How to Date Alicia Keys

Swizz Beatz just dropped 2 minutes of amazing knowledge on how to have a great relationship -- especially one as attractive and successful as Alicia Keys. Pay 1000% attention to his points as these will not only help you have a strong, long-lasting relationship, but also get you into one. Remember, communication starts at first glance.​

Sleep More. Get Laid.

That was the original concept for this infographic. It still makes me laugh.

I had the awesome opportunity to team up with Zeo, a wellness company, on a research project that found whether or not sleep can effect your game.

You'll be surprised to see how much it does affect your ability to date. I typically sleep roughly 7-8 hours a day no matter when I go to sleep the night before (just ask my fiancée what happens if I don't get enough sleep).

Enjoy the infographic below and be sure to pass it around.

Tough Love #6: Date Crimes

This continues my posts of Tough Love, a series of posts, giving direct advice to women based on the weekly VH1 show, Tough Love. If you have missed out on other posts, feel free to check out the other ones.

Week 1: Creating a First Impression
Week 2: Communication
Week 3: Being Sexy
Week 4: Daddy & Dating
Week 5: The Wow Factor
Week 6: Date Crimes

It has always been easy for women to prosecute men for their dating past. My dating past is not pristine and honestly, whose really is?

There are very few people who live the dating lives of angels and I personally think that is ok, as long as you are looking to and currently DO take action in making things better.

There really wasn’t much stuff here to talk about in this episode of Tough Love but I will talk about some of the crimes that the women of Tough Love were “on trial” for and how most men perceive these crimes to be on a scale from “not so bad” to “total dealbreaker.”

Cheating on your fiance: this particular type of cheating is pretty much the #1 dealbreaker for men. A reason why is one of the biggest fears in a guy is you reach a major point in a relationship where you think he's found the one and he proposes to you to be with him for the rest of his life.

You say yes and then as you two prepare for the rest of your lives together, you cheat on him with another guy? It’s just a terrible thing to do and it makes every guy wonder if you could EVER be in a committed relationship let alone more than that. At a certain age, that kind of offense will cripple you.

Destructively vengeful personality: once again, another serious deal-breaker. If you take pleasure in taking revenge on someone, especially one of the destruction of property nature, guys will NOT want to be in a relationship with someone who can’t control their emotions in a productive way.

What issues you may have, you need to be able to get them in check or seek a professional to help you. These kinds of issues will not hurt you with short-term relationships but if you’re looking for long-term, forget about it.

Dating a taken man AKA adultery: it takes two to tango and if you’re going after a man who is already taken (and you KNOW he’s unavailable), that is a red flag.

There are enough single, eligible men walking the earth that you don’t need to get into a relationship that is already made - I don’t care if it’s a breaking (broken) relationship. If it’s the attention you are seeking, you can get it elsewhere. It’s still cheating, even though you’re not the one in the relationship.

In these and other date crimes, they will all come back around and hurt you. Yes, I believe in karma, but that’s not the point. These types of consequences do NOT have to be in the form of the same act being done upon you. But they can play a factor in the reason why you may be still single now.

Any step to recovering from such crimes will have to deal with confronting them, being honest about them and most importantly learning from them.

Having said that, if you are looking for these types of date crimes or other potential red-flags from us guys, it’s better to be indirect with your approach when you’re initially dating someone. From there, once the two of you become more comfortable with each other, you can start being more direct about what you’d like to know or are concerned with.

We all deserve to be with someone that is going to treat us right. We’re human and we do accept mistakes. The major thing is being mature and learning from them so that those same mistakes don’t become patterns and restrict you from being deemed “dateable.”

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Elements of Communication: Element #2: Giving Space & Trust

I wrote this article in early January and it a response post. I loved this article and I wanted to add it to the Elements of Communication series. Here is the first one:

Element #1: Having an Opinion

And here is the article explaining Element #2: Giving Space & Trust

This is a follow-up post to lisaq’s post on 20-forty answering the question, “is it okay to go out with the girls or should couples always go out together?” You should read her post.

When I read this post, it brought me back to so many moments when that issue came up in my previous relationships. Whenever my girl would want to go out without me, there were so many different things that went on in my mind.

“Why does she want to go out somewhere without me? “

“What’s wrong with me that makes her not want me there?”

“I wonder what’s she is going to be doing since I’m not around. Actually, I wonder what her friends will make/let her do with me not there.”

Then the usual sequence of ideas goes from that to wondering what drunk idiots will do when they see my girl with her friends, without her man. And then what she would do. Needless to say, it would cause a lot of problems in my relationships. What I would confuse for showing how much I care and don’t want anything bad to happen to her was actually showing a lack of trust in her, her friends and most importantly, insecurities about myself.

Never again.

I think it’s important that we talk more about relationships, as it is very important not only to gain one but also to maintain a very healthy one. This is one issue that proves to be a deal-breaker. If you haven’t read my post about fulfilling a woman’s emotional needs, I highly suggest you give it a good read. By far, one of my best.

In any relationship, it is important to establish two important things – trust and space. Yeah, trust is a given but it’s so easy to give off the feeling that you don’t trust her inadvertently. That whole “not trusting the drunk guys out there” thing is a lame excuse (just like Lisa said). If you really trust her, you’ll also trust the fact that she’ll know how to handle those drunk men. And what if she gets drunk herself? If you have to worry about her actions being different when she’s drunk, then that is something that you will have to confront her with, but ONLY if you have seen or heard that she does things while drunk that can be questionable.

On the same note, I feel as though trust can be related to space. Most people have different test levels of trust. Sure, we can trust someone we like with some personal secrets, or with some of our personal belongings, and of course, our love, but then when it comes to being separated – even if for just a few hours – it becomes a different test of trust. If you feel good about your relationship and actually trust her, I think it’s good for both of you to have other things to do in each other’s lives that don’t involve the other person. A typical example is a girls’ night or a guys’ night. But other examples may have to do with hobbies that only you enjoy.

Remember in high school when you had your girl but you played a sport and had to dedicate a crapload of time practicing and playing your sport (for me, it was football)? Your girl wasn’t around that much – unless she went to see you play at a game, but still, she couldn’t talk to you until after the game was over. With practice everyday, you she rarely had a chance to see you. But, whenever she did have that chance to be with you, you could tell she really appreciated the time with you – and vice-versa. I strongly believe that you need to find something like that and continue to hold on to a good chunk of your world as you two slowly merge them together.

When I talk about building your life, making yourself interesting and doing things that YOU love to do, once you get into a relationship, that doesn’t mean that you have to give up any of those things. Logically speaking, if you did give up those things, you wouldn’t be interesting and you certainly wouldn’t be the attractive person that your girl fell head over heels with – which is not what you want to do, right? Plus, you won't feel obligated to have to do everything with your girl if you have other activities going on in your life (I don't see anything wrong with that, just as long as it doesn't interfere with your relationship.).

So if there is anything you take from this it should be a few things.

1. Read lisaq’s blog, 20-forty.

2. Allow your girl to have nights out with her friends and without you. If she doesn’t invite you, chances are it’s a girls’ thing and be ok with it. Give her the benefit that she has nothing up her sleeve. Don’t give yourself reason to doubt if she hasn’t done that for you, already.

3. In the meantime, go and have your poker nights or your beer and wings nights with your boys.

4. Make sure that you are still having a life and doing things that you love. Remember, your whole point of wanting to be with a woman may be to actually share those things about yourself with her. Not doing those things and changing your life would be counter-productive.

I’m sure we could get deeper into this but I’ll save this for another post.

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Get the VIP Treatment

I've mentioned many times before how it is important that you have a few spots in your area where you are a regular. If that requires you to go once or twice a week, then so be it. Creating a lifestyle takes time and commitment.

So if you've reached that point where you are a regular and you have befriended the bartenders and waiters then you should notice that you've been treated a little bit better. Maybe the bartender serves you quicker on busier nights or you get a few drinks "on the house." Not only are these things beneficial to you but your social circle as well. Remember the whole "giving value" thing? Yeah, they'll appreciate the fact that you get hooked up and are sharing that with them (and they'll tell their friends about it, too - increasing your popularity).

I don't take advantage of situations at all for my personal beenfit - but I love doing it for other people.

Case Study: My buddy's birthday.

I want to make sure that my buddy has a great time at a place where he wants to go. I also want him to be treated well at this particular venue. So using my strings, I have been able to get him a table for little to nothing for this weekend (pending we meet requirements and he decides that that's where he'd like to have his party). I'll give you a small breakdown of how I was able to pull this off.

Over the course of several months, whenever I go to this place, I brought different people every time. I always made friends with everyone that worked there and checked in on them every once in a while throughout the night. I always sent a text to the bouncers to make sure that the amount of people I was bringing was ok. Above everything else, I thanked EVERYONE when the night was over. And of course it should go without saying that the people that I bring here are always model citizens who have a good time and not cause trouble.

A couple of weeks prior to my buddy's birthday, I talked to the manager about possibly wanting to hold a party there since they've always treated me well. I pretty much told him that if I can bring a ridiculous amount of people there, would he be able to hook me up (the venue is pretty small so an amount of 30 people would be pretty substantial). He said that he'd look into it and when I have official numbers, he'll "make it happen."

I tried my best to keep in touch with him, letting him know of my progress and he appreciated it. Today, he finally said he'd hook me up so I'm pretty excited about that. Once my buddy says that he'd like to have the party there, if it's possible, maybe I'll surprise both my buddy and my manager and bring more people there. But we'll see.

In the end, the important thing about being treated like a VIP is building and maintaining relationships. Going to a place once a month isn't going to cut it. You have to be out there in the scene, "working hard."

I'll have a follow-up post here about how all of this worked out in the end.

And my next post will actually be about how who you know can make your lifestyle infinitely easier.

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