An interesting topic that always seems to come across my desk involves guys who have female friends they want to date. I get all versions of this question: “David, How do I go about getting out of the friend zone and getting into the boyfriend zone?”

This topic is always interesting to me, but it is especially interesting right now because I am currently dating a woman with whom I started out being just friends. When I first met her, she was actually dating somebody else.

So how did I go from the friend zone to the boyfriend zone with her? Did I subliminally do some mind tricks on her to convince her that dating me would be a far better experience than the one she was having with her boyfriend? Absolutely not. What I did was I got to know her.

For any of you who have been in the friend zone with a woman and wondered if there was a way out of it, here are four tips to help you get a woman to look at you in a different way:

1. Don’t Sell Yourself: If you meet and become friends with a woman whom has a boyfriend, don’t sell yourself to her her at all. Get to know her over a period of time. If a woman is attracted to you as a person, she could become attracted to you a significant other. It all depends on at what place she is in her life. We all know that many relationships tend to “go south” and end. The problem is that a lot of men will meet a woman who is in a relationship and decide not to befriend her at all. Now I’m not suggesting that you become the shoulder she comes to cry on when things are going wrong with her boyfriend. What I am suggesting is that you can get to know her as a person, because you never know where life may lead you down the road. So don’t be a salesman, and don’t berate her boyfriend. Get to know her. Be yourself. Have a good time with her, and see if natural chemistry develops between you. When you are genuine and take the time to get to know her as a person, she actually might start to look at you in a different light and end her relationship.

2. Don’t Be Afraid To Express Yourself: If you’ve already been friends for a long time with the female whom you’d like to date and she’s never thought about you in a romantic way, then you need to understand that there’s a good chance she’ll never think of your romantically. The way so many guys get themselves into the eternal friend zone is that they played it too safe when they first met that woman. They act in a very passive-aggressive way toward her. They are so afraid of really expressing to her any indication of their romantic interest in her, that they go out of their way not to express any feelings toward her at all. For example, instead of really asking the woman out on a date, they will ask her to hang out in a group. So instead of really talking to her and clearly asking her out on a date, guys will nervously ask a woman out on a “non-date” kind of date. The reason why it is almost a foregone conclusion that you will end up in the friend zone in this situation, is because you have never asked her out on a real date. You ask her out – to barbeques, to happy hours or to parties – but it’s always to join a group of other people. If you’re interested in somebody, you need to ask her out so it’s clear to her that you are asking her out on a date.

3. Be Patient: Four of my best relationships have been with women with whom I was friends before I became romantically involved with them. To do this, you must be patient. So many guys will not even befriend a woman if she has a boyfriend at the time they meet her. They won’t take the time to befriend her because they are only interested in immediate gratification, i.e., if they can’t get involved with her romantically right now they don’t want to have any involvement with her at all. You have to stop thinking about immediate gratification all of the time. Not every woman you meet today is going to want to go out with you tonight. I tell guys to think of befriending women they meet like building a portfolio of interesting people with whom they can get together in the future. You need to treat women you meet like long-term investments. Just enjoy getting to know them as a person right now, because you never know what may happen. Chemistry just might spark between the two of you.

4. Don’t Wait And Take Action: Don’t ever ask a woman’s friends to tell you about what she is thinking, and in particular do not ask them what she thinks about you. If you are interested in a female friend and would like to get out of the friend zone with her, then you need to ask her out on a date. Take the risk. She might actually feel the same way about you as you do about her. She may have been developing a crush on you too. So what you need to do is take the risk, because the friendship can survive something like you asking her out on a date. You, however, don’t want to have to live with the self-torture of never knowing if you could have become romantically involved with her. Don’t wait to take action, thinking that will say something to you if she is interested. Even if she is interested, she might never say anything first. So don’t ever wait. If you’ve got a crush on a female friend of yours, you need to call her and say “You know what? I want to go out with you. You and I need to hang out alone.” Make it clear to her that you want to go out on a date with her. It doesn’t matter if she says yes or if she says no. It just matters that you take the chance. You will define the relationship one way or another, and then you can move forward.

Dating takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of perseverance. The best things in life, in fact, tend to pay off when you have patience and perseverance. No one is ever completely successful the first time they do something.

So start being willing to take your time. Take time to look at all the women you’ve met in your life, and think about whether any of them stick out as being someone you’d like to get to know again. Perhaps she’s someone with whom you became friends when you first met. Send her a text or call her on the phone. Who knows? She might be more receptive to you the second time time around