I wanted to share a quick story about Bob and how we broke him out of the Friend Zone.
WARNING: Kid's don't try this at home!
So his name was Bob. Bob was about 5'8 200 pounds and the funniest guy you ever want to meet. Bob had lot's of friends...lots of female friends. One friend in particular was Mary. Mary was his "perfect" woman. She was funny, caring, beautiful....she was everything to Bob except she wasn't his girlfriend.
Bob has been Mary's best friend for the past year and a half. That is a long time to have feelings for someone. Bob was miserable. He couldn't see his life without this woman being in it ...even if it was just a friendship. Bob however had enough and called me looking for some advice. The pain of not having more with Mary was just too much to handle.
I told Bob I had a plan and it would take about 30 days to pull it off! I told Bob to go watch this movie and basically we were going to pull off the same stunt. Well 'sort of'. That movie was from the 80's called "The boyfriend School."
The movie in a nut shell was about cartoonist Gus Kubicek (Steve Guttenberg) who is a good guy, but he suffers from a poor track record with women. That's where his sister, Lizzie (Shelley Long), comes in. She's a successful romance novelist, and she knows what women want. When Lizzie remakes her mild-mannered brother into a hunky biker with an exotic accent, Gus finally gets a shot at the girl of his dreams: journalist Emily Pear (Jami Gertz). But, when the truth comes out, will she stick with him?
The problem with Mary was that she didn't see Bob as "Boyfriend" material. So after a tiny investigation into what was going on I found out Bob wasn't making a "boyfriend" impression on Mary. She didn't see him in that light and to be fair this is all Bob's fault. There are many different universes of the friend zone. Bob though was in the classic kind of Friend Zone. You know....the psychological place in which you put yourself when you behave like a friend with the person you like, because you don't have the courage to behave otherwise.
We put Bob in the gym for 30 days, shaved off his beard and got him dressing better. At this point Bob is feeling like a million bucks, a changed man....but will it be enough to attract Mary into his den of desire? Mary started seeing changes in Bob almost immediately. Bob kept asking me if he could just sit her down at dinner one day and confess all his feelings to her. I of course told Bob...HELL NO. It was clear that this needed to be done right as it should of been from the start.
We needed to spark attraction inside her for Bob. Confessing feelings after a year and half is not attractive....most women will feel sorry for you and even become more a friend not a lover. Bob understood this and kept pushing forward. So at the end of 30 days I sent in my "ringer." She is a friend of mine but super hot. Not an 8 but a 10 1/2 All we did was send her into the same coffee shop that Bob was hanging out in so that they could bump into each other in front of Mary. The look on Mary's face when these two embraced was priceless!
Mary looked as if she had just seen a ghost. There was Bob embracing with this "hot" woman in a way she have never seen before. To be fair...I didn't know if Mary was getting attracted to Bob or if she felt her "friendship" being threatened. This could of easily backfired but Bob was willing to take the shot. Mary asked about the woman. All I told Bob was to say this, "That was my past coming back to haunt me." That was it. Mary was blown away. When another woman signs off on a man it's a done deal.
The next couple of weeks I told Bob to stop spending so much time with Mary. Mary of course got frustrated and finally cracked. She started treating Bob more like a guy who she wanted to date then a best friend. Bob was in shock....it worked. However.... a strange feeling came over Bob. His confidence was through the roof like never before in his entire life. The experience itself changed Bob to the point where he figured out Mary had been stopping him from living his life.
In the end it wasn't Mary who he wanted so badly to get...it was his self confidence. It's been awhile since I have spoken to Bob. So I sent him an email the other day and it appears he is dating someone and it isn't Mary.
Way to go Bob!
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