I’m going to explain two key elements to having a genuine conversation that can help two average people decide whether they want to pursue a ltr or not. This technique is not meant for if you go to a club in LA and try to get a stripper to go home with you for that evening. The focus really is on genuine and long time relationships.

Furthermore, it is essential that both aspects are used. If you’re only interested, then you come across as boring and if you’re a man also as a ‘nice guy’. And if you’re only interesting, then you come across as selfish and arrogant. And either way, you can’t get to know each other if you don’t implement both aspects, which is essential for deciding if you want pursue a ltr or not.

Let’s start with explaining what it means to be interesting.

As said before, my goal is having a genuine relationship/conversation. So don’t make yourself appear interesting by creating a fake image or story. But instead focus on bringing your own personality (thoughts, ideas, emotions, interests, goals, natural humor, etc) into the light. Or in other words: you need to open yourself op.

Opening up only works: if you are an interesting person and if you have the confidence to open up.

Now confidence comes from having an interesting life (I’m not going into detail on how to become confident). A life that you enjoy living. You need to be healthy both physically and mentally generally speaking. You need to have goals, hobbies, a social life and so on if you want to be a healthy and confident individual. And if you have this, then you are happy with yourself. And that means that you care less about external validation.

Confidence also comes from experience. So go out and talk to people. But I’m not going into detail on how to be confident, there are enough recourses on that. I’m just trying to create a framework for conversations.

Therefore becoming confident gives us two things: it gives us a life, which makes us interesting. And it gives us the confidence to talk about our lives and express our natural selves without being fake.

So after becoming confident we are ready to be interesting in a conversation.

This is all well and good, but at this point the conversation is very one sided. So how can we get to know the other person as well? How can we become interested?

The easiest way mentally is to be genuinely curious about others.

Genuine interest can’t be faked. You can force it but only in small amounts. But it still is a skill you can develop. And it is developed by being like a child: ask yourself questions about what is being said and then express those questions out loud (if you start with yourself then that makes the question more genuine, curiosity is an internal and mental proces).

From my experience, curiosity is something that you can tap into. It’s already there, just try to get it to the surface. What I do to open my curiosity on a given moment is to be confused by things: ‘so my dad is a lawyer and my mother a cop’ “huh, does that mean it’s possible for a person your mom has caught to be defended by your dad in court” (weird example but it expresses my idea). Curiosity grows, so if you start by doing this, then eventually it will start coming natural to you. And if you keep doing it during other conversations and contexts, then it will come natural to you all the time.

You can make this easier by talking to people that are easy to be found interesting by you. If you use a dating app, only pick people that seem to have an interesting profile. But of course this is not always possible to dictate.

Now we know how to be interesting in a conversation and how to be interested in the other person. Now we only have to know how we can make these two aspects work together.

Generally speaking people are selfish. So start the conversation from the aspect of being interested. Let the person talk about them selves, ask questions and so on. And when you see an opening you can add someone to express yourself: make a joke, share a story or an idea, or perhaps a feeling. And then continue this proces. It’s basically this: expressing yourself in the context of someone else’s personality. Or in other terms: comparing yourself with the other person.

I’m not going to give you too much rules. Because if you work on being confident and curious, then the conversation will flow naturally. And a natural conversation is the goal.

Now fuck off

TLDR: be interesting and interested in someone else if you want to have a genuine conversation. This helps you to know each other, which helps you decide whether you want to pursue a ltr or not.