Ya, here I am flinging ‘F’ words all over the place, and nobody’s around to appreciate my awesome alliterations! It’s New Year’s Eve, and the office is like a ghost town sparsely populated with lethargic ghosts in ratty jeans. Princess Panda is the only one making an effort to dress for the occasion here, wearing a red hairband with huge jaunty red flowers & feathers stuck on top.
Ya, so I’m in permanent Ascot races mode when I’m happy, what can I say? 
Anyway I’d just heard that a village hottie from back home is getting hitched! At the ripe old age of 26! *tsk tsk* So young, so beautiful, so full of promise, & sooooo taken. I commisserated with a good guy friend of mine over this; for him, she was ‘the one that got away’. Since I’m in an alliterative mood this morning, let’s call him …’F’. For ‘Fantastic’. 
Well when I found my way to Facebook this morning & found out the frikkin’ news, I messaged Mr. F to find out if he was feeling fine. *fuahaha* And then, quite without invitation, I barged in with my two cents’ worth of love advice (ya, I’m such an authority figure here having had three boyfriends before Mr. Panda ambled into my horizon & blocked out the sun.)
The problem Mr. F was facing is something quite a few men face these days surprisingly. Like Ross in ‘Friends’, who pined for Rachel for years before getting her (and losing her, & getting her back, & losing her…you get the picture), sometimes the good, loyal, decent gentlemen who would technically make great husbands always end up being relegated to the ‘Friend’ basket, while the jerks on a white charger come in & sweep the dames away into a passionate stupor. And then, just as quickly, Rhett sweeps out again, leaving the nice, steadfast ‘Friend’ to patch up said dame, only to watch her ride off into the sunset with someone else when she’s all nicely mended.
I tell ya, it doesn’t make sense! I’m convinced the answer lies in the WOOING & in sezing the WINDOW.
See, if you’re a guy & you happen to really dig a particular woman, please DON’T take the Korean mini-series male hero way of writing your feelings into a diary, losing it & then hoping that it’ll magically end up in the girl’s best friend’s locker room & she’ll bring it to your lady love and then you live happily ever after. [cue violin music against angst-filled background shots of beautiful Korean winterscape.] Suppression of emotions is NOT a sign of stoicism; it’s a sign of sheer stupidity. (Really on an alliterative roll now. *amazed at myself*)
Trust me on this one. When you meet a girl, you only have a very limited, rapidly diminishing window of opportunity in which to form an impression in her brain, that you are romantic hero material. Remember; you will be fighting with visions of the latest Prada handbag, PMS, corporate politics & Jake Lautner for space in that brain of hers. So your every move must be calculated, focused and above all, swift. There are exceptions to the rule of course; but unless you look like Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Ken Watanabe, and have Obama’s clout and Bill Gates’ money, you may consider yourself the rule rather than the exception.
So STRIKE when the iron’s hot. Be Mr. Nice Guy, sure. But telegraph your interest for goodness’ sake. Take a risk & let her know (not in so many words lah…practice your non-verbal skills!) that; (a) you’re available to explore a relationship with her (b) you’re a good person who’s sticking around for the long-term (c) you think she’s the best thing since sliced bread, and (d) you badly want to be her beau. And convey all that BEFORE she sees you as a good friend & you get relegated to that basket.
Case in point; I’ve dated a few guys, and they’re all completely different from one another. Literally the ONLY thing they had in common was that they all moved fast. Excellent move, I might add. Give me too much time, and I’ll start manufacturing reasons why it wouldn’t work, it’s the wrong time, he’s not my type, blah blah blah.
I can’t over-emphasise the fact that there’s a small window of opportunity for women; we’re big suckers for the ’swept away’ feeling. No time to think, weigh, consider. It’s our inner Scarlett clamouring for big southern romances against a landscape of uncertainty! It’s the ‘being in the moment’, and the sense of destiny (probably brought on by too many late-night movies, romance novels & sugar deprivation from a low-carb diet) that makes us feel as though everything has been written in the stars, and then the magic words appear:
‘Could he be …The ONE??’
Because after all, things aren’t supposed to happen so fast…unless we have something really, really powerful going on, in which case it’s stupid to consider the pros & cons because, you know, it’s fate and all. *cracks gum*
Ok, I’m exaggerating here to make a point, but I wanted you to see how all the movies we watch and the books we read have primed us for a Grand Romance. We yearn to have that Great Love, the one we can tell our grandkids about. Andrea de Cruz & Pierre Png have that great love story; “Grandpa gave grandma a part of his liver after hers got burnt by ingesting diet pills from China.” You’d serve us well to give us that grand romance of a lifetime. If you throw all your cards down, and take a risk for love, the worst we can do is reject you. But then we’d never see you as a mere ‘Friend’; a title worse than death for a guy with a bleeding love-lorn heart.
Mr. F thinks that he should wait for a woman who actually wants to marry her friend. Now I’m not saying that there aren’t marriages like that (the Chinese call it ‘re jiu shen qin’; extended togetherness blooms love); but in today’s fast-paced world where everything is about instant gratification, the lady may get nabbed by someone else while you’re waiting for the shoots of love to bloom. The ‘re jiu shen qin’ situation only applies if nobody is out to nab your girl, and that buys you a lot of time for love to grow like a little plant in dry season. Cos make no mistake about it, romance is the water that nourishes your love tree; and friendship without romance is a recipe for a long hard winter’s crop. So it’s not just about finding a woman who really wants to marry her friend. You’ll find that by the time women marry they really are already marrying their friend! All the traits of a good friendship like trust, the ability to communicate & enjoy each other’s company, same values, same wavelength etc…they’re present in a good marriage too. But it’s about upping the romance quotient! Some women like to think that passion for them has so affected a man’s ability to think that he lays aside his ego & pride by doing something silly, crazy or passion-driven…for love of her. Even in the animal kingdom, the male woos the female by strutting or spreading colourful feathers, or doing the dance or something. (They also leave the momma with the baby at the first opportunity to go spread feathers for some other chick, but that’s not the point of the story here!) My point is, that to get from ‘friend’ to ’flame’, first step is always the wooing. It is the wooing that separates the friends from the suitors. And then like AVATAR, once you make the ‘tail’ connection with your wild filly (I don’t mean this in a crude way, just figurative ok…just watch the movie before you grill me!), women, being the faithful creatures of habit that they are, then start to feel emotionally ’settled’ and most likely won’t bail sometimes even if the guy turns out to be a borderline jerk with poor personal hygiene. It’s almost biological. We’re programmed to stay once caught! So if you’re a nice guy with more women friends than you can count, none of whom can actually keep a straight face when asked if they’re your ‘girlfriend’, it’s time to put some sizzle in your schwizzle. Forget the friendly, fatherly mien; inject a little forbidden, ferocity & fervour into the mix and you should have the perfect combination for a happily ever after. Just remember guys; Ross gets the girl in the end, and you can too! Good luck!
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