldn’t resist grinning at her new friend. “So, you like that young man, huh?”

  “Ah, well, he is attractive. …” Laura was blushing.

  “And what are you going to do about it?” asked Christina in her characteristically straightforward manner.

  “I-I don’t know,” said Laura. “Nothing?”

  Luckily for Laura, Christina wasn’t just an expert at training horses; she was also quite a hand at roping in the fellas. “Come,” she said, grabbing Laura by the arm, “let’s go to the pub and discuss.”

  At the pub around the corner, Christina headed for the bar. “You find a table and I will get drinks—beer okay?” Laura nodded and went off to find a table in the far corner of the pub. Christina joined her minutes later carrying two sparkling pints, but she didn’t put them down. Instead, she gestured to another empty table. “Over there; it’s better.” Laura grabbed her things and followed her friend to the table, which happened to be smack in the center of the room.

  “You want to meet new people?” Christina said.

  “Sure,” Laura replied.

  Christina leaned toward her. “Then you must always sit in the middle. That’s where the popular people sit. That’s where you get noticed. It is the same at horse shows. If you want the judges to notice you, place your horse in the middle. It is psychological. One year at school in Innsbruck, where I grew up, they played this game with the seats in the classroom because they said the people who sit in the center are usually the most popular. They moved us around so everyone got a chance to sit in the center, and do you know what? At the end of the year everyone was popular. It’s true. Now I tell all my riding students to head for the middle.

  “Now, this young man,” Christina continued. “Tell me about him.”

  “I can’t,” Laura answered. “I don’t know anything but his name. I don’t even know if he’s available.”

  “He is. His boss boards his horses at my place and he never stops talking. Now, have you ever spoken to him?”

  “I had to ask him for advice at the pharmacy a few weeks ago when I had pinkeye.” Laura laughed, sipping her beer and beginning to loosen up. “I looked gorgeous!”

  “If you have been here for two months, then I think it is time you give a dinner party,” pronounced Christina, slapping her hand on the table. “And you are going to invite Jason.”

  “No, no, I can’t.” Laura put her glass down.

  “Yes. You are going to find a way to talk to him and here is what you are going to say: ‘I’m having a dinner party to celebrate being here for two months, and I would love for you to come.’ And here is what you call the kicker.” Christina paused for effect. “Then say, ‘Please feel free to bring a friend.’ Then pause and add, ‘If you wish.’”

  “But I can’t just walk right up to him.”

  “Yes, you can. You see him, you count to three, and on three you go up and speak. Just like going over a steeplechase jump. If you hesitate, you fail. You think about it, you fail. You feel afraid and your horse can tell, and it will shy away or just refuse. Same with men and women: Count one, two, three, and go. It’s the three-second rule. My students all know this rule. You are not asking him out on a date, for heaven’s sake; you are asking him to socialize—it is different and it is normal. Then you have him where you want him.” She stopped and tapped her empty glass. “Another beer?”

  Laura hesitated. Christina clicked her tongue as if to urge on a horse and Laura looked up.

  “Oops! One, two, three,” she said, counting off on her fingers, then answered confidently, “Yes, I’d love one.”

  Although the outcome of this story isn’t the real point, of course you want to know what happened. Laura followed Christina’s advice and invited Jason to her party, telling him to bring a friend if he wanted. He came alone, which suggested that he was interested in Laura. They dated for a while, but they didn’t fully click. Laura, however, eventually found her matched opposite—Jason’s cousin, whom she might never have met if she hadn’t followed Christina’s plan, three-second rule and all.

  The real point of this story is to show you that regardless of circumstance you can always find ways to make connections. And you can benefit from Christina’s great advice. She showed Laura how to engineer a meeting with a man she was interested in, without it looking as if she were blatantly chasing him, something some guys still don’t handle well. Rather than be pushy (which wasn’t in her nature anyway), she simply set up a congenial situation where Jason could do the chasing if he were so inclined.

  There Is No Rejection, Only
Selection

  One of the main reasons people are uncomfortable with dating and reaching out socially is the fear of rejection, but it’s a mistake to look at it this way. As you search for your matched opposite, you are going to spend a fair bit of time dating. The search is a numbers game; statistically, approximately one out of every 16 eligible people you meet can be your matched opposite. You will likely experience what you may choose to label as rejection, as well as doing some so-called rejecting yourself. This is most apparent in online dating, where you might scroll through dozens of profiles before seeing any that interest you—and of course, the reverse applies as well. Some of the major sites have a counter showing how many people have viewed your profile since you last logged on. If you looked and saw that 130 people had read your posting but not a single one has been moved to contact you, you could think of it as a crushing rejection or simply realize that you probably weren’t a good match for any of those people.

  And as I said earlier, rejection isn’t personal; it’s part of the natural selection process. You wouldn’t walk into a furniture store and buy the first sofa you saw. Instead, you’d start shopping with some general idea of what you want, then try out one after another until you found one that felt right. Most of the ones you’d reject would be perfectly fine sofas that would be great in someone else’s living room—just not yours. You go through the same process of selection when buying a car, a home, and just about anything else of importance to your life, so it’s absurd to think that you’d settle for the first man or woman that came along. Unless you’re one of those extremely lucky souls who meets their matched opposite early, settling for someone you don’t really click with would be downright foolish.