Ask Her Out Now: Don't Confuse Initiation With Maintenance

You can never harvest without planting the seed

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When you start guessing and hoping, it is time to ask her out
When should you ask your dream girl (or that girl invading your dreams) out? If you are reading about this, you should probably ask her out already. Today. Now. Actually, more like yesterday. Or a year ago.

When you start guessing whether she is interested and hoping she is, you need to ask her out.

If you are a guy who complains "Why does the guy have to be the one to ask? It is so unfair!", you may want to read this first: Initiation is not work, it is POWER.

Get to know her deeper during the date, not before
A lot of misguided nice Christian guys have this strange and unfortunate notion that he needs to be "good friends" (oh what a heartache of a word: The hallmarks of friend zone) with the girl he likes before he should ask her out. WRONG. It is the other way round. People get to know each other through one-on-one interaction, aka dates. That is when you go beyond small talk ("love the sermon on Sunday", "went to the beach with my pet bunny") into more personal conversations ("I feel a calling to become a Christian bum", "what my bunny and its fox friend taught me about faith"). You know her enough to want to ask her out. The next step is to start the real dating process instead of peeking through the window. You need to show intention to be "in". You show intention by asking her out on a date, not just "hanging-out". If you keep talking to her in a fake platonic way, you will just talk yourself into the dreadful friend zone. (Read: Christian girls don't like jerks, they just like guys who show their intention up front, and they all happen to be jerks)

She has already decided whether she will go out with you before you even realized you want to ask her out
If you, a regular Christian guy, are still protesting that you need to be "good friends" with her before you should ask her out, I, a good Christian girl, will let you in a shocking secret: That girl has already decided whether she will go out with you before you even realized you want to ask her out.

Go ahead, recite that and let it soak in. This is so important for guys to understand if you want a chance with the girl you like.

A girl will go out with a guy she feels attracted to, not a guy who understands her in and out (if she says that, she is still a clueless cotton puff floating in the air, not ready for a grown-up relationship). Attraction is a rapid and intuitive thing, and a girl assesses a guy quickly on whether he is "datable" on qualities he already possesses and displays when they first meet (Read: The only thing you can do to boost your chance with a Christian girl should have been done before you met her). If you find that shallow, realize that you too decided you want to go out with her because you find her attractive, not because you found out that she wants to do mission work in Haiti (although that sounds cool). You know her enough to want to ask her out. That means she knows you enough to decide whether to go out with you.

You can never harvest without planting the seed
Let us be clear, we are dealing with initiation of a potential relationship here, not maintenance of a relationship. For maintenance, yes, you will indeed need to work hard to keep a relationship alive and well. But for initiation, attraction is the spark that starts the dating process. It gives you the chance to have a chance at a relationship.

Think of it this way: you can keep fertilizing the field, watering the soil, and plucking out the weeds, but you will still get nothing if you never planted the seed in the first pace. Initiation - asking her out with clear intention - is the seed you need to plant BEFORE working the field. Sure, you may want to prepare the soil a bit beforehand to ensure it is optimal for the seed, but all your work will go to waste if you never plant the seed. Sadly, many nice Christian guys confuse initiation with maintenance and turn bitter when their "hard labor" (such as texting her at 3am with "Hi there! :)", liking all her Facebook posts about "The Bachelor", staring at her exactly 10.75 meters away, and sneering at every male weasel crossing her path) does not bear fruit. They never started the process.

Of course, as a manly guy, you'd like to believe that you won your dream girl over by saying this or doing that. Don't worry, the time for hard work to show off your biceps and triceps (what do you mean you have none? Shame on you!) will come when you are in an actual relationship. For now, first work on starting the relationship by initiating. Understanding the proper order of work will place you miles ahead of 90% "nice guys" who are totally clueless (except, of course, those who are leading the rockin' worship team or en route to becoming a "Godly" [don't ask me what that means] youth pastor).

But what about prayer? I am glad you remembered to ask. Of course, prayer is critical to dating for Christians! Read: Pray while you ask her out.

Now that you know you need to ask her out NOW, find out how to do it well: The most effective way to ask a Christian girl out.