(Go back to part 5 of this episode here)
My next question is from Claire who wants to know how to connect with her ex girlfriend who she studies with and stay friends with. Claire says:
“Hi, Clay!
Thank you so much for answering my question a couple weeks ago. My ex is still dating the other girl and it seems to be becoming more serious. My ex and I are friends and we see and text each other on a regular basis.
However, the main reason she asks to hang out with me is for help with her math homework. I try not to go out of my way to help her but if I have time left I will. I will just get – I just get worried because that’s the main reason that she talks to me. I have no idea where I stand or what stage she is at.
Anyway, I get really worried about asking her on a more date-like hangout and I can’t really use the catch-up excuse or anything since we see and talk to each other on a regular basis anyway.
We’ve been having great interactions in groups of people and over text. We even studied together just the two of us for four hours last week and it felt totally natural.
I want to get to a situation where I can connect with her and talk to her more though I don’t think that she knows that I still have feelings for her.
How can I progress forward to start hanging out with her on one-on-one situations without her pulling away or increasing her reactance? Thanks!
—Claire.”
One way that you could do that is, if you’re helping your ex girlfriend with her homework or something like that, you might choose a coffee shop or someplace that’s out of the way.
You get there and maybe you study for a little bit and then after an hour or something like that, you can close up the books, put the notebooks away and say to your ex:
“That’s enough. I think my brain is kind of exploding right now or something. How about we just put this aside and just go catch up for a little bit?”
“What’s new with you and…?”
“How have things been going? Did you ever see that movie about the thing (or whatever it might be)?”
Then you can have a little bit of a personal conversation with your ex girlfriend.
Shift things away from the subject of math and studying and more towards building your emotional connection. That’s really where your relationship with your ex is going to grow.
It’s not going to grow while you’re talking about integrals, derivatives and all that math stuff.
Your emotional connection with your ex girlfriend is going to grow based on talking and sharing emotional experiences with one another.
So if you can pivot the conversation away from the studying and have at least some moments that you’re talking about your personal experiences and things that are important to you besides math, then you can start to build that emotional connection.
You can do it within the context of the study date.
You have some periods of time within that context where you are talking about the homework but you’re taking these little breaks throughout every now and then.
Or even just you know in big chunks like taking a one-hour break or something where you can talk about things like:
“Hey, by the way, did you hear the update that so-and-so sent out about how their taking a year off to travel the world?
“What do you think that would be like?”
“Where would you go if you could take a year off and travel around the world?”
You can have little conversations like that and start to build emotional connections that bring the two of you closer together.
That’s probably what I would do if I was in that particular situation. And I hope that helps you out, Claire. Please keep us updated on how that goes.
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