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Excerpt from: 7 Signs He's Trying to Buy You Off
by: Dave Zinczenko
Flowers, On a First Date
The unwritten message: I'm the man, and you should know I'm the man. And won't it be nice when your friends drop by and see these flowers and know that I'm that guy who sent them to you.
I'm very eager to get together again (how about Wednesday?), but if I call you, you're going to think I'm more desperate than a dehydrated marathoner at mile 22.
These aren't expensive gifts, but you can't put a price on a guy who picks up the subtle signals, can you?
by: Dave Zinczenko
Flowers, On a First Date
The unwritten message: I'm the man, and you should know I'm the man. And won't it be nice when your friends drop by and see these flowers and know that I'm that guy who sent them to you.
- Sign He's Invested in You: A single rose, or maybe a bouquet bought from a street vendor during the walk back home.
- Sign He's Trying to Buy You Off: The showy dozen roses, at a time when he knows you about as well as the flower vendor he bought them from.
I'm very eager to get together again (how about Wednesday?), but if I call you, you're going to think I'm more desperate than a dehydrated marathoner at mile 22.
- Sign He's Invested in You: He includes a note gently expressing his feelings, maybe with a touch of humor.
- Sign He's Trying to Buy You Off: He attaches his business card.
- Sign He's Invested in You: He takes you to a place where he knows a few people, and wants to introduce you to them.
- Sign He's Trying to Buy You Off: He's waving greenbacks to get attention from the maitre d'.
- Sign He's Invested in You: He cooks for you, makes you comfortable, attends to your every need.
- Sign He's Trying to Buy You Off: The fancy goods come straight from the gourmet market, and don't hang together as a meal, and the spotlight is on the black satin sheets in the suspiciously neat bedroom.
These aren't expensive gifts, but you can't put a price on a guy who picks up the subtle signals, can you?
- Sign He's Invested in You: He's exploring your world through your music and ideas, and takes delight in that.
- Sign He's Trying to Buy You Off: The big warning flag here is if he's trying to rewrite your iTunes and Netscape lists with his preferences. It should be a cultural exchange, not an invasion.
- Sign He's Invested in You: The gifts shows that he's watching what you wear, carefully, and selecting items that show he knows what you like.
- Sign He's Trying to Buy You Off: He's delivering showpieces you won't feel comfortable wearing in your everyday life. Relationships are all about the day-to-day, and his gifts should show that he understands that.
- Sign He's Invested in You: The focus is on going someplace that gives the two of you plenty of time to be intimate with each other, and I'm not just talking about the bedroom. He may go with his buddies to Vegas, but with you, it should be a destination quiet enough to hear each other whisper.
- Sign He's Trying to Buy You Off: He selects a destination that does the romantic work for him; the hotel suite with a prominently displayed Jacuzzi, or Paris on a whim. Money shouldn't ever do the work of relationship building; his words and his silence ought to do that.