The right time is now

How many of you wait for "the right time" before expressing interest in a woman?  I have a very good friend, a handsome, successful man who is now happily married, who used to take months, multiple months, before he would express any interest in a woman he had met.  He was, he explained, waiting for the right time to ask her out.

Needless to say, most of the women he would up dating prior to meeting his wife were women who a) approached him, and, b) were crazy. And I don't mean crazy in the sense of "yeah, she's kind of out there" or even "wow, she is a hot mess", but in the literally insane, psychiatric hold and evaluation, weekly therapy, and in one case, dead by her own hand, sense.

Men qualify women by deciding which women we will pursue. That's what our instincts are shaped for and they tend to be poorly suited for dealing with women who pursue us.  Men, much more than women, overvalue the expression of active interest on the part of a member of the opposite sex. We are too easily flattered. This is why, when you see a couple wherein the woman appears to have seriously outkicked her coverage, you will usually observe that she tends to be more aggressive than the norm and is the more personally dominant member of the couple.

The fact is that women expect to be pursued, want to be pursued, and are literally standing around waiting to be pursued. When you, as a man, refrain from playing your part in the mating dance, you send a message that, depending upon your sociosexual status, is either taken as rejection of her or self-disqualification of yourself.  Neither message is likely to spark any interest in you or make her any more responsive to your eventual expression of interest several months from now when, after having firmly established yourself in the friend zone, you attempt to make the leap without warning.

The right time is now.  Establish yourself as a player, (in the sense of being in the game rather than a spectator), as a possibility, from the outset.  You don't have to "make a move" per se, you simply have to make it clear that you are a man, standing in front of a woman, informing her that if matters are left up to you, you will be having sex with her at some point in the future. She can reject you; that is her prerogative. But she cannot ignore you, she has to sort you out one way or the other.

If you've got any reasonable shot with her, that's not a message that will offend her. And if it is a message to which she reacts poorly, then you don't have a shot with her and there will never be a right time.

So roll the dice. Make her choose. Don't give her the easy option.  Either way, she'll have more respect for you than if you eagerly ensconce yourself in the friendzone.