Jumped the gun

[Slim]

Meet a girl on Tinder. We’re chatting back and forth and her pics are ok. I’m somewhat interested. I’m about to work a festival near where she lives and invite her to stop by. She does around noon. Turns out she’s really cute! She hangs around for a while and it feels like we have a pretty solid interaction (I’ve been doing this long enough now to have a decent feel for if a girl is going to flake). I become genuinely excited about this girl – something that’s pretty unusual for me these days. (Note: most girls I get to first dates are interested in me, but not vice versa…)

I text her at 5pm, saying it was nice to meet her (I know this style wasn’t embraced before, but I don’t think it’s ever significantly hampered my results).

She doesn’t respond until 11am the next day – she says her phone died and when she finally saw my text it was late and she thought it would be rude to respond. Hm, uh ok. Little fishy, but I’m just excited she didn’t flake (because again, I’m unusually attracted to her).

I text her around noon that I’m working the festival again, and that if she’s free she should swing by and we’ll have an adventure. (I was operating under the potentially foolish assumption that her previous excuse was legitimate, and that she was as attracted to me as I was her). I don’t hear from her again until 7:45pm that night, at which time she simply says she had a crazy day at the festival, and hopes I had a good one too.

Whoopst. I clearly jumped the gun. So I don’t respond to her text. The next day at 2pm she apologies for not swinging by, asks how my weekend was. I wait until 9pm to text her back. My message is unemotional and relatively light. I don’t convey any upset at her flakiness, just make some observations about my day without asking her any questions. This was last night.

Today at 1pm she texts me a follow up about my text. Relatively light, no question, although it is inviting a response.

Here are my thoughts:
1) She clearly wasn’t as into me as I was into her
2) But she definitely isn’t disinterested, otherwise she would have flaked completely.
3) I should probably drop out for a few days, and eventually touchbase – if she responds, set up an actual date.

Conversely I could respond again tonight, maybe with something light and playful – and maybe officially end the text interaction with a “talk to you later” etc without offering an invitation.

Any thoughts?
Slim

[Slim]

Update:
So I texted back around 8pm, two short messages, light and playful. Essentially “Get yourself to XYZ immediately!” No question or invitation on my end. She immediately (within the minute) responded with something light – but no question or invitation on her end. I didn’t reply.

Part of me feels like I should have rewarded her for responding so quickly, but her text really didn’t require a response (although it could have been interpreted as an invitation to take her on a date to XYZ location).

On the other hand, she hasn’t fully redeemed herself in my eyes. I’m thinking I go silent for a couple days and then invite her on an official date #1.

Thoughts?

[The_Hurricane]

You have to ask yourself this question: right now, if she wants a date with you, is she certain that she could have it? From what you’ve given us, the answer is a resounding yes. She’s certain. You invited her once, validated her a couple of times, and implied an invitation once. So, if she’s certain she could have the date, but she’s not moving the interaction in that direction, what can we say about her interest? It’s probably not that high. There is nothing you can do to increase her interest by text. You can only mess up and lower your own value. The more you text back and forth while settling for less than she knows you want – a date – the more you will lower your value. Yes, it’s time to drop off. The fact that she responded quickly is good. It means that dropping off may work in creating the emotional vacuum that she needs to commit to getting together. I would continue this behavior if you get a date. Hang out with her, tease her, play with her, but don’t make it absolutely certain that you want another date. End the date early. Don’t make plans for another one. You have to raise your value in her eyes.

–Lee

[Slim]

Thanks, Lee. Indeed, on our only in-person interaction we had talked about getting tea together, and she seemed very interested in the idea. I think that’s part of the reason why I was so confident in her attraction to me. Ah well.

So are you implying that if she texts me a question I shouldn’t respond at all?

[The_Hurricane]

I wouldn’t respond at all. There is no mystery or sense of loss if you never completely disappear, so when you magically reappear – by pinging her – it is less likely that she will see this as a second chance to get together and her reaction will be less positive.

–Lee

[ryano]

“I should probably drop out for a few days, and eventually touchbase”.

If there’s one thing I hate is game playing nonsense. You’re clearly interested in her. Yet you’re stooping down to game playing? Purposely taking X amount of hours to respond to her text? Trying to think of clever ways to text her? Second guessing yourself and saying that you jumped the gun? What is this??

Women like to play things like that, and sometimes I’ll forgive them. However, As a man, you should never do anything like that. You set the tone. You are the leader. Women respond favorably to a man that plays NO games whatsoever and is reliable, like a rock.

Here’s my rule: I text a girl 1-2 seconds after she writes me a message. And another rule is: I don’t start thinking of clever ways to respond. I just respond with the amount of thought process I take for any of my friends. A girl I date does not get any special treatment because doing otherwise indicates neediness, that I’m TRYING to win her over. And girls can smell games more than you can, trust me. Girls invented games.

And besides games are usually only played when people don’t like eachother. When people really like eachother, fall in love with eachother, there is absolutely no game playing. I’d suggest that you find a girl that likes you just as much as you like her and toss this one out.

[SomeguyUK]

To be honest I think you’re on to a loser with this one dude. I’m no guru but I’ve been in this situation a lot of times and it rarely works out. I think Lee is right – just go silent.

I’m thinking maybe the crucial point was the ‘nice to meet you’ text. Maybe she wasn’t interested enough at that point, or she would have reciprocated. But to me the fact that she texted you the next day suggested she’s trying to keep you as an ‘option’ without committing to see you at this point. If she is at a festival and she is cute, it’s not unlikely she has met some other dude.

Do yourself a favour and get off Tinder. It’s too easy to just spend your time meeting mediocre chicks from there (that’s my experience anyway). Put the effort into your ‘real world’ game and meet some better ones.

[Author]

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