Time for fan mail Friday where we'll be answering your questions and dropping some knowledge and feedback to help you kick the weekend off right if you're new to the art of charm podcast. This isn't the best place to start most of our content is more in depth and longer format so check out the best of at the art of charm dot com slash best or the fundamentals toolbox at the art of charm dot com slash toolbox if you're looking for a little bit of practical application where we give you some homework to help you increase your networking ability and your professional skill set.

Check out the art of charm dot com slash challenge on the toolbox the challenge and the best of page we've got the fundamentals of body language and nonverbal communication attraction negotiation networking and everything else we teach here at the art of charm all right let's cut to it.

Hey guys I'm seeking your advice and comments on my particular situation I'll make a long story short I met a girl a couple years back and we instantly hit it off after talking to her for a while I built up the courage to ask her to the movies.

I had never been so bold is to ask a girl out like that in person it was great I never specified though as friends or more than just kept it light and easy she said yes only to text me later that night telling me just as friends and she might be over thinking it but she didn't want to feel weird if I felt different than her so I played dumb and pretended that I meant just as friends as well and apologize for making it seem otherwise we went and had a great time as time goes by we hang out every other day and can find

each other and we lay in bed and cuddle and take naps and watch movies she even does the thing where when we're spooning she tries to scoot her but even closer though there's absolutely no way she could get any closer she eventually tells me I'm her only guy friend who hasn't come on to her and made it weird and that she likes it that way eventually she finds this guy we both know and she likes him he truly is a good guy and being the person I am I tell her to go for it if she really likes him and she does and they start dating

a year later they're still dating then a couple weeks ago she texts me and tells me to watch the movie something borrowed and that it's pretty much us

curious I watch the trailer she's the lead female role who has a crush I'm the best guy friend saying go for it nice right then I find out that my role in the film tells her that he likes her a lot but they never get together and she marries the other guy sad right anyways I like her a lot a lot

we're the exact same person we like all the same stuff and get along so well it's unreal what I'm asking is what do you guys have to say I feel like the only thing I can do is wait for her to break up with him and then tell her how I feel thanks for any feedback I know this is a little long Jake

Hey Jake I really feel your pain here this has never happened to me directly but I had a close friend this happened to way back in the day in college and it was pretty painful just by proxy I would say you don't need to wait until they break up that's a little bit weirdly sort of agenda ish because it's like I like you be with me now even if she's not ready it's it's a weird sort of move I would say tell her now it will cost you the friendship but you have to be okay with that so in other words you only really want to tell her if you're comfortable

losing her as a friend but here's the thing you're not really friends you're pretending your friends because you want something more from her so it's actually a covert contract you've heard us talk about these on the show before where you have something where it's like well if I'm her friend for long enough maybe this will happen

there's probably something like that going on so I would really the real advice here stop pretending your friends because you're not you're just leading her on as a fake friend because you secretly hold feelings and that's not good for either of you

you're pining and she doesn't really know in truth where you stand so you should come clean and be prepared for that to affect your friendship and I'm putting friendship and air quotes there but what the good news is once you clear the air with this she can either say oh my god me to or more likely say oh my gosh I didn't see this coming I thought we were just friends and you're gonna have to do some seriously hard thinking about whether or not you're okay with just being friends and whether or not that's even possible

for you at this point this next question comes from Donald hi Jordan thank you for producing such a valuable podcast I've been listening for years and have been enriched as a result given my highly scientific background I was especially excited when I saw your science based dating episode pop up on my feed I was dismayed as part of the interview consisted of Dr. Dwayna Welch potentially misusing data without her exact sources I can't be positive but given the way she spoke it sounded as if she was using correlation to try to get her

try and show causation what made this even worse was that she then joked with you telling you that correlation doesn't mean causation in particular Dr. Welch referenced married people being happier as a causation while in reality they're likely is a factor where no one wants to be married to an unhappy person causing the unhappy people to either not get married or to get divorced as a result there are more unhappy people in the unmarried category than the married category

keep in mind that this is speculation and I don't have any studies to back this up and I have not read the studies that Dr. Welch references

Hey Donald thanks for this Donald job by the way is to find bad science for certain publications so this isn't just a weird nitpick based on speculation but probably has some legs.

One thing we often do here at the art of charm is look into the science and ask questions about the spin or the logical argument style of the points made by guests on the show you've heard me challenge people all the time

and we're really grateful when someone points out something like this to us so thanks for that.

Dear Jordan it never fails I go out start chatting with a woman then she starts throwing things at me to throw me off my game comments like I only date confident men or are you a little too old to be here.

It sort of doesn't really matter what the comment is the point is it seems rude to me and I'm not sure what to do about it.

Walk away get mad neither of these seem right to me what do you have to say signed getting testy.

Hey man these are what we in the business call tests and guess what they're not always a bad thing in fact a lot of times they're not when it comes to higher quality higher value women if you will they're going to throw tests your way to see if you can roll with the punches and this is actually a good sign because what this means that she's interested in you enough to actually bother testing you in the first place.

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