Photo; Courtesy

When a woman so beautiful, you disqualify yourself that she is way out of your league. Men loathe rejection. He would rather censor himself or even talk his way to the friend zone than take NO from a woman he fancies. When a woman says NO to you, she becomes an enemy, at least in your head.

When I meet any woman who ever said NO to me, I invariably mutter a hurried hi and fake some rush to some place. I hate them.

Yet, most of the time, we pre-empt ourselves, unnecessarily. A few years ago, while on a tour in Europe, I was delivering some speech at a big university in front of a crowd of mostly young and beautiful women. In the crowd, was a curvaceous and exceptionally beautiful lady.

She was of mixed race (black and white) which is to emphasize how hot she was. I never even bothered to say hi, or even find out her name. She was simply out of my league and I considered myself lucky that she was even listening to me.

I don’t know how we ended up friends on Facebook, but a year or so later, we were in talking terms and she often expressed her love for my jokes. I discovered she had a satirical taste for intellectual humour. The back-and-forth communication went on, until she asked me the most personal of all questions: ‘Did you have a thing with that white girl you were so close to during your trip?’

I was taken aback. It was very uncharacteristic of her. Sensing an opportunity, of course, I told her that my association with the other girl was purely professional and I never ventured anything beyond that.

She did not believe me, the same way women hardly believe any man who attempts to tell them he is honest or faithful. I emphasized, in several other languages, that the other girl was just a friend.

 She bought it, and almost made it clear that to me I should have taken my chances with her as well. Wish I had the balls back then! The rest are just details, so I will bring in the moral of the story here.

Recently, a certain William wrote a mail to me, courtesy of this column, seeking advice on how to approach a woman. He told me that he is extremely girl-shy. And here goes my advice.

Women like men with balls. The reason why almost always, it is bad boys who hit on them first. What bad boys possess in abundance is confidence. And confidence is not arrogance.

Confidence is the ability to state what is on your mind, clearly and succinctly. Just be clean, get a good deodorant, dress smartly and approach the lady of your life.

It is easier said than done. But what is the worst case scenario? She can only say NO! She can’t shoot you.

No one can teach you confidence. Neither is it inborn. But you can rehearse with your female friends, relatives and start with those closer to you.

If you fail, here is a Ugandan proverb to spur you into action, “a man who hangs around a beautiful girl without saying a word ends up fetching water on her wedding,” now we don’t want that. Do we?

Get out, tell her what you feel. The first step is the most difficult. Try and see how sometimes it can be so easy.