I commentes on Richard’s article: I tried it, and it worked! Given that I read your original article and had thought about it, I am 100% sure that I would have not tried it if you had not written it. I am still dating the girl!
It was not so much me, but the girl that was a bit shy and conservative. By asking to hold her hand, I think I took it in the slowest way possible!
I’ll put forward a synthesis here and say try whichever one of these things you want, just try something!
The thing about body language, tone, etc is no matter what you’ll be doing something. There’s no checking out of body language. So no matter what stage you are, advice on that topic can be useful.
I think the "hold hands" advice is fine, but it's optimizing the wrong part of the funnel. I don't think the shy guys are getting a lot of first dates and then failing to convert, I think they are failing to get to the first date in the first place.
Bingo and it's not just shy guys. While conversion can be a problem because of the whorish nature of women, that is vastly less a problem that getting a date in date in the first place.
For a socially clueless young male, 'May I hold your hand?' is excellent advice. If the young woman is interested in you, she will agree even if she thinks the approach rather lame. If she isn't interested, she won't agree and the young male will now know to move on. The third possibility, that the young woman is so indifferent that the hapless approach tilts them to negative, is highly unlikely. Or, our socially clueless young man won't have the skill to convert such a situation anyway.
The 'May I hold your hand' advice considers that a young woman in your social circle will have already reached some sort of opinion about the young man, even though it may be subconscious and whatever the opinion is will be hidden. 'May I hold your hand? reveals the opinion and, for a young man at skill level is one out of ten, it's the one out of ten skill level move with the best outcome. If the young woman agrees, the experience with her will rapidly advance the young man's skill level several points.
Note that even if the young woman declines, it isn't hopeless. Definitely give up on the woman and move on, but be aware that the young woman will likely ruminate on what happened and may later experience regret. In which case she knows it is up to her to make the next move. If our hapless young male has recognized in advance the possibility and decided to grab it if it comes, the general superior social skills of the young woman will cause her to succeed.
Hey Bryan, I'm probably the best target audience for that piece of advice, shy nerdy guy who's never had romantic success. I tried it a few months ago, and while it worked on that date, she didn't want to follow up with any future dates. But it was nice and kind of woke me up to how low stakes a lot of this stuff is. Upped my confidence a little.
The dating market and "gender war", etc. are all very hostile at the moment so it's understandable why many men would be extremely cautious to initiate anything. Having a low stakes, unambiguous signal of interest that doesn't commit too much one way or the other is very useful to people like me.
I run a company in the dating & relationship advice space (relationshiphero.com) and FWIW I think Bryan's "ask to hold their hand" tip for shy guys is brilliant!
His stated logic is correct. If you (the man) bungle the move really bad, i.e. you just say "would you like to hold my hand" (these words are actually perfectly good IMO) but your delivery is somehow "bad" and the woman has very low attraction for you to begin with, the woman will just think "this guy who I'm not into turned out to be interested in me, and made the possibility go from ambiguous to somewhat clear by making a polite move to hold my hand, but I was hoping he just WOULDN'T be interested in me since I'm not interested in him, so I awkwardly told him 'no thanks, I'd rather not... sorry...' and it was such an awkward moment, and then we just kept going with the day and he didn't try again, so he was good about getting the message" — this is actually not creepy at all, and they actually will most likely blame themselves for half or even most of the awkwardness of the moment, because it's not like you overstepped any kind of social boundaries, it's not like you asked her to come over to your house at night or did anything that was inappropriate to do to someone who turns out not to be interested in you — you made a very clear and socially-appropriate FIRST move attempt.
Even in this awkward-moment "nightmare scenario" I described above, that's actually still a solid move and nothing to be embarrassed about — it almost certainly leaves you in a BETTER position after you did it than before. Most women (correctly) feel that guys are too shy and and don't make enough moves on them, so any guy who makes any move — literally just saying the words "Would you like to hold my hand?" (my preferred variation) or any other decent variation ("Can I possibly hold your hand", "How would you feel about me holding your hand", "What would you say if I asked to hold your hand", etc) — any guy who makes that move is already in their mental category of "guy who intentionally/purposefully/bravely is a Live Player in the game of courtship".
Assuming the worst-case scenario happened of them saying no to the hand holding request, these repercussions are still happening in the woman's mind, mostly subconsciously:
* You're now always in the back of her mind as someone who's likely to reciprocate if she ever changes her mind and shows interest in you — this happens pretty often in a matter of months or years as circumstances shift
* Your ability to make a move and then gracefully/unproblematically take no for an answer and go back to 100% platonic (no longer signal any romantic interest in her, for a couple weeks at least, think like an exponential backoff algorithm), is surprisingly rare and impressive. Most guys don't have that level of self-control to just play the dating game like a game where you make a move and just act calibratedly and maturely to the outcome of the move (seriously). She is going to subconsciously be kind of impressed with you, and is now more likely to be recommending you to her friends/acquaintances as someone to hang out with and potentially date.
Remember, this is the *bad* scenario. The good (and significantly more likely) scenario is this:
* She smiles and says "sure!"
* You hold hands
* You can now reach for her hand any time, worldlessly or with any old line like "would you like to hold my hand again" so that you build this nice hand-holding comfort, which just reinforces the message that both of you are interested in each other, and then she'll be waiting for you to make the next move next time you see her.
Actually, after the first hold is done, I would personally recommend later attempting the next handhold by saying "Would you like to hold my hand again?" This is a useful test because you can learn from which of these two reactions you get:
1. Another positive-valence "Sure!" Now it's 100% clear she's interested in proceeding to the next stage of the romantic relationship with you (e.g. hold hands a lot on this date, then go out for a subsequent date which is clearly coded as a date).
2. A backpedaling reaction like "Haha, I'm good for now"
If you get reaction #2, what probably happened is that the first time you asked to hold her hand, she was caught off guard, and didn't have a tactful way to communicate "sorry I'm not currently interested in a romantic relationship with you", so she just said the lowest-friction response like "uh, sure, we can for a bit". When you ask her to hold hands later, for a second time, she's now prepared for it and she can easily give a tactful kind of "no", where she's maintaining graceful ambiguity about her lack of interest because she said "yes" and was nice about it the first time, and yet you can go ahead and interpret it as a clear sign that she's not interested, because it's 99% likely that being interested in you would make her respond to a second handholding offer with a positive-sounding yes reaction and eagerly giving you her hand.
Now, having gamed out the realistic scenarios in detail, we can see Bryan's "ask to hold her hand" move guarantees you either win big, or lose in a way where you actually still win compared to not asking.
I recommend doing it in the way you're most comfortable with. My comfort zone is using explicit language, and I feel most comfortable first saying "Would you like to hold my hand?" And only doing it if they respond positively.
For a first date, have a secondary place nearby to walk to together, and mention it during the initial part of the date, which is probably at a café or restaurant, somewhere you’re sitting down. At the end of the meal or coffee, be the first to stand up, then casually reach out your hand, and say “shall we go?”
Interesting. This *could* work, but I don't see it as a 100% sure thing like the move of asking "would you like to hold my hand?" Let's game it out:
The ideal outcome is that you reach out your hand, say "shall we go?", and as you help her up, you detect plenty of interest in the way she eagerly takes your hand and appreciates the gesture. Even better if she herself was smooth enough to take your right hand with her left hand (which is ineffective at helping her get up), or if she took your right hand with her right hand and the two of you then smoothly transitioned into rotating your relative orientation around by 180° and initiated handholding.
Plenty of smooth moves have this ideal outcome — because the whole game is indeed easy mode, and most shy nerdy guys are indeed just leaving massive value on the table by regularly interacting with women who are pretty likely to be interested in dating them and not making a move to instantly ascertain whether they are or aren't.
To help shy nerdy guys reach for this low-hanging fruit, we shouldn't be trying to make their move "smooth", we should just be helping them see why their decision to break the initial romantic barrier is something to feel unashamed about, and to *rationally not fear* about the downside consequences (since I explained why there literally are none, only many upsides in fact).
Furthermore — and this is important — an un-smooth tactic instantly becomes charming (and even smooth) when it's done in a "grounded" manner, i.e. you know what you're doing and why it's the right thing to do for your courtship goals, as opposed to trying a nervous flailing gambit where you're not sure what to do a couple steps later if you get an unexpected reaction. An un-smooth tactic is smoother than you'd think, when it's done out of your normal and accurate big-picture understanding of being a player in the courtship game.
If you say "Would you like to hold my hand?" in a nice friendly way, and the woman rapidly subconsciously infers "Wow he's making a kind of bold move on me by asking this, so I guess he's romantically interested in me", the positive valence from you playing the game like it's just part of your normal playbook of strong communication & respectful social interaction, without undermining yourself or hiding what you're doing — and without treating it like it's an isolated high-stakes moment (since you shouldn't mind continuing to show that you're interested in future moments if she's indicating a desire to know) — is so cool, that the whole "would you like to hold my hand?" interaction which sounds uncool on paper may actually be perceived as smooth in the moment, or quickly revised in memory as having been smooth.
Now let's play out the worst-case scenario of the "shall we go?" hand reachout.
If the woman is *not* romantically interested, she's still almost equally likely to take your hand if a clear "help you up" type of hand-reachout gesture is made out of friendliness, so the signal of her taking your hand to get up is pretty low. So then what do you do once she's up — try to keep holding her hand, even though it's unclear whether she's interested? You could, but I personally don't think the benefit of the "shall we go?" non-handholding hand contact was worth the extra complexity, from the perspective of guys who aren't comfortable with social touching (most shy nerdy guys these days).
Also, what do you do when the woman has taken your right hand with her right hand to stand up, and you haven't yet ascertained whether she is or isn't romantically interested? Are you going to let go and turn 180° and try to hold her hand again in one smooth, wordless motion?
I claim, from the perspective of guys (and girls) who don't have a natural sense for this stuff, you've created a signaling mess.
You may think you've signaled romantic interest by helping her up, but you've at best only signaled it in a "given her a hint of evidence" sense, not in the "made a move" sense. That is, while she *may* correctly infer that you've helped her up because you're romantically interested in her, she can't correctly infer that you've done the "Make A First Move" step in the courtship protocol.
On the contrary… for a typical nerdy guy, assuming delivery and body language aren't smooth & effortless (if yours are, then your situation probably isn't similar to the situation I'm giving advice for), the woman is likely to pick up on your "shall we go?" hand grasp as coming from a not-comfortable-with-your-intentions place (as opposed to coming from a comfortable Live Player of the game of courtship) — because you're trying to make it illegible that you're shooting your shot and Making The First Move. Going this route generally won't improve your situation as much as legibly attempting the "would you like to hold my hand?" move.
Now consider if the woman *is* interested in you, but the woman is also herself kind of shy and awkward (common for women in the social circle of nerdy guys). In this case, she might accidentally miss the cue to take your hand when you say "shall we go?", or at least miss the cue to put her left hand in your right hand so you can smoothly segue to holding hands, thus leaving the courtship protocol in an ambiguous state after she gets up.
In conclusion:
If the "Shall we go?" move feels good and natural to you, and you don't get why I'm talking about being left in an "ambiguous state of the courtship protocol" — go for it! Because getting past the part of courtship where you ascertain whether a woman is interested in you isn't fundamentally difficult or complex. All kinds of moves will work.
On the other hand, if you want a rock-solid plan for how you can (1) quickly and confidently ascertain whether the woman is or isn't interested in you and (2) have a rock solid plan for what to do upon ascertaining either kind of possible knowledge, preserving the option to retreat back to the platonic friendship comfort zone without having taken any damage (in fact coming out being cooler on net) — then just say "would you like to hold my hand?"!
This is fun. I think I'm less shy than most, so I never derived any big conclusions if a date would only take the hand momentarily or would say, "that's OK, I need to grab my [coat, purse, scarf]." But the other element that "shall we go" insterts is the "we," and so the later description/recollection is "then WE went to..." rather than "then he took me to." I'm 42 with a wife and 4 kids, so I'm no doubt rusty; however, the warning from Anonymous ("you become the weird guy they're going to tell their friends about") is probably timeless. Perhaps we're all too worried about touching (and no one mentioned interdigitating), and what my idea gets at is easing the transition from first location and gives your date the opprunity to either express an inteest in more time with you...or go full Bartleby.
You are missing the point my friend in that it's not something that needs to be asked anymore than a handshake needs to be or a cheek kiss greeting. If you are in the situation where you need to explicitly ASK "can I hold your hand", and you aren't passing notes in the sixth grade, a 14th century knight in chivalric fairy tale, or my ninety-three year old neighbor going on dates from "OurTime" (yes that's real), you (as in the guy) are confused what situation you are in. Affirmative consent isn't a dating strategy, it's a sexual one.
It's not really like a handshake. With a handshake, nobody just grabs my hand and shakes it. They hold their hand out as an invitation to shake it, and if I don't want to, I can decline without them ever touching me. But if you just reach out and grab the girl's hand, there is no opportunity for her to decline without already having been touched.
I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong to do. I've done it and never had a bad response (fortunately!). I'm just saying your analogy doesn't work at all, so isn't a good defense of the "don't ask, just do it" approach, because the offered handshake *is* an ask itself.
Are you considering the scenario of not being certain whether the woman is interested to date you? I.e. the most common scenario nerdy guys find themselves in? Because I think we agree that holding someone's hand without asking who isn't interested in you is out of most people's comfort zone.
That's a different problem that has nothing to do with hand holding. If you are on a date, she's interested in dating you. If you aren't, then don't worry about it, you shouldn't be hanging out with them, i.e. don't creep on your coworkers or friends. The problem nerdy guys have is they are creepy, which is a valid dating strategy, but once again, not a hand holding consent problem.
I’m not sure if you read the original article from years ago, but the issue is that for many guys (granted guys from a certain demo/mindset) they literally cannot reliably tell if they’re on a date or not. Bryan’s strategy, as inelegant as it is, is designed to remove that ambiguity as quickly as possible before the guy invests more mental and physical resources into what may be a totally one-sided courtship.
"Unfortunate, but I struggle to think of anything helpful that requires even less effort."
Let me tell you about my experience. I dated one girl in my life. Just one. On the first date, I didn't touch her at all. On the second date, I didn't touch her at all. On the third, fourth, fifth, sixth date I didn't touch her at all. And so forth.
We dated for three months, and then I asked her to marry me. She accepted. I still didn't touch her at all.
Five months later, we got married. And then I held her hand.
My secret? Be part of a culture where relationships between men and women are very clear and unambiguous. There is no such thing as personal friendships between men and women outside the family circle. There are close relatives. There are women with whom you work in a professional/business setting. There are clients and vendors. That's it.
So are you spending time with a woman? Is she not a close relative? Is she not a professional associate? Is she not a client or vendor? If the answer to all of the questions is yes, then it's a date, and you're considering marrying each other. And you're not going to touch each other until you get married.
The system is totally non-ambiguous. Even the shyest of guys doesn't need to wonder "Am I in the friend zone?" No, you're not.
If she agreed to spend time with you, it's a date. If she agreed to spend time with you again, it's another date.
And you're not dating anyone else, and she's not dating anyone else, and neither of you will do that--until and unless one of you decides that this marriage isn't going to happen and breaks off the relationship.
Being an Orthodox Jew solves a lot of problems for me.
This might work out in single occasions, but it is not a very reasonable process. Compatibility on the sexual and physical level has to be explored and estabilished at first. I was not compatible with my first lovers.
It does work and has worked and continues to work for hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jews in every generation, from the distant past till today. And our numbers are increasing rapidly, as our marriages usually stay together and our median family size is far above replacement.
Sexual compatibility? A poor filter. I assure you, no matter how sexually compatible you find a girl today, in ten years she will be a different person, and certainly in twenty or thirty. You cannot establish sexual compatibility in advance for the simple reason that it is constantly changing.
Far better to focus on the person, not on the bedskill.
I think it is obvious that physical compatibility is just as important as psychological compatibility. And physical preferences don't seem totally malleable. Just think of the lack in virtue when imagining a sexual act were one party doesn't feel joy or an encounter where one partner is disgusted experiencing the style of touch. Can I possibly fare better if I married a partner that later disgusts me with her preferences?
By the way - who knows how people get to know each other when they are private even if they belong to religious groups? For a puritan it might be hard to imagine but people usually know ways to overcome rules that go against their inner desires.
Sure, most people think like you. Relatively few people think like me.
Empirically, which of us are doing better? Your society, with its widespread unhappiness and divorce, or mine, where most people are satisfied with their husbands and wives and stay with them for life?
If you want to assume that we’re “cheating”, declaring values and standards of no touch before marriage but actually ignoring those values and standards, hey, I can’t stop you. I can only assure you that it is not so.
Let me try to steelman your case: a lot of platonic encounters with a woman can just as well reveal compatibility. At least endurance implies such high levels of interest on both sides, e.g. because they are into the looks etc., that both may endure waiting and overlook certain frictions after the platonic phase.
Perhaps a better case may be that illiberal lifestyles cancel the paradox of choice.
As to my knowledge in archaic times there was economic as well as societal pressure to get into marriage and bear children, combined with rigid norms, deprivation of economic opportunities of women and matchmaking.
A) Long term relationships between men and women are far more complex than mere sexual compatibility. Furthermore, other aspects of compatibility, such as wanting broadly the same kind of life and having the same kinds of ambition, are both more important and longer-lasting. The Orthodox Jewish model allows those aspects to be explored and properly weighted, whereas the secular model does not.
B) As previously alluded to, sexual compatibility changes over time. Optimizing for sexual compatibility means choosing a permanent relationship on the basis of a temporary state of affairs.
C) Sexual skills can be learned, whereas matters of fundamental character and life hopes are far less amenable to change.
D) Empirically, Orthodox Jewish relationships tend to succeed over the long term, while secular relationships do not.
Bingo though I move faster than that but we agree on the concept. It's why I get confused on all the people here that don't seem to understand if they are on a date or dating. If you are out with a chick sans a formal obligation, you are dating. Not sure the issue here.
Because they are pleased to live in a world in which non-romantic friendships between non-related men and women exist. So the question must be asked--is she my girlfriend? Or just my friend that happens to be a girl?
The thing is we both know what world doesn't actually exist sans some extremely niche scenarios. In reality what that is is a woman hedging a piggy bank and dog and a guy trying to siege her down because sometimes hell first freeze over.
PS: I'll acknowledge one rare situation where I've seen it legitimately work is with ex spouses with adult kids. You already reached bed death and burnt out all romantic and sexual feelings towards them hence they act like an old pair of shoes as an old friend would. Platonic is all that left because the rest was replaced with battle scars lol.
I have a personal data point supporting your recommendation. I was a shy junior in High School when I met a new girl at a house party given by some of my friends. She had recently transferred to Houston from West Texas in the middle of her senior year. After talking with her at the party I found out she lived in the neighborhood and offered to walk her home. During the walk to her house, the thought occurred to me that I had met the girl I would marry. So, I decided to hold her hand. When we got to her house, I wanted to kiss her but decided not to. She later told me that if I had kissed her, it would have ended our short relationship. We have since been blessed with 55 years of marriage.
I'm a twenty-two year old virgin college student, so more or less the target audience here. The problem with "I want to hold your hand" is that all flirting is strongly governed by norms -- if you say something 'weird' like an explicit request for handholding you become the weird guy they're going to tell their friends about later. In fact, you run a huge risk of this just by approaching them at all. There are very exacting standards for conformity and you bend them near breaking point just by approaching at all.
This isn't the case in a bar, but there are other problems with the bar as a dating market if you're a shy guy who reads economics blogs.
I'm a 21 year old college student, though not a virgin, and I think Bryan is talking about a later part of the funnel than you are. You shouldn't be trying to lead with overt romantic gestures if you're at the stage where you're merely in a "talking stage" and they haven't actually agreed to a date with you yet. Flirting at that stage is more "you have a nice sense of style" or trying to get them to study with you one on one. It is once you guys are spending time together one-on-one, and they seem to be enjoying your presence, then you can graduate to stuff like hand-holding and more risk flirting. You could ask to grab coffee then you pay for both coffees (and then you see how they respond!), because paying for you and your date is considered a romantic gesture.
Honestly, another thing you just have to accept is that romance is risky. It's life. Almost every person who is now in a romantic relationship had to take on some sort of risk in order to get to that point. There will always be a hole to poke when it comes to dating. The fact that so many people decide to pursue it in spite of the great risk speaks to how wonderful it is.
Rejecting a handhold is a very awkward, while holding hands is low cost. For this reason, I can very well imagine somebody holding hands with a date just to avoid the awkwardness of refusal, without being interested.
You have to monitor whether a person pulls away their hand as soon as they have an excuse, and whether they re-initiate and hopefully when the hold is broken.
I am merely one girl, but for what it's worth, many "normal and shy" guys have tried asking me out in creative ways (e.g., "If I had asked you out when we met, would you have said yes?"), including the "I want to hold your hand" thing(!!), and I've also had some "normal and shy" guys slyly try to escalate physically (e.g., actually grabbing my hands instead of asking verbally). In *both* cases, they forced me to make a final, explicit decision in the way Hanania previously commented (https://www.betonit.ai/p/i-want-to-hold-your-hand/comment/8704706).
Ultimately, I think different people are different, but a person should make his (or her) interest known in whatever way feels most approachable to him (or her). Differentiation in the methods would not have changed my final answer.
My wife and I always held hands for 37 years. I held hands with my kids. As a widower I always move to hold hands with a date...it's a public display of affection that elicits smiles from most passers-by thus affirming social acceptance.
Yeah handholding is how I differentiate between a romantic vs sexual relationship. I got girls I've known for years that still won't hold my hand in public, those relationships are never going to go anywhere and that's ok because there is no confusion on that.
My only objection is that encouraging shy guys to work within their shyness limits their dating pool. Society still largely burdens men with the responsibility to direct the courtship and women vastly prefer men they perceive as strong and confident.
If a shy guy can find a woman who loves his meek approach, fabulous! He will have a smaller pool of candidates in which to find a compatible partner.
Kind of depends on how shy they are, right? Like if they’re the sort who get nervous around family at Thanksgiving, the hand holding advice is probably level-appropriate. It’s like how morbidly obese people should go out for a walk rather than do Tough Mudder or Crossfit.
I commentes on Richard’s article: I tried it, and it worked! Given that I read your original article and had thought about it, I am 100% sure that I would have not tried it if you had not written it. I am still dating the girl!
It was not so much me, but the girl that was a bit shy and conservative. By asking to hold her hand, I think I took it in the slowest way possible!
I’ll put forward a synthesis here and say try whichever one of these things you want, just try something!
The thing about body language, tone, etc is no matter what you’ll be doing something. There’s no checking out of body language. So no matter what stage you are, advice on that topic can be useful.
I think the "hold hands" advice is fine, but it's optimizing the wrong part of the funnel. I don't think the shy guys are getting a lot of first dates and then failing to convert, I think they are failing to get to the first date in the first place.
Bingo and it's not just shy guys. While conversion can be a problem because of the whorish nature of women, that is vastly less a problem that getting a date in date in the first place.
"whorish nature of women"
I don't know if you're an incel or an old-school misogynist, but you're not someone anyone here will take seriously, for good reason
For a socially clueless young male, 'May I hold your hand?' is excellent advice. If the young woman is interested in you, she will agree even if she thinks the approach rather lame. If she isn't interested, she won't agree and the young male will now know to move on. The third possibility, that the young woman is so indifferent that the hapless approach tilts them to negative, is highly unlikely. Or, our socially clueless young man won't have the skill to convert such a situation anyway.
The 'May I hold your hand' advice considers that a young woman in your social circle will have already reached some sort of opinion about the young man, even though it may be subconscious and whatever the opinion is will be hidden. 'May I hold your hand? reveals the opinion and, for a young man at skill level is one out of ten, it's the one out of ten skill level move with the best outcome. If the young woman agrees, the experience with her will rapidly advance the young man's skill level several points.
Note that even if the young woman declines, it isn't hopeless. Definitely give up on the woman and move on, but be aware that the young woman will likely ruminate on what happened and may later experience regret. In which case she knows it is up to her to make the next move. If our hapless young male has recognized in advance the possibility and decided to grab it if it comes, the general superior social skills of the young woman will cause her to succeed.
I asked my wife to hold hands on the first date, and she politely declined.
Hey Bryan, I'm probably the best target audience for that piece of advice, shy nerdy guy who's never had romantic success. I tried it a few months ago, and while it worked on that date, she didn't want to follow up with any future dates. But it was nice and kind of woke me up to how low stakes a lot of this stuff is. Upped my confidence a little.
The dating market and "gender war", etc. are all very hostile at the moment so it's understandable why many men would be extremely cautious to initiate anything. Having a low stakes, unambiguous signal of interest that doesn't commit too much one way or the other is very useful to people like me.
I run a company in the dating & relationship advice space (relationshiphero.com) and FWIW I think Bryan's "ask to hold their hand" tip for shy guys is brilliant!
His stated logic is correct. If you (the man) bungle the move really bad, i.e. you just say "would you like to hold my hand" (these words are actually perfectly good IMO) but your delivery is somehow "bad" and the woman has very low attraction for you to begin with, the woman will just think "this guy who I'm not into turned out to be interested in me, and made the possibility go from ambiguous to somewhat clear by making a polite move to hold my hand, but I was hoping he just WOULDN'T be interested in me since I'm not interested in him, so I awkwardly told him 'no thanks, I'd rather not... sorry...' and it was such an awkward moment, and then we just kept going with the day and he didn't try again, so he was good about getting the message" — this is actually not creepy at all, and they actually will most likely blame themselves for half or even most of the awkwardness of the moment, because it's not like you overstepped any kind of social boundaries, it's not like you asked her to come over to your house at night or did anything that was inappropriate to do to someone who turns out not to be interested in you — you made a very clear and socially-appropriate FIRST move attempt.
Even in this awkward-moment "nightmare scenario" I described above, that's actually still a solid move and nothing to be embarrassed about — it almost certainly leaves you in a BETTER position after you did it than before. Most women (correctly) feel that guys are too shy and and don't make enough moves on them, so any guy who makes any move — literally just saying the words "Would you like to hold my hand?" (my preferred variation) or any other decent variation ("Can I possibly hold your hand", "How would you feel about me holding your hand", "What would you say if I asked to hold your hand", etc) — any guy who makes that move is already in their mental category of "guy who intentionally/purposefully/bravely is a Live Player in the game of courtship".
Assuming the worst-case scenario happened of them saying no to the hand holding request, these repercussions are still happening in the woman's mind, mostly subconsciously:
* You're now always in the back of her mind as someone who's likely to reciprocate if she ever changes her mind and shows interest in you — this happens pretty often in a matter of months or years as circumstances shift
* Your ability to make a move and then gracefully/unproblematically take no for an answer and go back to 100% platonic (no longer signal any romantic interest in her, for a couple weeks at least, think like an exponential backoff algorithm), is surprisingly rare and impressive. Most guys don't have that level of self-control to just play the dating game like a game where you make a move and just act calibratedly and maturely to the outcome of the move (seriously). She is going to subconsciously be kind of impressed with you, and is now more likely to be recommending you to her friends/acquaintances as someone to hang out with and potentially date.
Remember, this is the *bad* scenario. The good (and significantly more likely) scenario is this:
* She smiles and says "sure!"
* You hold hands
* You can now reach for her hand any time, worldlessly or with any old line like "would you like to hold my hand again" so that you build this nice hand-holding comfort, which just reinforces the message that both of you are interested in each other, and then she'll be waiting for you to make the next move next time you see her.
Actually, after the first hold is done, I would personally recommend later attempting the next handhold by saying "Would you like to hold my hand again?" This is a useful test because you can learn from which of these two reactions you get:
1. Another positive-valence "Sure!" Now it's 100% clear she's interested in proceeding to the next stage of the romantic relationship with you (e.g. hold hands a lot on this date, then go out for a subsequent date which is clearly coded as a date).
2. A backpedaling reaction like "Haha, I'm good for now"
If you get reaction #2, what probably happened is that the first time you asked to hold her hand, she was caught off guard, and didn't have a tactful way to communicate "sorry I'm not currently interested in a romantic relationship with you", so she just said the lowest-friction response like "uh, sure, we can for a bit". When you ask her to hold hands later, for a second time, she's now prepared for it and she can easily give a tactful kind of "no", where she's maintaining graceful ambiguity about her lack of interest because she said "yes" and was nice about it the first time, and yet you can go ahead and interpret it as a clear sign that she's not interested, because it's 99% likely that being interested in you would make her respond to a second handholding offer with a positive-sounding yes reaction and eagerly giving you her hand.
Now, having gamed out the realistic scenarios in detail, we can see Bryan's "ask to hold her hand" move guarantees you either win big, or lose in a way where you actually still win compared to not asking.
Or you can just literally reach out and hold their hand, it's not lava.
I recommend doing it in the way you're most comfortable with. My comfort zone is using explicit language, and I feel most comfortable first saying "Would you like to hold my hand?" And only doing it if they respond positively.
For a first date, have a secondary place nearby to walk to together, and mention it during the initial part of the date, which is probably at a café or restaurant, somewhere you’re sitting down. At the end of the meal or coffee, be the first to stand up, then casually reach out your hand, and say “shall we go?”
Interesting. This *could* work, but I don't see it as a 100% sure thing like the move of asking "would you like to hold my hand?" Let's game it out:
The ideal outcome is that you reach out your hand, say "shall we go?", and as you help her up, you detect plenty of interest in the way she eagerly takes your hand and appreciates the gesture. Even better if she herself was smooth enough to take your right hand with her left hand (which is ineffective at helping her get up), or if she took your right hand with her right hand and the two of you then smoothly transitioned into rotating your relative orientation around by 180° and initiated handholding.
Plenty of smooth moves have this ideal outcome — because the whole game is indeed easy mode, and most shy nerdy guys are indeed just leaving massive value on the table by regularly interacting with women who are pretty likely to be interested in dating them and not making a move to instantly ascertain whether they are or aren't.
To help shy nerdy guys reach for this low-hanging fruit, we shouldn't be trying to make their move "smooth", we should just be helping them see why their decision to break the initial romantic barrier is something to feel unashamed about, and to *rationally not fear* about the downside consequences (since I explained why there literally are none, only many upsides in fact).
Furthermore — and this is important — an un-smooth tactic instantly becomes charming (and even smooth) when it's done in a "grounded" manner, i.e. you know what you're doing and why it's the right thing to do for your courtship goals, as opposed to trying a nervous flailing gambit where you're not sure what to do a couple steps later if you get an unexpected reaction. An un-smooth tactic is smoother than you'd think, when it's done out of your normal and accurate big-picture understanding of being a player in the courtship game.
If you say "Would you like to hold my hand?" in a nice friendly way, and the woman rapidly subconsciously infers "Wow he's making a kind of bold move on me by asking this, so I guess he's romantically interested in me", the positive valence from you playing the game like it's just part of your normal playbook of strong communication & respectful social interaction, without undermining yourself or hiding what you're doing — and without treating it like it's an isolated high-stakes moment (since you shouldn't mind continuing to show that you're interested in future moments if she's indicating a desire to know) — is so cool, that the whole "would you like to hold my hand?" interaction which sounds uncool on paper may actually be perceived as smooth in the moment, or quickly revised in memory as having been smooth.
Now let's play out the worst-case scenario of the "shall we go?" hand reachout.
If the woman is *not* romantically interested, she's still almost equally likely to take your hand if a clear "help you up" type of hand-reachout gesture is made out of friendliness, so the signal of her taking your hand to get up is pretty low. So then what do you do once she's up — try to keep holding her hand, even though it's unclear whether she's interested? You could, but I personally don't think the benefit of the "shall we go?" non-handholding hand contact was worth the extra complexity, from the perspective of guys who aren't comfortable with social touching (most shy nerdy guys these days).
Also, what do you do when the woman has taken your right hand with her right hand to stand up, and you haven't yet ascertained whether she is or isn't romantically interested? Are you going to let go and turn 180° and try to hold her hand again in one smooth, wordless motion?
I claim, from the perspective of guys (and girls) who don't have a natural sense for this stuff, you've created a signaling mess.
You may think you've signaled romantic interest by helping her up, but you've at best only signaled it in a "given her a hint of evidence" sense, not in the "made a move" sense. That is, while she *may* correctly infer that you've helped her up because you're romantically interested in her, she can't correctly infer that you've done the "Make A First Move" step in the courtship protocol.
On the contrary… for a typical nerdy guy, assuming delivery and body language aren't smooth & effortless (if yours are, then your situation probably isn't similar to the situation I'm giving advice for), the woman is likely to pick up on your "shall we go?" hand grasp as coming from a not-comfortable-with-your-intentions place (as opposed to coming from a comfortable Live Player of the game of courtship) — because you're trying to make it illegible that you're shooting your shot and Making The First Move. Going this route generally won't improve your situation as much as legibly attempting the "would you like to hold my hand?" move.
Now consider if the woman *is* interested in you, but the woman is also herself kind of shy and awkward (common for women in the social circle of nerdy guys). In this case, she might accidentally miss the cue to take your hand when you say "shall we go?", or at least miss the cue to put her left hand in your right hand so you can smoothly segue to holding hands, thus leaving the courtship protocol in an ambiguous state after she gets up.
In conclusion:
If the "Shall we go?" move feels good and natural to you, and you don't get why I'm talking about being left in an "ambiguous state of the courtship protocol" — go for it! Because getting past the part of courtship where you ascertain whether a woman is interested in you isn't fundamentally difficult or complex. All kinds of moves will work.
On the other hand, if you want a rock-solid plan for how you can (1) quickly and confidently ascertain whether the woman is or isn't interested in you and (2) have a rock solid plan for what to do upon ascertaining either kind of possible knowledge, preserving the option to retreat back to the platonic friendship comfort zone without having taken any damage (in fact coming out being cooler on net) — then just say "would you like to hold my hand?"!
This is fun. I think I'm less shy than most, so I never derived any big conclusions if a date would only take the hand momentarily or would say, "that's OK, I need to grab my [coat, purse, scarf]." But the other element that "shall we go" insterts is the "we," and so the later description/recollection is "then WE went to..." rather than "then he took me to." I'm 42 with a wife and 4 kids, so I'm no doubt rusty; however, the warning from Anonymous ("you become the weird guy they're going to tell their friends about") is probably timeless. Perhaps we're all too worried about touching (and no one mentioned interdigitating), and what my idea gets at is easing the transition from first location and gives your date the opprunity to either express an inteest in more time with you...or go full Bartleby.
You are missing the point my friend in that it's not something that needs to be asked anymore than a handshake needs to be or a cheek kiss greeting. If you are in the situation where you need to explicitly ASK "can I hold your hand", and you aren't passing notes in the sixth grade, a 14th century knight in chivalric fairy tale, or my ninety-three year old neighbor going on dates from "OurTime" (yes that's real), you (as in the guy) are confused what situation you are in. Affirmative consent isn't a dating strategy, it's a sexual one.
It's not really like a handshake. With a handshake, nobody just grabs my hand and shakes it. They hold their hand out as an invitation to shake it, and if I don't want to, I can decline without them ever touching me. But if you just reach out and grab the girl's hand, there is no opportunity for her to decline without already having been touched.
I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong to do. I've done it and never had a bad response (fortunately!). I'm just saying your analogy doesn't work at all, so isn't a good defense of the "don't ask, just do it" approach, because the offered handshake *is* an ask itself.
Are you considering the scenario of not being certain whether the woman is interested to date you? I.e. the most common scenario nerdy guys find themselves in? Because I think we agree that holding someone's hand without asking who isn't interested in you is out of most people's comfort zone.
That's a different problem that has nothing to do with hand holding. If you are on a date, she's interested in dating you. If you aren't, then don't worry about it, you shouldn't be hanging out with them, i.e. don't creep on your coworkers or friends. The problem nerdy guys have is they are creepy, which is a valid dating strategy, but once again, not a hand holding consent problem.
I’m not sure if you read the original article from years ago, but the issue is that for many guys (granted guys from a certain demo/mindset) they literally cannot reliably tell if they’re on a date or not. Bryan’s strategy, as inelegant as it is, is designed to remove that ambiguity as quickly as possible before the guy invests more mental and physical resources into what may be a totally one-sided courtship.
"Unfortunate, but I struggle to think of anything helpful that requires even less effort."
Let me tell you about my experience. I dated one girl in my life. Just one. On the first date, I didn't touch her at all. On the second date, I didn't touch her at all. On the third, fourth, fifth, sixth date I didn't touch her at all. And so forth.
We dated for three months, and then I asked her to marry me. She accepted. I still didn't touch her at all.
Five months later, we got married. And then I held her hand.
My secret? Be part of a culture where relationships between men and women are very clear and unambiguous. There is no such thing as personal friendships between men and women outside the family circle. There are close relatives. There are women with whom you work in a professional/business setting. There are clients and vendors. That's it.
So are you spending time with a woman? Is she not a close relative? Is she not a professional associate? Is she not a client or vendor? If the answer to all of the questions is yes, then it's a date, and you're considering marrying each other. And you're not going to touch each other until you get married.
The system is totally non-ambiguous. Even the shyest of guys doesn't need to wonder "Am I in the friend zone?" No, you're not.
If she agreed to spend time with you, it's a date. If she agreed to spend time with you again, it's another date.
And you're not dating anyone else, and she's not dating anyone else, and neither of you will do that--until and unless one of you decides that this marriage isn't going to happen and breaks off the relationship.
Being an Orthodox Jew solves a lot of problems for me.
This might work out in single occasions, but it is not a very reasonable process. Compatibility on the sexual and physical level has to be explored and estabilished at first. I was not compatible with my first lovers.
It does work and has worked and continues to work for hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jews in every generation, from the distant past till today. And our numbers are increasing rapidly, as our marriages usually stay together and our median family size is far above replacement.
Sexual compatibility? A poor filter. I assure you, no matter how sexually compatible you find a girl today, in ten years she will be a different person, and certainly in twenty or thirty. You cannot establish sexual compatibility in advance for the simple reason that it is constantly changing.
Far better to focus on the person, not on the bedskill.
I think it is obvious that physical compatibility is just as important as psychological compatibility. And physical preferences don't seem totally malleable. Just think of the lack in virtue when imagining a sexual act were one party doesn't feel joy or an encounter where one partner is disgusted experiencing the style of touch. Can I possibly fare better if I married a partner that later disgusts me with her preferences?
By the way - who knows how people get to know each other when they are private even if they belong to religious groups? For a puritan it might be hard to imagine but people usually know ways to overcome rules that go against their inner desires.
Sure, most people think like you. Relatively few people think like me.
Empirically, which of us are doing better? Your society, with its widespread unhappiness and divorce, or mine, where most people are satisfied with their husbands and wives and stay with them for life?
If you want to assume that we’re “cheating”, declaring values and standards of no touch before marriage but actually ignoring those values and standards, hey, I can’t stop you. I can only assure you that it is not so.
Let me try to steelman your case: a lot of platonic encounters with a woman can just as well reveal compatibility. At least endurance implies such high levels of interest on both sides, e.g. because they are into the looks etc., that both may endure waiting and overlook certain frictions after the platonic phase.
Perhaps a better case may be that illiberal lifestyles cancel the paradox of choice.
As to my knowledge in archaic times there was economic as well as societal pressure to get into marriage and bear children, combined with rigid norms, deprivation of economic opportunities of women and matchmaking.
My case is a lot stronger than that.
A) Long term relationships between men and women are far more complex than mere sexual compatibility. Furthermore, other aspects of compatibility, such as wanting broadly the same kind of life and having the same kinds of ambition, are both more important and longer-lasting. The Orthodox Jewish model allows those aspects to be explored and properly weighted, whereas the secular model does not.
B) As previously alluded to, sexual compatibility changes over time. Optimizing for sexual compatibility means choosing a permanent relationship on the basis of a temporary state of affairs.
C) Sexual skills can be learned, whereas matters of fundamental character and life hopes are far less amenable to change.
D) Empirically, Orthodox Jewish relationships tend to succeed over the long term, while secular relationships do not.
Bingo though I move faster than that but we agree on the concept. It's why I get confused on all the people here that don't seem to understand if they are on a date or dating. If you are out with a chick sans a formal obligation, you are dating. Not sure the issue here.
Because they are pleased to live in a world in which non-romantic friendships between non-related men and women exist. So the question must be asked--is she my girlfriend? Or just my friend that happens to be a girl?
The thing is we both know what world doesn't actually exist sans some extremely niche scenarios. In reality what that is is a woman hedging a piggy bank and dog and a guy trying to siege her down because sometimes hell first freeze over.
PS: I'll acknowledge one rare situation where I've seen it legitimately work is with ex spouses with adult kids. You already reached bed death and burnt out all romantic and sexual feelings towards them hence they act like an old pair of shoes as an old friend would. Platonic is all that left because the rest was replaced with battle scars lol.
I have a personal data point supporting your recommendation. I was a shy junior in High School when I met a new girl at a house party given by some of my friends. She had recently transferred to Houston from West Texas in the middle of her senior year. After talking with her at the party I found out she lived in the neighborhood and offered to walk her home. During the walk to her house, the thought occurred to me that I had met the girl I would marry. So, I decided to hold her hand. When we got to her house, I wanted to kiss her but decided not to. She later told me that if I had kissed her, it would have ended our short relationship. We have since been blessed with 55 years of marriage.
I'm a twenty-two year old virgin college student, so more or less the target audience here. The problem with "I want to hold your hand" is that all flirting is strongly governed by norms -- if you say something 'weird' like an explicit request for handholding you become the weird guy they're going to tell their friends about later. In fact, you run a huge risk of this just by approaching them at all. There are very exacting standards for conformity and you bend them near breaking point just by approaching at all.
This isn't the case in a bar, but there are other problems with the bar as a dating market if you're a shy guy who reads economics blogs.
I'm a 21 year old college student, though not a virgin, and I think Bryan is talking about a later part of the funnel than you are. You shouldn't be trying to lead with overt romantic gestures if you're at the stage where you're merely in a "talking stage" and they haven't actually agreed to a date with you yet. Flirting at that stage is more "you have a nice sense of style" or trying to get them to study with you one on one. It is once you guys are spending time together one-on-one, and they seem to be enjoying your presence, then you can graduate to stuff like hand-holding and more risk flirting. You could ask to grab coffee then you pay for both coffees (and then you see how they respond!), because paying for you and your date is considered a romantic gesture.
Honestly, another thing you just have to accept is that romance is risky. It's life. Almost every person who is now in a romantic relationship had to take on some sort of risk in order to get to that point. There will always be a hole to poke when it comes to dating. The fact that so many people decide to pursue it in spite of the great risk speaks to how wonderful it is.
Rejecting a handhold is a very awkward, while holding hands is low cost. For this reason, I can very well imagine somebody holding hands with a date just to avoid the awkwardness of refusal, without being interested.
You have to monitor whether a person pulls away their hand as soon as they have an excuse, and whether they re-initiate and hopefully when the hold is broken.
I am merely one girl, but for what it's worth, many "normal and shy" guys have tried asking me out in creative ways (e.g., "If I had asked you out when we met, would you have said yes?"), including the "I want to hold your hand" thing(!!), and I've also had some "normal and shy" guys slyly try to escalate physically (e.g., actually grabbing my hands instead of asking verbally). In *both* cases, they forced me to make a final, explicit decision in the way Hanania previously commented (https://www.betonit.ai/p/i-want-to-hold-your-hand/comment/8704706).
Ultimately, I think different people are different, but a person should make his (or her) interest known in whatever way feels most approachable to him (or her). Differentiation in the methods would not have changed my final answer.
My wife and I always held hands for 37 years. I held hands with my kids. As a widower I always move to hold hands with a date...it's a public display of affection that elicits smiles from most passers-by thus affirming social acceptance.
Yeah handholding is how I differentiate between a romantic vs sexual relationship. I got girls I've known for years that still won't hold my hand in public, those relationships are never going to go anywhere and that's ok because there is no confusion on that.
My only objection is that encouraging shy guys to work within their shyness limits their dating pool. Society still largely burdens men with the responsibility to direct the courtship and women vastly prefer men they perceive as strong and confident.
If a shy guy can find a woman who loves his meek approach, fabulous! He will have a smaller pool of candidates in which to find a compatible partner.
Kind of depends on how shy they are, right? Like if they’re the sort who get nervous around family at Thanksgiving, the hand holding advice is probably level-appropriate. It’s like how morbidly obese people should go out for a walk rather than do Tough Mudder or Crossfit.
Absolutely! Start where you are. That said, what shy guy would not be aided by increased confidence in any degree?
80% shy!? Why, Pareto?
Just a guess.
Fair enough.
Do you think that's a baseline for males, or is it culture/environment contingent?
Don't ask, reach for their hand and hold it. If they don't pull away, you're in.
I would amend this to a more subtle move. Brush their hand with yours and see how they respond.