Mark: What do you do when you're a planner and the guy you're seeing isn't, how do you
communicate to your ex that even though you want to be friends, you're going to need some
space first and how do you tell a guy that you're not up for something casual before
you go on the first day?
Welcome to Ask Mark.
It's week number 57 I'm here with beautiful Jermia and we are at holy wow!
Gorgeous Venice Beach.
Jermia: Venice Beach.
Mark: This place is incredible. I love it. Live from California. Ask Mark.
Well, live for us.
Jermia: We're live in California at this moment.
Mark: Not live for you when you watch the video.
Let's get onto some questions, shall we?
The first question is from, imstacey with her amazing Neverhood avatar.
She says, great video once again, Mark, thank you.
Could you please make it, make a video about how to deal with a dating scenario where a
man is not planning dates ahead and just says, "goodbye, good night" at the end of the date.
It kills me when they do that.
I'm a planner and I don't like uncertainty, but the majority of men I've dated don't like
planning ahead.
And I said, is he letting you know later in the week are not lifting a finger?
And she said he either lets me know right before the weekend or doesn't lift a finger
at all until I contact him and start giving him blunt hints.
But I would be up for another date.
I love it when they start planning the next date on the date or in the middle of the date
at the end plus continue to do so in the future.
I know this happens naturally when a guy's into me, but sometimes some guys just don't
like to plan ahead regardless of their level of attraction.
This is a great question.
I love this question.
There's a couple of elements you've explored here, Stacey.
So there's kinda two things we're thinking, Jermia, do you wanna kick us off?
Jermia: Yeah. So at first you kind of need to establish whether or not this guy is just a poor planner
or he is a little bit disinterested.
Mark: or a lot disinterested.
Yeah,
Jermia: Yeah.
So it depends if he's, you know, initiating contact during the week.
Like he, he's still talking to you regularly and it's, you know, shared amount that like
if you're contacting him just as much as he's contacting you or if it's always you consistently
initiating and then it is, you know, towards the end of the week when you're finally like,
come on, like what are we doing?
And that's when he's like, Oh, you know, like haven't made any other plans.
So cool, I'll jump in.
That's completely different to a guy who's, who is, you know, initiating halfway, like,
you know, kind of matching your investment level and he's just not good at planning and
we'll still talk to you.
And then finally when he's able to kind of be like, alright, cool, let's commit to something.
So...
Mark: is there an emotional momentum there throughout the week and he's just a bad planner?
Or is there nothing there throughout the week and he only plans stuff at the weekend, last
minute when you contact him?
Two totally different scenarios.
So the second scenario is easier to deal with where he's not that into you.
You kind of know what to do there, but in the first scenario, planning, what do you
do?
How do you assess it when a guy's genuinely into you, but much like myself tends to do
things last minute.
Even with people that we know we need to see tends to get organized last minute.
This someone like Stacey's a planner.
Jermia: Yeah.
Well, what you want to be doing is trying to meet each other halfway if that's possible.
You need to assess how kind of big the gap is.
If you're like planning kind of months in ahead and he's planning like day before, it's
going to be a bit of an incompatibility that it's probably not going to be something that
you're able to really work through, but if the gap isn't too much and he's willing to
meet you halfway and you're willing to make him halfway, there's definitely something
you can address working through.
Mark: Yeah, that's where you can have the conversation.
Assuming it's not too far.
Hey, we obviously like each other.
I'm a bit of a planner.
I know you like to be a bit more spontaneous.
Can we meet in the middle?
I'll, I'll be a bit less, you know, I'll try to be a bit less planny with you and maybe
you'd be a bit more planny with me.
If the emotional momentum is there, you can have that conversation just fine.
You will have to watch expectations, Stacey.
Certainly planning the next date on the current date is it's not going to be compatible for
a lot of guys, so you will have to meet some guys in the middle.
Now, the other thing you can do is you can teach the guy what you will and won't accept
in your life by basically showing your standards with your actions.
i.e. he says, "I can't prepare this early in the week."
You say, "that's cool."
You book out your weekend, and then when he says on Friday,
Jermia: well sorry, I'm busy, like you didn't give me any dates.
Mark: If the guy's really into you, he's going to learn his lesson
Jermia: and like, Oh wait, I want to hang out with this girl. She's busy.
I'm going to try and make times and get in there earlier next time. I'll planned stuff
good.
Mark: All right, beautiful.
Next one is from Jen, and Jen says, hi Mark, I'm so glad to have found you and all of your
videos are great.
They have really helped me change myself within myself and over the last week I've had an
ex that I really do still love, but the fact is since we split, I've made great mistakes
really by just staying friends with him and now we like friends with benefits.
We both said at first we wouldn't go down that road, but it happened, which I know I
never should have.
Looking at the videos you do, he probably does not respect me anymore.
And he is the one that always stayed in touch with me and and not let me go.
There's been many times where I've told him enough is enough in the first place and he
believed that I would walk away completely, but I guess he does not now because I've never
stuck with it.
This is really common, Jen, really common, but I think it would be best if we were not
to be in touch for some time.
I think I agree Jen.
So how would I go about just saying to him that I really want some space, so no spending
time together or talking without telling him to fuck off and basically being a rude bitch.
Um, don't get me wrong, I still want to walk away, but uh, it would not be easy.
Please help me.
Jermia: It is a really hard situation.
Obviously you guys are still in relatively good terms.
You're still kind of sleeping together.
So it's just a conversation that you're going to have to have with him.
As hard as it is.
Just have to kind of say, look, I know this is hard, but like I need to take some time
for myself just to clear my head of all this kind of stuff and you know, have time to get
over you and cause I don't think this is healthy for either of us.
And you know, I'd really love if you could support me in that by not reaching out to
me while I kind of get over you.
Mark: Come and be vulnerable.
Ask for his help.
Hey, I'm struggling right now.
As Jermia said, I need this space.
I need to get over you.
I need for you to not contact me for a while.
Jermia: It doesn't have to be the end either.
Like you can still have a really nice kind of friendly, mutual parting and then eventually
when you're both over each other and living your lives, you can still be friendly and
amicable. Like it doesn't have to be on bad terms.
Mark: Great question.
Love it again, great questions in the moment.
Uh, we've got Julia, it's the last question for today.
Julia says, I finally asked an old friend that I met online over two years ago to meet
up in March.
Both have been busy with work and live three hours from each other and his first response
was so positive.
This will be our first time meeting Unfortunately had so many things going for us in the past,
uh, going on for us in the past that when one was busy, the other wasn't, et cetera,
vice versa.
But, I want to make it clear to him that I'm not wanting to have sex and just hang out
as I rather intimacy with someone I deeply care about.
How should I tell him?
Jermia: Yeah, we have a great video on this one and you know How to Tell Him That You're
Not Going to Have Sex With Him, so have a check out of that video that we've got on
the channel already.
Mark: Yeah.
The easiest way to do it is to keep it playful and, and kind of like that way you don't feel
bad.
He kind of gets the message and he still sees you as a high value woman.
Mark: Yeah.
You can search How to Tell A Guy You're Not Having Sex With Him.
Will be right up the top there and that's for the ends of dates.
Jermia: Yeah.
Now that's when you're already on this one.
You're already on that day with him, but I have a feeling you may want to tell him before
you get there.
That way you don't have to worry about it while you're on the actual date itself.
You can super easily to send him a message like say the day before, say "Hey, like really
looking forward to tomorrow.
Just FYI, I'm not into like the casual thing.
So if you're still happy to meet up, that'd be amazing.
And I'm really looking forward to the date."
Mark: Yeah, fantastic.
Fantastic text.
I really have nothing to add to that.
Um, the guy's going to get the message with that.
And if he meets up with you, he's basically agreeing to those terms.
If you don't get time to send that text as Jermia says, you can do the playful approach
at the end of the day.
If he asks you home, you can also do the series approach.
You can say, "Hey look, I've loved tonight not really looking for something casual, but
if you do want to meet again and get to know each other, you know, I'd love to do that."
Obviously the other thing as well, make sure if you are looking for something non casual
and you want to build towards something, don't make the first date at home.
Make sure you meet somewhere in public so you can then go to those playful or more serious
lines at the end of the day.
Mark: Beautiful.
Thank you for watching.
Hey, don't forget to join the Facebook group.
Jermia is in there.
Brett is in there.
My amazing master coaches.
I'm in there too when I'm not spending time answering the comments on here.
We've got a whole community going in there.
It's amazing.
You guys are doing the most amazing job in there.
Yeah, these guys are great.
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Leave your comment question below.
We'll answer it in the next few weeks and thank you again.
We'll see you next week.
Jermia: Bye!
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