How to Get Girls Using Magic

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This week, I went on the podcast Seeing Other People and talked about dating in New York as a magician. I didn’t have “pretend to be a dating expert” on my NYC Bingo Card, but I guess that’s what’s great about living in the city—anything can happen. (You can listen to the full episode here, or watch it on YouTube).

To be clear, I’m not a dating expert on any level. But as I prepped for the podcast, I did find some interesting parallels between magic and the all-too-human art of finding companionship. And as the year wraps up and my shows wind down, I’m finding myself in a more reflective mood.

While you can technically use magic tricks to flirt with people, you don’t need anyone to tell you how to do that. Instead, here are some thoughts about the similarities between magic and dating, which can certainly be turned into practical action, if you so desire:

1. Seeing the world through someone else’s eyes: When I perform, I know how the tricks work. If I do my job correctly—the audience does not. That means that we experience the exact same series of events completely differently. Outside of a show, that can be a hard thing to accept. “She saw what I saw, right? She just blatantly left the dishes in the sink, didn’t make the bed, etc.” But seeing a magic trick is a nice reminder that two or more perspectives can exist simultaneously. There’s always hidden information that we aren’t accounting for. Creating a magic trick forces you to not only see the world from someone else’s perspective, but to make that the better perspective. If you all saw the show through my eyes, it would be a bad show. As the magician, you only succeed by making the audience’s perspective more important than your own. Take that as you will.

2. Steve Martin’s Wife: Steve Martin got married late in life. Some people know that he was a magician in his early days. He still does a few tricks now. In a recent documentary, his wife says “There’s probably a short list of people that think: ‘magic tricks…banjo…that’s the guy for me.’ But I’m on that list.” It’s easy to dismiss yourself as being different—it’s easy to buy into the trope that people don’t want to date a magician. And hell, you might not be for everyone. You’re not supposed to be for everyone. Taylor Swift has thousands of haters and, simultaneously, the highest grossing tour in the history of music. It’s ok to find your niche.

3. It’s a privilege to know what somebody is thinking: We’ve put people on the moon, but we haven’t figured out how to read people’s minds. It’s rare to feel fully seen and understood. It’s rare for someone to look at us and tell us exactly what we’re thinking. This is why mind-reading is so appealing. We can experience something we always want but rarely get. I’m reminded whenever I perform how much of a privilege it is to learn somebody else’s thoughts. If someone lets you inside their head, that’s a gift.

4. It’s an effort thing: The magician Teller once said that “Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” Substitute “magic” for “relationship.”

The magic community has a lot of pointless discourse about whether people “like to be fooled,” and the arguments are typically too general and completely miss the point. If you’re doing magic to fool people, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. You’re doing magic (or dating) to enchant people. You’re doing magic (or dating) to make other people feel seen. You’re doing magic (or dating) to deliver Quality.

People love magic—it’s your job to give them what they want.

Happy trails.

Again, you can listen to the full podcast episode here.