Reply To: Disappointing Trends

[The_Hurricane]

It’s possible to get dates without sexualizing the conversation, just as it’s possible to get dates without hard qualification, but the quality of the dates and subsequent relationships improve when you start strong. It’s hard to change someone’s initial impression of you. If she thinks you were too cautious in the beginning to take her to the hot zone, that will be her opinion of you for a long, long time, and maybe forever, even as she’s dating you.

You can verify this effect – over many, many approaches – only by alternating between both types of approaches. Otherwise, there is a survivorship bias. You know that none of your three relationships started with a sexualized conversation, but you don’t know that sexualized conversations would have derailed those three relationships. More importantly, you don’t know how many other interactions would have resulted in relationships if only you had been bolder.

The other part of your comment falls into the category of damage control. I am not a big believer in damage control. Most of the time, you can’t turn a flake into a good date. The truth is that few power dynamics can be changed after they go bad. Attraction is created in person, and can only be lost by text or phone. Hence, all of text or phone game is about preserving the attraction you’ve created. You can’t create more. And if you slip up, you can lose what you already have.

Hence, it’s best to keep your text game to a minimum. Ping, get buy in, tell her what to do to get together with you. That’s the model. If she says no, disappear for a while. Ping her again, get buy in, tell her what to do. If you never get buy in – if she never invests in that conversation – don’t even bother asking her out. Just disappear and ping her again in a few weeks.

Why do some girls continue to respond after they’ve essentially said no? Validation. They love to be wanted and it makes them feel good to have a few suitors on the line. Most of those girls can be filtered out by making the conversations bolder at the beginning. They should be genuinely uncomfortable dealing with you unless they also consider you a sexual prospect. If you never put that pressure on them, it is more likely that they can keep you around as a friend if they are so inclined. Nothing wrong with being friends with girls, just as long as you know that offering them that option may mean that you’ll wind up orbiting their star for a long time.

–Lee