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!

“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.

Check this out and be inspired:)

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.

Are you ready for the twist? Here are 8 of the most irritating online behaviors committed by men:

1. Athletic & Fit?: It’s time that all men realized that they are not Peyton Manning or Marvin Harrison. They’re not an Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer. Your body type is exactly what it is. So you really need to look in the mirror and make a determination of how you really look, because when you say “athletic and fit” in your online profile and only put up dazzling head shots of yourself, a woman is expecting a swimmer’s body to accompany that dazzling face. When what shows up instead is a dazzling face with a middle-aged body, the expression on a woman’s face is usually one of discomfort. When you post an accurate full-body photograph of yourself, you’ve already been exposed. Then you just let women make the choice if they are interested or not. It’s that simple. Lying about your body type never produces good results.

2. Stop Being A Salesman: When you contact a woman online, do not send her a cut and paste email telling her all the reasons why she should want to have a relationship with you, why you’re a gift to mankind and why she is a fool if she doesn’t answer your email. She can read your profile if she chooses. Your profile is intended to intrigue her. It’s not a sales brochure of all the reasons she needs to be in a relationship with someone she hasn’t even met yet. When you send a woman a message online, say something intriguing that will make her want to go and read your profile. Women do not want to read a cut and past email telling her how amazing you think you are. Let her find that out for herself.

3. Respect Her Age Range: If you’re a 50 year old man looking at a 25 year old woman’s profile that says she is looking for a man between the ages of 25 and 35, then you should not contact this woman. Period. You need to respect a woman’s stated age range for the men she’s looking to meet (give or take no more than five years). Nothing turns a woman off more than having her Father’s friends chasing her online. If a woman says she wants to date someone who is no more than five years older or younger than she, then she does not want to date someone twice her age. Men get visually impaired when they see pictures of beautiful women. Some men somehow think they have the right to date hot younger women half their age. Now there are some men can do this . . . but online is not the right place to try and do that. In online dating, you don’t stand a chance of dating women if you are outside their stated age range. Even if you would be able to completely dazzle a woman in person, online you’ll just be viewed as an old guy chasing younger women. If you want to meet younger women, get out of the house and dazzle them with your charm and wit – you’ll stand a much better chance.

4. Read Her Profile!: I’ve lost count of the number of women who email me saying “David, what is up with all these men who don’t read our profiles? I get so many men who wink at me when my profile clearly says ‘NO WINKS!’” Nothing turns a woman off more than a man who does not read her profile. Women are all about an emotional connection. So when you contact them, pick out something interesting in their profile and respond to it. By cutting and pasting a form letter to women without having read their profile, you are simply wasting your time. Online dating works, but you have to put a little effort into it by doing things like reading a woman’s profile so she knows you made some effort.

5. Nix The “Possession Pictures”: Before some of you get angry about this one, understand that I’ve ripped women on this same picture issue for putting up certain kinds of pictures with their friends or pictures of them from a distance. Men tend to put up pictures of their possessions – everything from their car to their Super Bowl tickets. The fact is that women don’t care about your possessions when they’re looking at an online profile. Now, granted, some women are looking for men to take care of them, but women still want to be able to see who you are when they look at your online profile. So put pictures up of you in different situations. Just be sure any picture you post is clear, up close, and current! If you have no hair, don’t put pictures up of yourself with a full head of hair. It’s just not going to work. Once again, you are who you are. There’s no need to go into salesman mode to get to meet women. There are plenty of women to meet out there – so represent yourself accurately and you’ll find them.

6. No Email Stalking: You contacted her once, and she didn’t respond. Why? Well perhaps she didn’t like what you wrote to her. Perhaps she’s busy. Perhaps there’s no reason at all. It doesn’t matter. If a woman doesn’t respond to your first email to her, email her again a week or ten days later just in case there was some snafu the first time (and so you won’t have to wonder if there was some snafu the first time). Doing this is perfectly fine. To send a woman a barrage of increasingly nasty emails for four or five days asking why she isn’t responding to your emails (or something similarly nasty), however, is behavior guaranteed to get a woman to NEVER want to communicate with you or see you. It’s frankly tantamount to email stalking. Two emails with no response equals you needing to move on to someone else.

7. Lose The One-Liner: I can’t tell you how many women have forwarded me emails they’ve received from men online whose first contact with them is something akin to a “hello” subject line with a one-line email body containing his phone number and an invitation to call him. It’s usually something like “Sally, give me a call sometime – my number is 301-555-5555.” How do men expect women to respond to this – by calling them? If a total stranger on the Internet sent you their phone number and asked you to call them sometime, you wouldn’t call them either. Women like to be intrigued and pursued a little bit. By sending this one-liner email, you did nothing to intrigue them. Get creative in your first email to women you meet online, and they’ll be offering their phone numbers to you.

8. Don’t Be An IM Stalker: Some online dating sites allow you to instant message with people you meet. This can be great! If you’ve emailed a woman several times and she’s never responded, however, do not start instant messaging that woman every time she gets online. You’re going to freak her out! Allow someone to answer you (or not answer you), but don’t become so obsessed over one person. Take a look at Yahoo! Personals. There’s TONS of people to date on there. TONS! So don’t start stalking one person with instant messages, and making them wish they would have never tried online dating in the first place. Respect when someone is not attracted to you or interested in you.

Online dating is fun. It also may be challenging at times. The best thing to do is to think of it as a party on the Internet, and don’t engage in behaviors online that you would never engage in at a real-life party.

If you want more online dating tips and/or a way to make your profile and contacts better, send me an email. I’ve told you here what to avoid doing . . . but there’s plenty you can do to make yourself a more successful online dater.

1. Take Action And Keep The Momentum Going: One of the biggest things I stress to people when they are dating online is to make a meeting happen with people you meet as soon as possible. Don’t write emails back and forth for two weeks. Don’t wait ten days before you will give someone your phone number. If you’re interested in someone, then you need to remember that online dating is a momentum based thing. The person in whom you are interested may be corresponding with six, seven or ten other people. You want to be the one that sticks out among the group. You want to be the person who is full of action. So immediately, the minute after you have exchanged emails twice, get a phone number, talk on the phone and set up a meeting. Set up something very simple. Go meet for a cup of coffee. Take a walk with your dog. Pick something really easy.

Online dating is dating by the numbers. So don’t go back and forth forever with someone via email or phone before you have your first meeting. You don’t want to do that. If you’re emailing back and forth with someone and enjoying it, then get on the phone with them because it is all about momentum. If you continue to just email back and forth you are going to lose the momentum.

2. Real Chemistry Happens In Person: A problem in online dating is that most of the time you are not going to have the chemistry with someone in person that you do over the phone or via email, so you always want to keep your first meeting simple. You want the meeting to happen quickly, and you want to make sure that you both drive to the place you’re meeting so you are able to leave when you want to leave. Once you decide to meet, pick a place like a coffee shop or an activity like taking a walk where you both of you can come to meet each other. Never have dinner on a first meeting.

Chemistry is all about the voice and the physical presence, so never engage in these ongoing email marathon sessions with someone before you meet them. It is likely to get you disappointed once you do finally meet up with that person. You need to realize that the faster you get together for that first meeting, the faster you are going to find out whether or not this is someone who is really worth your time. Just like with the emails, don’t spend two hours talking on the phone with someone you haven’t yet met in person. Remember that you haven’t met them, and when you speak on the phone talk only long enough to establish that you potentially have some chemistry before you set up your first meeting. Once again, it is worth it for me reiterate the point that most of the time you will not have the chemistry with someone in person that you do with them on the phone.

3. Put The Right Kind Of Photos On Your Profile: The minimum number of photos you should post with your online profile is five, and every single one of those photos must be current. Of those five pictures, three of them need to be full body shots. Your photographs on your online profile need to be such so you are clearly visible in them. Don’t post any of these ridiculous kind of photos where you are so far off in the distance you are totally unrecognizable, but the picture shows you off in the distance skydiving or something. Don’t post pictures of you from a distance surrounded by ten of your friends at a dinner table. Each of your photos need to clearly show who you are and what you’re all about. All of the photos you post also must have you in them. Don’t post photos just of your dog or of a waterfall you saw during your last trip to Hawaii. Your online profile is not a travel agent brochure. Instead, show clear pictures of you with your dog or on your vacation in Hawaii.

4. Look Within Your Area First: Another tip to increase your chances for a successful transition from online into real life is look in your own geographic area first. Don’t send winks to people who live 3,000 miles away from you. It is ridiculous. Search within your own geographic area. Try limiting your search at first to a twenty-five mile radius. Now, don’t do that for one day then declare there to be no one in your area to meet so as to give yourself permission to re-expand your search area. Instead, keep looking within that same mile radius. If you live somewhere and there’s not a lot of women there or a lot of men there, respect other people’s boundaries.

Also, don’t waste time trying to connect with someone who says they are looking to meet someone who lives within a ten mile radius of where they live when you live 500 miles away from them. Don’t waste other people’s time, just as you would not want someone wasting yours. Successfully dating online is all about being as time efficient as possible. If you do that, you are going to really be able to go out and meet more people. So respect other people’s boundary lines.

5. Remember to “Reapply”: When dating online, it is important to remember that going online to meet someone is very much like going to a giant singles bar. So just because you contacted someone a month ago (or two or three months ago) and they did not respond, does not necessarily mean they are not or would not be interested in you. There are a million reasons why they may not have responded to you the first time. They may have been dating someone else. They may have had their profile online but not have been checking it at all. They may simply have gotten a flood of emails the day you sent yours and your message got “lost in the shuffle.” So, in online dating it is perfectly okay to “reapply” if you are still interested in someone who did not respond to you.

There are a few important keys to remember when reapplying online. First, do not ever reapply with the exact same email as the one you originally sent. Type something different and something fun. Do not reference the fact that the person did not respond to you the first time. Also, only reapply once. Do not take the idea of “reapplying” as a justification to start online stalking someone.

6. Make Your Contacts Real Conversations: Online dating is about starting the conversation. A lot of people don’t understand that it’s about starting a conversation. So before you contact someone, make sure you read their profile. It’s very important to begin communication with someone you see online by addressing something substantive you liked or noticed about their profile. Remember that when that person (and ostensibly all people who put up a profile) wrote their profile, they did so to communicate certain pieces of information about themselves to you. That is, they gave you information so they could start a conversation with you.

So, imagine what someone is like when you read their profile. Read it aloud so you can actually hear their voice tone, and then take the first couple of questions that come into your mind and send them to that person. It will make for the start of a real conversation with them so you can see if they are someone you want to get to know better and to meet.

These tips will really make your online dating experience far more rewarding, far better, and will help you start to finally meet people from online that you want to get to know in the real world. It’s about being different, and not being the same as everyone else who is online looking to meet someone.

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?

Do you remember that tree house when you were a kid? The one that you weren’t allowed to enter because you weren’t cool enough or something?

So I’m no longer on her Facebook or MySpace page. Is that supposed to hurt me? I moved on the day she left! I couldn’t wait for the relationship to end – because it just wasn’t right.

So now she’s punishing me? By taking me off of her MySpace and Facebook pages? Really, are we in kindergarten? “You can’t have this piece of gum because I don’t like you anymore!”

How many of you eliminate people from your life and then subsequently eliminate them from your MySpace and Facebook pages as well?

Is that supposed to be the final slap? So we can’t play anymore online. She can’t tag me or bite me. She can’t poke me anymore?

That’s quite all right – because we’re done ‘poking’ in reality as well! I don’t need to be poked in fantasyland. We already poked in real life and it didn’t work out, and now the relationship is over. I don’t need to be poked on Facebook.

It’s the same way that I feel about strip clubs. Why go and get someone to grind on you when it’s totally fake?

I’m all about reality – not fantasy. So for those of you who play around on MySpace and Facebook – I’m talking about poking, rearranging your top five friends like they’ve earned a promotion – stop!

I remember when I was hanging out with this girl – she used to rearrange her top five friends on MySpace depending on the mood she was in that day.

Seriously. This isn’t elementary school, and it’s not a popularity contest – oh wait, it’s the internet, I forgot that it is a popularity contest!

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.

Joe Smith sends you a friend request, and you don’t know him, so you look at his friends. You see Mary Thompson is one of his friends, and you add her as a friend.

And of course Mary Thompson confirms you as a friend – because the internet is a fucking popularity contest and everyone wants a lot of friends! Facebook and MySpace are like having 5,000 friends that you never talk to! They could give a fuck about me, but they are still all of my buddies.

But when I show up as their happy friend, it makes them feel popular. Being on the internet is like regressing back to junior high school. Don’t you feel bad on Facebook when you see someone with like two friends? You think to yourself, oh, what a loser, he’s got two friends! It’s ridiculous; it’s such a popularity contest.

So anyway, you go to this woman’s profile and add her as a friend. She will always add you, and then you send her an email.

Subject line: Man, Joe knew we would be…

I always like the dot-dot-dot because when it comes down to marketing yourself, you have to think like a business. Most people in the subject line of an email write “hello.” What the fuck, hello? Delete.

But you know when you get good junk email, and you swear that you don’t want to open it, and when you do open it, you’re like, oh shit, I got caught again! How did you get caught? They had a good subject line, right? So your subject line has to be something good that will make her want to open your email.

And then the body of the email: …that we would be great friends, so I added you. So now that you’re my really good friend, can you help me out with one thing? Who the hell is Joe Smith? He just appeared one day as my friend, and I’m hoping you can hope me unlock the mystery of Joe Smith. ☺

You do the smiley face so that she knows that you are funny and clever.

She’s going to open it, giggle and laugh, and she’s going to answer you back. You just became her buddy. Then your messages will go back and forth just like any other email exchange.

You have to get clever. Most guys are so bad at emailing.