Building that emotional connection

After discussing the theory of rapport and emotional connection in previous blog entries, some of you emailed me about how exactly have I used it. Here are some examples that came off the top of my head...

(1) There was this one time, at a bookstore far far away, (sorry, I couldn't help myself!) there were two girls, I opened and then we joked around. They were there to look for an art piece as an inspiration for them to paint something similar in their new condo. One of them told me that she doesn't like just a bouquet of flowers, but just one flower, and view it from behind. Then we discussed how most of us just skim the surface by taking the prima facie approach to people, events, and life in general. And I continued that it takes a special person to dig deeper and appreciate the multi-faceted nature of life. Notice how I turned something she mentioned in passing, into something deep, about our approaches to life?

(2) Another was one night in a bar, I was talking to this girl, then the subject of work came up. She told me she was doing such and such at this company, and I happened to know someone who was recently fired from there. With that brief commonality, she asked me if he's gay, and how he's a loner who doesn't socialize with co-workers, etc. Then I continued with how it must be difficult to live a life of denial, she replied about how she had to be a certain way with her last bf. Again, with just a tenuous connection, we went from talking about work, to something that deeply affected her.

(3) There was this one time I stumbled into a birthday party and ended up talking to the birthday girl. She told me about leaving her broken home and went to a crazy religious school down south. She's a total conservative right wing nut job, but just for my own amusement, we continued talking about her faith. Then I interjected how she was able to heal herself, found a purpose in life, and how faith in her space-daddy/spaghetti-monster/god was able to bring clarity, protection, and peace to her. This time, it was more about turning something negative (her broken home) into positive.

(4) Last one, I was talking to a pretty tall girl at a bus stop. The way she held herself together made me think of my ex, who used to be a model and a beauty pageant contestant. And guess what? She also competed in beauty pageants! Which I immediately relate to her on how it must be difficult to express herself when everyone already has a preconceived notion of how she should behave, she just lit up and talked about how she has to wear a mask and most people don't know her inner turmoils. She told me how guys rarely ever listen to her and she was surprised I got to know her so deeply and quickly... HA! She ended up missing her bus.

I normally hate writing FR/LR because they are such bullshit and I hope that by focusing on the specific turning point in my interaction using emotional connections, we can turn a fluffy conversation about trivialities of life into something deep and meaningful. Girls yearn for that special someone to turn those momentary sparks in life into full blown flames. Be that flamer guy (HA!) and you will have plenty of girls in your life! I might blog about how to take those connections to a sexual level in future entries.

The take home lesson is that I basically turned a simple piece of our conversation into an emotional journey for her to express herself. Notice I didn't run any routine, I didn't talk about the same set of emotions, and there were a few other details I left out, for brevity and simplicity by removing the sexual overtone in our conversations.