The JKTC Café

Just returned from holidays, guys. I've been to Malta. Great place to visit. Don't go there for the beaches, though, there aren't many. If you're interested in an island with a rich history, architecture, nature and sea life, then by all means put Malta on your to-visit list.

Anyway, my holidays never consist of relaxing only. They have this tendency to turn into a very journey through the Self. As were these holidays on Malta. I booked my holidays with a group of people I didn't know. Fifteen persons; about half of them girls. Well, what I did right was that I started talking to the girls right at the airport. Almost no guy does this (why on earth not?? I do not understand this anymore). What didn't go so good was that I didn't manage to create a connection with all of them; two 18 year old girls didn't really respond to me and I failed to tune in to them. Which was a pity, since one of them was flat out the cutest of all.

I was about to never mind that, but after a few days the following happened. Two guys (among which my roommate) appeared really humorous, and even more so together. Eventually, they were kind of the most attention demanding element of the group. This started to attract the 18-year-old girl I just told of; eventually my roommate managed to 'get her'. Just by being funny, nothing more. Which goes to show how attractive humor can be.

Anyway, I started to have this nagging feeling: why am I not in the spotlights? I mean, I don't think I should be on top of the world. But should I be content with just some place in the margin? Obviously not. However, joking around at the level these two guys were doing proved to be quite demanding. It also got me kind of confused.

I could have done some things I didn't do. For example, I could have approached Maltese girls (they came across as not being very open to tourists on a romantic level, so this would have been a good practice scenario). However, that probably wouldn't have worked out very well for the cohesion of the group, and I wanted to have a nice vacation with a group of people, not just as an individual. Besides, for reasons I'll explain to you later I wasn't very interested in pursuing a romantic relationship.

So, I have a question for you guys. If in a situation in which other guys demand a lot of attention, what should you do? You obviously don't need to be as funny as them. On the other hand, wouldn't that be a good ambition? And if you feel some people are demanding a little too much attention, how can you put this to a stop, so you (and maybe even other people) get the room you deserve?

In other words, how to be an alpha type of male when others are being this as well?

Hi guys,

So, I'm on this dating site. Well, actually, meeting girls in real life is much more fun, but when you're talking to persons of the other sex on a dating site, at least you both know what you're up to. And if the other person is available or not, to name but one example.

Anyway, whatever my reasons are, I find that chatting/mailing with girls is much different from contact in real life. Firstly, a lot of them tend to not respond to messages. Which of course leaves the 'why' question. Another big question is: what am I going to say to her? Obviously a 'hi, let me introduce myself to you' isn't going to work! Well, not out of the box, that is.

So, what I do is this. Obviously I write only to those girls which have a profile that triggers my interest (which I do not base on photo's only ). In my message, I firstly make some kind of humorous remark about her profile (tough man! I sure wish I was born a stand-up comedian). Secondly, I ask her something about herself.

But what seems to work best is my own current profile. Currently, I only have one photo on it, which of course I should expand. However, what's more interesting is the text I've put on the profile. When prompted for what my 'ideal match' criteria would be, I was like: well, let's fill in what I honestly want. So right now it reads something like this (translated from my native language, so might sound a little awkward here and there):

"Describe your ideal match:

Oh, that's a question I'll have answered quickly. You are the most fascinating woman to walk the earth. And you are well aware of this. You are absolutely stunning, because of your long brown hair and dark eyes, or blond hair and blue eyes. But because beauty is common, your personality is fantastic as well. You're not shallow at all, but a little unpredictable, and maybe you're even somewhat of a quick tempered person. And you're so sweet. You never try to command me, you're very very creative or just appreciative of expressions of creativity, and you think about life instead of just taking everything for granted."

Needless to say, I had lots of fun putting this on my profile and imagining every visitor reading this - I sure hope the looks on her face are as good as I imagine them. Anyway, I get some responses to this statement - yep, women messaging the man, and not the other way around. Me likes.

So that's what I do. What do you guys do? Do you visit dating sites? What are your 'tactics'?

Hi guys,

You might remember me asking a question about overcoming social anxiety, or shyness, as I called it. Well, time for an update, I guess. There's something interesting down the road.

So, last week, I really kicked myself into gear. Went to the mall with this one target: to stop a girl (or more at one time) and ask them for a trivial something. I asked for the time. Found out something nice: when I translate the sentence "do you have the time?" (feel free to fill in more polite versions of them, English is not my native language) literally into Dutch, I have something which can either mean "do you know the time?" or "do you have a moment?" Confusion, I like that. I used this to my advantage ("No, I don't mean THAT. Just..." always good for at least a smile).

My personal target was to get used to talking to people at random. One never knows when such a thing might come in handy (ahem!).

I talked to about 45 girls that way. With some of them, I had longer conversations.

To my big surprise, I suddenly felt walking up to a girl something I really wanted to do. Not anything to really be afraid of anymore. Of course, I'm not yet a hero regarding this matter... Still, I'm starting to get this 'craving' to just go up to the other sex. I find myself being bold enough to maintain solid eye contact, too. Before, I found this too scary. Right now, I know the surge of energy one gets with prolonged eye contact is not something to be afraid of. And frankly, I don't care if a woman doesn't react anymore; I probably won't see her ever again.

I know life can be an emotional rollercoaster, especially when there's things like these at stake. Still, I'm glad I'm going through this. Just because it feels great. People comment about it, too. My dad asked me if I had been drinking... Well, that's just cool.

Just wanted to share this with you guys. Hope you find my story interesting.

So, what are your experiences? Do you recognize these kinds of feelings? Do they lessen over time, or does flirting (or other kinds of social interaction, for that matter) always yield this much energy?

Cheers,

Johannes

'nother question to pick your brain, guys,

Oh yeah, yesterday night, I finally had it 'going' again, so to say. After a drought spell of more years than you'd want to know, I finally kissed a girl again. OK, the atmosphere was not OK, and the kiss felt weird; either she is a bad kisser or she realized she made a mistake along the way.

(I learned how to kiss from a girl who's kissing technique I still rever very much, so I think I know when to acknowledge a girl is a good kisser or not; yesterday's girl certainly didn't made any butterflies go do what they do best, but we'll see what will happen in the future)

So, that was the good. The bad is: she was the one that initiated the kissing. And not me. Now, this happened to me some weeks ago as well (not with the same girl, mind you): I just didn't know when and how to start kissing. I was talking to her and she seemed interested, but not overly. I started physically escalating, and she didn't object, nor did she start touching me. So I got confused: should I get closer to her, go for a kiss? And eventually, she took the lead...

What would you guys say? I know there are some 'methods' to figure out whether she's ready to be kissed or not, like what David D. says. However, I just don't seem to be able to correctly judge her 'readiness'. How did you start to get 'a feeling for it'?

Cheers,

Johannes

Hi guys, I have this question...

In the past, when it came to talking to women, my strategy was rather simple: I just didn't do a thing. Whenever I saw a nice woman, I started to wait for the 'right' moment to start talking to her, which of course never came. No, wait, sometimes it DID came, but then I felt so terribly awkward that the conversation really didn't lead anywhere. Oh, and don't even get me started on the few women that clearly invited me to go talk to them. The number of times I totally screwed up...

When I decided I really had to start WORKING on a different attitude (see my introduction in 'Introduce yourself'), I eventually came across some 'drills' that were meant to diminish shyness. Now I know a number of people advice against overly forced approach drills, but what I've found actually does yield some results.

Now, I want to radically change my mentality. No longer will I wait for some fairy-like woman that will come over and talk to me. I want to be able to do what a man's supposed to do: take initiative. I already have experienced that this attitude helps me in other fields as well (with coworkers for example).

What I did was this. I went out into my city's center, and started approaching women, asking them for directions. This works, but not very much; it takes away some of the fear, it gives me some confidence, and there it stops.

The other day, I read some other advice: just go out, and say 'Hi!' to all women you encounter. Nothing more, nothing less. I can see this might work; it feels so horribly awkward, that I didn't yet manage to try it out. Yet, my guess is that the awkwardness is the strength of this little 'drill'; maybe doing this for a day really does diminish social shyness to a great extent.

So, the questions I have for you guys, is this one: have you practiced on this shyness thing? What did work for you, and what didn't? Did you feel any of the 'awkwardness' I just described? What did you do with that? Because this very awkwardness really is keeping me from going out and doing it: what if the feeling is a warning to me that this might be not a good thing to do, might even be counter-productive?

Love to hear your comments!

Cheers,

Johannes

Hi guys,

I'm Johannes and have been on the newsletter for some time now. Am quite unexperienced with women. Of course, this is not out of free will. Had some bad experiences in the past (heart broken several times, you know the drill...), which made me more and more a wimp with women. This mentality of "let's try to be as nice as possible and hope she'll fall for me", ouch, what a horrible misconception it is, and yet what a hard-to-avoid trap too...

Some time ago (2 yrs or so) I got to know the 'dating community'. I didn't become involved in it, but tried out some stuff, mainly to fight my shyness with women. And then I found out that 'shyness towards women' really isn't the problem, it's more a shyness towards everybody, a feeling of social awkwardness. So, I decided to take some steps. Or, did I? It's becoming more and more an automatic process: I just can't keep going on the old way, the 'new way' is so much better. Just going out and 'doing' it feels good; sitting lazily at home feels more stupid by the day.

Everytime, every single time I am somewhere, doesn't matter where, I see all these men going out of their way to be socially awkward, weird, creepy... Just to impress their peers, or women. While all you need is a social attitude. And that's what I'm looking to develop more.

Becoming a 'player' isn't my goal per se, but becoming the social, loveable guy is. And of course, such a man also has skills with women. I find skills with women to be more rewarding than just plain social skills. But from the one comes the other.

So that's me!

Cheers,

Johannes