Yesterday while I was on my computer, I happened to go on Facebook and saw that it was a friend of mine’s birthday. I realized that I hadn’t spoken to him in a long time, and for no other reason than I had gotten selfish and busy and that a year had passed before I knew it.
In realizing that, I thought “I miss talking to him. He’s a really good friend and a good person.” So I decided to post a happy birthday message to him on there (his birthday is on the 22nd). I didn’t hear from him all day, which surprised me because he was kind of a wiseass and a funny guy, and I would’ve expected some kind of response from him.
So at 8:30 pm last night, I received an email from a guy whose name is very familiar to me. It said, “David, I think you should know that Ron passed away.” I sat there and just stared at the computer in shock.
He was 52 years old. I was wondering how it happened. I mean, we just IM’d about a month ago.
Well, apparently, it was one of those weird and ugly twists of fate. My friend Ron was walking through Central Park, got hit by a speed biker, fell down, cracked some ribs, and hit his head. When you land on your head in the right spot, it’s always trouble.
He spent a couple weeks in the ICU — brain swelling, bleeding, in and out of consciousness and incoherent. He couldn’t fight it and the doctors couldn’t fix him.
I spent the next little while just thinking about Ron. I remember every time we hung out.
I remember his generosity. I remember that he believed that every time you have a house guest, you always take them out to dinner and show them a good time.
I also remember his honesty. When I was in my last relationship, he was one of the first ones to tell me I wasn’t feeling the things I should have felt, and that there was no reason to continue the relationship.
This blog today, however, was not written for all of you to say, “Sorry for your loss.” I am going to another funeral tomorrow also, but I don’t want to hear, “Sorry for your loss David” from any of you. Not once. This blog is your wakeup call.
Here is what I want each and every one of you to do this weekend for me and for yourself. Put together a list of all the great people in your life, and ask yourself if you’re in contact with them.
Forget the reasons why you’re not talking to them, and spend the weekend reconnecting with all of them. Call them, email them or text them. Take the time to get in touch with someone who’s a good friend but with whom you may have lost touch.
Forget the reasons why. Life happens.
Doing this is more important this weekend than thinking with your penis and going out trying to get laid. For the women, this is more important this weekend than trying to figure out how to get the right men to approach you.
It reminds me of the Mitch Album book “One More Day.” You’re not going to get one more day with the person who meant a lot to you. Shit happens. Life happens. So stop waiting like this is the endless ride, and start reconnecting.
I don’t want to see one “I’m sorry for your loss” comments today, and if you do I’ll know you didn’t read this whole blog. What I want to hear from you instead is, “Thank you for my gain. thank you for reminding me of the importance of reconnecting with a good friend.”
“Thank you for my gain David” is all I want to hear. Have a great Friday!
I’m sitting here right now deleting 219 unopened emails from my Facebook page. As I’m sitting here doing that, the IM box keeps popping up with all sorts of “friends” (whom I don’t really know) wanting to chat with me.
“Hey David! Are you there?”
“Hey David, Can I ask you a question?”
“Hey David – I have a situation with a woman right now … ”
Things like that are popping up nonstop on my screen. It’s really funny that there are all these ways to contact me in ways I don’t want to be contacted.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love hearing from people, but I have one email address — david@davidwygant.com — that I want people to use to contact me.
People will be on my website, but for some reason or other decide to contact me via Facebook.
It’s not just Facebook. I get things from MySpace. I get things from Twitter. I get them from all over the place. I get people who just randomly text me nonstop saying things like “Hey, how are you?”
What is so funny is that in this age of communication where people are so good at communicating via all these different methods — Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc — that people still can’t say hello to each other in a store. Pretty wild, isn’t it?
Can you imagine us all walking around with laptops around our necks? Every time we’d pass someone, their Facebook page immediately shows up on our laptop screen. So instead of actually talking to them, you can just send them an IM as they’re shopping in the grocery store aisles.
You could be sitting in traffic and, all of a sudden, you notice you’re attracted to the person driving in the car next to you. You could then immediately jump on their MySpace page, IM them and say “Hey you! I’m in the car next to you. Want to chat?”
People don’t do this in real life. Seems like everyone is good in the cyberworld, but lousy in reality, and the fact is that reality is the only thing that matters.
The other day I was walking near these two kids who were about ten or twelve years old. They were texting their friends and ignoring each other.
I remember when I was a kid, we used to go on roadtrips all the time. We actually used to look out the window and see what was going on around us. Now, kids stare at DVD screens in the car and text their friends.
It’s amazing how many people complain nonstop about how they’re not meeting anyone. The reason a lot of people aren’t meeting anyone is because they have their head up their electronic ass all day long!
As most of you know, I’ve been looking for an iPhone. One guy said to me that if I get the 3G iPhone, that it may not be compatible with the T-Mobile network making the mobile web service work a lot more slowly. I told him I didn’t really care because I don’t need the mobile web nonstop.
I like to connect with people, say hello to my friends and neighbors, and get to know new people. Also, what ever happened to learning what someone is all about as a person? I don’t need to read it on a Facebook page or a MySpace page. I can actually walk up to people and find out more information in five minutes than I ever would on their Facebook page or MySpace page.
When people write in cyberspace, it is often a bunch of lies. Everyone writes as the person they want to be, not the person they really are. Everybody makes themselves sound so perfect, and they do it on dating sites as well too.
So, really, think about the amount of hours you spend IMing people, texting people and trying to get in touch with old friends. Think about all the time you spend reconnecting with people whom you really haven’t connected with in so long.
We’re all looking for those great friendships or that great love, and we’re doing everything we possibly can to find them. We’re reconnecting on Facebook with people we dated twenty years ago to see if there’s anything to be rekindled with that old flame.
In reality, though, how much time are you spending every day actually going out and meeting people? This is what I’m teaching you here. It’s about the spark you can find in everyday life. It’s about living life and not spending so much time in cyberspace.
As I sit here wasting time not only checking out all the useless emails on Facebook, I want to also tell people to stop tagging people, hitting them with water guns, and all the other stupid applications that Facebook offers. Who cares if someone wants to squirt you with a water gun?
Great! Come to my house, talk to me, and then let’s get into an old-fashioned water gun fight instead of you tagging me with an imaginary water gun in this imaginary world called Facebook.
Are you ready to put down the Facebook pages and meet women out and about in the real world? Summer is a great time to meet people at street fairs.
Here is a conversation we had over dinner at this weekends bootcamp. This will give you a good idea of what my bootcamps are like, and you’ll also get to hear how Khiem and I answer questions from clients! And you heard it here first.
Eagles and the Chargers in the Super Bowl.
Client: So are you opposed to the idea of the first contact being through texting?
David: Yeah.
Client: Sometimes I feel like on the phone I can’t ever get my rap together. And nowadays, no one ever answers their phone!
Khiem: David’s a bit different from me. I don’t mind a quick text once in a while. I don’t mind the first contact to be via text but there needs to be a phone call very quickly after that.
David: I do like texting. Khiem, you just like to talk on the phone longer than I do. The other day Khiem got on the phone at 5:30 and rumor has it he wasn’t off of it until 11:30 or 12:00! When he wants to have a phone conversation, you might as well make plans for yourself for lunch, dinner, and a snack! It will be a while!
Khiem: With the girl that I’m seeing, I made a rule that I wasn’t going to talk to her every day. So then every time we talk, she wants more. I try to give her enough to last her a couple of days. I don’t want to talk to her every day!
Client: When you’re seeing somebody, how much do you think that they want to hear from you?
Khiem: I set a rule about what I want. Do you remember how I said earlier that you should make sure that you tell people how much you expect from them? Let them know what you want so that they know what to expect from you.
I tell women up front that I like my independence and that calling every day is too much for me. I tell her that I want her to grow and have her own life. I don’t like clingy girls, and I tell women that straight up. If you like clingy girls, that’s cool, but that’s not who I am, and I won’t do it.
And because I’ve laid that out to her, she accepts it. You have to tell them up front. For me, we can talk every two or three days – no more than that.
Client: But when you do talk to her, you have meaningful conversations, right?
Khiem: Oh yeah, it’s always meaningful, and many times it’s arousing as well. Not every phone call would include dirty talk, but many of them do.
Client: Do you think that there are special considerations when you are dating younger women?
David: How young are they? (laughter)
Client: Not like students, I’d say around 30. That’s the absolute youngest I would ever go.
Khiem: You have to understand their world.
David: Yeah.
Khiem: Try to understand their world, because each woman at different ages has different expectations in life. Based on their expectations and lifestyle, you can work from that angle.
You don’t want to try to accommodate yourself entirely to her. But if you’re dating a woman who is a lawyer or does something corporate, then you know that she has a busy schedule. You know that you have to set up a date at least three or four days in advance – if not a week.
But if you know that she’s more active and spontaneous, you can call her more often and be more spur-of-the-moment with your dates. That’s how you tailor your communication style to the woman that you are interested in.
At a younger age, she has a higher level of distractions. Women in their twenties have a high level of distractions, particularly around 23, 24, 25.
Client: 23 is like insane.
David: At 23, it’s like a Labrador Retriever on the beach! “Should I play? Should I sniff ass? Should I go? Should I get the ball? Oh my god, nobody wants to play with me? I’m going to go lie down and look sad for 20 minutes.”
Khiem: Yeah, at 28 you start to get settled. 28-year-olds still haven’t fully matured yet, but around that age they start to settle down. But again, what is she doing? What kind of life does she live? Is she working? Is she still in party-mode?
You can meet women in their thirties that are still in party-mode.
David: Oh yeah!
Khiem: But you can also meet 24-year-olds who are out of that, done with partying and looking for something more.
David: Let’s take it a bit deeper. I speak to all women in the same way, because I know that I attract a certain type of woman. I’m very careful about who I attract into my life. I like a certain type of woman.
Sometimes someone might slip through the cracks – because the sex is great or whatever. There are certain women you’ll put up with more shit from because you’re just in the mood for that type of sexual relationship or something.
But most of the time, if you like a certain type of woman, you’re used to dealing with that type of woman. Maybe you don’t like the hard, ball-busting, lawyer type of woman, so you avoid them. Maybe you prefer the creative types – or whatever it might be. You’re used to that type of woman, and that’s what you attract.
But I always tell a guy that if you’re looking for a woman a lot younger than you, you’re going to encounter a whole other language.
Client 1: I feel like on some of these online dating sites, the girls my age are always looking for men aged 28 to 45. What does that mean?
Client 2: What’s wrong with that? What site is that again? (laughter)
Client 1: But what does that really mean? Does that mean that they just want someone that is mature and confident?
Khiem: Probably. Usually what they mean by older is not so much age, but someone who is comfortable with themself.
A lot of younger girls who are looking for older men are tired of the guys their age who have no clue. They are looking for a guy who is really secure in his own identity. He might be established as well, but that’s usually coming from the maturity of being secure in yourself. Generally that’s what they mean when they are looking for older guys.
Client 1: Okay, I just didn’t know if I should take it at literal value, like, okay they are just looking for someone that is older.
David: It means that they are pretty much open. They are looking for somebody who knows himself. They are tired of meeting man-boys. They’ve dated them. They are sick and tired of guys that are indecisive.
But they don’t really realize that the older guys are often just as indecisive! We have more life experience to share with them, which they like, but age doesn’t necessarily mean you’re secure with yourself.
Every time I post an article about things women do wrong online, I get tons of angry responsive emails from women who feel I neglect to mention either that men do the very same wrong things or that men do other equally bad wrong things online. The thing is that I am just one person, and it takes me time to create all this information I put in my articles. (more…)
I get email practically every day from people who are doing online dating who tell me that they do not have trouble making what seem to be good connections with people online, but who have very little success once they meet those people in person. This is an issue surrounding online dating that does not get discussed all that often, however, it is important to talk about because you want to minimize the amount of time you spend talking online to people with whom you will not connect in real life. (more…)
Something really funny happened today that I think you’re going to love hearing about.
I don’t know what you all think of MySpace or Facebook, but in my opinion, social networking sites are borderline weird – especially if you’re like me and have dated somebody who basically lived for them.
Earlier this year, I was actually dating a Facebook/MySpace junkie. So today, Rey was on the computer when he started laughing really loudly. When I asked him what was up, he told me that I had been removed from her friend list.
I was removed from both her MySpace and Facebook friend lists. Is this elementary school? Have I been banned from the tree house? Have I been eliminated? (more…)
First, you have to look at your mutual friends. Obviously, you couldn’t be looking at her profile if you don’t have a mutual friend. You’re not cruising Facebook – you’re just looking through other people’s friends. (more…)
