I am contacted frequently by men wanting to know how to date a work colleague.
In fact, what prompted me to write this article about how to date a work colleague was this recent question I was asked by one of my clients in Melbourne Australia:
“Hi Ben, how would you handle the situation where you are attracted to a girl you have professional relationship with and without risking it?”
“So what was the answer?!” I hear you ask? Here is my response…
(And make sure you read right to the end so you fully understand this so-often misunderstood situation, AND know the best way to proceed if you decide to)
Note 1 – In terms of ‘abundance’ (meaning you now know how to meet any girl, anywhere), you can now easily meet 10 more awesome girls whenever and wherever you like, so why would you need to risk losing a professional relationship? Why not find another girl who doesn’t have this conflict of interest.
(Obviously Note 1 relates to one of my clients who is now able to meet women anywhere he chooses and may not apply to everyone)
Note 2 – What kind of dynamic have you established with this girl already? Because if you already have a friendly dynamic established, then you are likely already ‘friend zoned’ in her mind, and it’s too late to re-classify yourself as a romantic interest
Note 3 – Because so many men don’t know how to meet women properly, it’s so cliche for guys to hit on women they are working with. This is because a working alongside a women is one of the few opportunities that men who don’t know how to meet women get to spend time with women. Because women have to be friendly and even a little flirty on a professional level to maintain and forge business relationships, men sometimes misinterpret this as being more than it is.
My current girlfriend has many of her clients flirting with her and hitting on her, and she literally had a client do this to her just the other day. As she starts telling me the story, I already know how it ends because it’s just SO predictable.
She starts by saying “A client came in the other day. He wanted to add me on social media so when he’s out of the country he can still conduct business etc….”
And I’m thinking “Sigh…here we go again. Let me guess! I bet he starts messaging you unprofessionally….”
And she carries on with the story and eventually gets to “And then yesterday he’s been messaging me ALL day blah blah blah…” and my eyes are rolling inside my head like marbles haha!
I very rarely actively hit on women who are waitresses, bartenders, shop assistants, work colleagues, clients, women providing me professional services etc because usually they are being overly nice to you for professional reasons, so it’s not an accurate indicator of their interest towards you. If they stand to gain something from the interaction, they can often be more compliant and show more interest than they usually would if they’d met you outside of their work environment.
This is no different to a girl being friendly to you in a nightclub till you buy her a drink, and then she disappears.
The fact is that MOST of the time I would RATHER keep the professional relationship with a woman than risk losing it. Again, this is only because I simply know I can now meet another girl as good or even better now I’ve mastered the skill of meeting and naturally attracting women.
There are always exceptions to every rule. For example if I noticed that the girl was very actively pursuing me romantically, or flirting in a way that there could be no mistake that she is interested to become romantically involved in spite of the professional relationship then I might make an exception.
As far as your question goes, there is never ZERO risk in anything in life.
There are merely:
- Choices
- Consequences
You have to make a decision based on your assessment of the consequences, and proceed in a way that maximises upside and minimises downside
This calculation is also always subjective to the person concerned, so from my perspective I might consider there is a bigger downside than upside potential and therefore the risk to benefit ratio for me isn’t acceptable to proceed for example:
– Personally in these types of situations, because I know I can meet awesome girls all the time, I would usually choose to keep things professional in order to not risk burning the professional relationship.
– IF you’re reading this and in your situation you have limited opportunity and experiences with awesome girls so far, you might decide the upside potential outweighs the risk of losing the professional relationship and therefore you might choose to proceed and attempt to date your work colleague.
So in summary:
- Do your analysis
- Minimise risk as best you can
FULLY ACCEPT the risk remaining and consequences if you do proceed.
Now…if you DO decide that the upside outweighs the downside, there are still better or worse ways of minimising risk in terms of keeping the relationship intact if you make an advance that is unwelcome.
The following sentence is the best way I have so far found to introduce the idea of dating a work colleague:
“It’s a shame we work together. You’re actually pretty awesome/cute/attractive. If we didn’t work together I’d totally let you take me out for coffee.”
The above sentence is so effective because:
1 – You are telling her it can’t happen, so you position yourself as the decision maker
2 – Because you’ve already told her it can’t happen, you can’t be ‘rejected’
3 – This raises the topic of you and her dating and allows her to consider it without any pressure
4 – It creates the opportunity for her to disagree with you and she might tell you that she’d like to date you regardless of your professional relationship
5 – It’s cheeky, flirty and fun, and introduces the topic in a way that she will enjoy
IMPORTANT TIPS FOR DELIVERING THE ABOVE!
- Make sure you say it with a fun smile
- If she doesn’t take the bait and insist she’d like to go on a date with you, you need to respect her choice and move on immediately. Don’t try and convince her to change her mind or be pushy. This will only creep her out and guarantee you destroy your professional relationship or chance or romance later on if she reconsiders
- Don’t apologise for bringing it up, this shows weakness
So those are my thoughts on how to date a work colleague. Hope this helps.
If you’d like to speak to someone from The Legends Academy about how we can help you to naturally meet and attract women anytime, anywhere, then contact us here today.
Thanks for reading. Please share if you liked it.
Ben Alexander