7 Questions to Ask a Man in the Early Stages of Dating

I've coached women on dating since 2013, and one of the most useful things I can give you is a short list of questions.

Not interview questions. Nothing that makes a Tuesday evening feel like a screening.

These are seven ordinary questions that a man will happily answer, and every one of them tells you something you'd otherwise take four months to find out.

The trick is less in the asking than in what you listen for. So I've put that with each one.

Ask it lightly, somewhere around date two or three. Most men expect it and answer easily.

What you're listening for is whether he appears anywhere in the story.

If the whole thing is what she did, what she was like, how unreasonable it all got, then you have just been told how he will describe you in about a year.

A man who can say one honest sentence about his own part in it is telling you something rare and worth staying for.

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Early. Date two or three, not month four.

Listen for whether you get an answer or a mood. "I'm open to seeing where it goes" is not an answer, it's a way of not giving one.

And here's the part most women miss. It doesn't matter enormously what he says, as long as he says something specific. A man who tells you plainly that he isn't looking for anything serious has done you an enormous favour and should be believed immediately.

Sounds like small talk. It isn't.

You're finding out whether there's a life there. Friends he actually sees. Something he does that has nothing to do with work or women.

A man with a full life will have you in it. A man with an empty one will put you in the middle of it, which feels flattering for about six weeks and then becomes very heavy.

Ask it warmly, as interest rather than assessment.

If the honest answer is nobody, you have just found out what your job is about to be.

Write this down and keep it somewhere you'll see it. A man with no one to talk to isn't looking for a partner. He's looking for a place to put it all down.

This one seems like a conversation question and it is, but it's also the fastest way to find out whether he can be wrong.

Listen for whether he can name anything at all. Some men genuinely cannot, and it will take you nine months and one argument to discover that the ordinary way.

A man who can describe changing his mind is a man you'll be able to resolve something with. A man who can't is a man you'll eventually stop raising things with.

Not what he does. What he's aiming at.

Listen for direction of any kind. It doesn't have to be ambitious and it certainly doesn't have to be impressive. It has to exist.

Men without direction are often lovely and very easy to be around, and there is nothing to build with. You'll find yourself supplying the momentum for two people, and you'll be told how amazing you are while you do it.

Ask this one before you ever need to know the answer, because afterwards you'll only get the version he wants you to have.

Listen for whether he goes toward it or away from it. Men who shut down, go quiet for days, or need you to chase them will tell you so quite openly when it's still hypothetical.

Almost every relationship problem you'll ever have with a man is really this question, answered badly, three years later.

Here's The Uncomfortable Part About All Seven

You can ask every question on this list and stay anyway.

I've watched it happen more times than I can count. She asks him what he's looking for. He gives her the vague answer. She notices, she files it, and she's still there four months later.

Nothing went wrong with the question. The question worked perfectly.

What happened is in the gap between hearing the answer and doing something about it. Somewhere in that gap, a bad answer got turned into a maybe.

That gap is not weakness and it is not a lack of standards. Most of the women I speak with have very high standards everywhere else in their lives.

It's a pattern in how you date, and it decides which answers you can act on and which ones you'll quietly explain away.

There are four of these patterns. One of them is yours.

I put together a short quiz that names which of the four is running for you. Seven questions, about 60 seconds, and your result comes with what it means and what to do next.

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If you already ask good questions and it hasn't changed who you end up with, the questions were never the missing piece.

Start with what happens after the answer instead.

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