 One of our members recently posted a question, center around why is it that every man I connect with after a first date, wait two to three weeks to initiate another date? They don't ghost or disappear. They keep communicating via text and telephone, but they wait a while. Why would this happen? I think this is a great opportunity to lean into this conversation. I think these days we are seeing a different dating pattern or methodology for so many people. And particularly men who don't feel like they've actually created a connection with a person might be a little bit more cautious than putting themselves out there. That's right. If there wasn't a solid connection built on that first date, they might be acting a bit apprehensive or a bit cautious. Now the sum of these men are actually waiting for women to initiate the next move because that lets the man know that you're genuinely interested. I think this is the tricky part of the early stage of dating is oftentimes when we meet someone for the first time, there wasn't a strong enough connection to say, wow, I really wanna see this person again. I think the wow factor doesn't happen in many cases. So what can we do about this? How should we approach this? Well, I shared why it happened. There's a couple of ways to look at this. If it's been a few weeks since they've initiated contact, but they have initiated a second date, well, great, go on the second date and see how it is. Or what you can do is actually initiate a date yourself. You could simply say, hey, Tim, I'm free this Thursday night. Would you like to get together for a drink? That's right. You could simply say, hey, Tim, or fill in the blank in the name, I'm free Thursday night. Would you like to get together for a drink? Now, the reason why you do this, you might be saying, well, Jonathan, I'm in my masculine energy and all the women tell me to be in my feminine energy and wait for a man to initiate. But here's what happens when you do this. You actually put him on the spot. And what I mean to say not in a nefarious way, you put him on the spot to actually have him lean into how he genuinely feels about you. Because if you've initiated the invitation and all this is as an invitation, say, hey, Tim, or fill in the blank with the name, would you like to get together for a drink? You could even throw out my treat. That demonstrates a bit of generosity and an interest. If he doesn't take you up on the offer, then you don't have to invest any of your emotional energy with this person. If he does take you up on the offer, you go and see what happens. The reality is the dating process to date is much more challenging because when we're meeting total strangers, we don't feel safe. That's right, we don't feel safe. Men don't feel safe and women don't feel safe because we don't know enough about them to trust them. It takes roughly about 100 hours of face-to-face time just to build the first layer of trust. In fact, they say it takes about 100 or 40 hours of face-to-face time just to get to partially know someone and for someone to actually become a friend, I heard Jay Shetty share, it takes 200 hours to actually develop a friendship with someone. So think about it, you had a few hours together, he doesn't know much about you other than what you shared that night and you don't know much about him. So how do we deal with this? Listen, I'm a big proponent of mutual effort. I talk about traveling down a two-lane street. I know some people say it's a two-way street, but I'm thinking of a street that has two lanes and two cars traveling at the same speed. When you're both mutually making effort, I like the way Matthew Hussie says this, invest and test, invest and test. And what that means is invest a little effort and then see how they respond. So you can do that, you can continue with the engagement. Now, quite frankly with my sweetheart and I, we didn't really engage with each other much for that first year because it was long distance. We just, what we did during that time is develop a bit of friendship. Now, here's the thing, we didn't have incessant phone calls with each other. If this person is having incessant phone calls and not initiating a date, what he's really gaining from you is your feminine energy. In other words, he might even be treating you as his therapist. I think a lot of men and women treat each other as their therapist and I don't mean that in the literal sense, but from an emotional perspective is having a person that you can lean on but not necessarily want to engage in a relationship. That's why if you initiate the effort just to test to see where he's at, you can get a better sense if it makes sense to pursue this person or not. Now, look, I'm not a big proponent of people dating multiple people at the same time, but let's be clear. The first time you meet someone is a meet and greet. The second time you meet someone, it's a date and if they continually want to see you, you begin dating. So the first is a meet and greet. Have as many meet and greets as you possibly can. This is an evaluation process. When I talk about my private coaching, learning, it's called radical honesty, pre-qualifying your prospect. Your job is to pre-qualify this person to determine is it worth investing in this person from a relationship perspective? So rather than getting hang up on who asks who on dates, and I like the book, If the Buddha Dated, If the Buddha Dated, it throws out all the gender rhetoric and says, how can we connect with each other on a heart-centered level? And that's my invitation for you. So give that a shot, see what happens, or wait those three weeks and see if you get a second date from a person, see how you feel. Again, dating isn't simply an evaluation process to determine if you want a relationship with a person. Now, relationship is a whole another story and we can talk about that in another video. But once again, in the early stages, make a little bit of effort, it isn't gonna kill you and it isn't going to shrivel up his penis and he's gonna become emasculated because you made a little bit of effort. All right, I think you get the gist of where I'm going. Listen, I'd like to get your thoughts on this. Please post a comment below if it resonated with you. If you have something to add, I'd like to hear. As always, if you find value in the group, please tell your friends about midlife love mastery, send them to my website, Jonathanasai.com. Have them click the group coaching button so they can join our fantastic group. And I'm gonna sign up this video as I always do. First off, give myself a big gigantic Jonathan Merrick of self love. I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay. I'm asking you to turn to someone, a Pat, a teddy bear pillow, and give it a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love. And let's face it, we could all use more love in our lives. Thanks a bunch, bye-bye now, bye-bye.