(1) Beginner

What to do when a girl doesn’t text back? First: don’t panic. Second: do things right next time. Third: read this and get her texting again.

A reader writes in:

I found something strange. Everytime Im having long interactions with girls in pickups on the streets, I bomb. I mean, she dont text back. It reminds me of Murphies law: If everything cant go wrong, IT WILL. I recently approached 10 women of which gave me attraction signals. They touched me, called me cute, called me the most interesting person, smiled, was high energy, stayd 20 minutes with me, and asked me to text them. I had good interactions with them and was smoothe and confident. I bonded wtih them and made plans to see them. They never texted back and I dont nkwo why.

I did another experiment where I cutted my interaction short about 3 minutes and asked for the number. Most of the shorter ones agreed on dates and texted back, and note, most of them gave me negative signs first. Is it because women use guys that they give fake "attraction signals?" Why do they seem so much into me at first but never bother to actually get into contact again? It happens over and over so much that when a girl give me signals thats too good to be true,I can almost predict that I will never hear from her again and Im alwasy right. I know it sounds counter-intuitive but I think the women who give you immediate signals are maybe time waster"? And what is your thoughts, do you find the same?

Brings back memories.

When I first started chatting up girls more, I noticed an odd trend: the women I spoke to for longer periods of time, who seemed more into me, ended up being less likely to ever return my phone calls or texts!

How bizarre, I thought to myself. This certainly doesn't make much sense.

But the numbers didn't lie. So, I did the only logical thing I could think to do: I worked to shorten the time I'd spend with girls whose phone number I intended to grab, and only spend a longer time with girls I intended to take home that day or night.

Almost overnight, the problem of girls not texting back and girls not calling back all but disappeared. But it still left me scratching my head a bit... why did spending more time with a girl and having her come to like you more lead to her falling off the face of the Earth and not returning text and calls later?

Should men pay for dates? Answer: not if they want to get the girl, erm, into bed. But they can if they’d rather be the perfect platonic gentleman!

It used to be the way things always were in love: if a man and a woman went on a date, the man paid. No two ways about it.

It's now not quite as ubiquitous as it used to be, but it is still a very common mindset. Many women expect men to pay for the first date. Many men would even feel embarrassed to not pay for the first date. Of course they pay for dates! That's just how it's done, and anything else would be classless and rude.

It remains the status quo to a large extent in countries around the world, in fact: I've heard many Latin women gripe about how they'll never see a man again if he doesn't pay for the first date, and when I've asked Asian women if the Asian guys they see on dates pay for them, they respond with, "Of course!" Even the guys they claim they only like as friends and will never date pay for them.

Everywhere you go, men pay for women. A lot of hoopla was made in the States about "going Dutch," which meant splitting the bill, but even the fact that it had to be given a name made it seem like some sort of big, extraordinary event.

Men are still expected to pay for dates.

I intend to show you today, however, that not only is paying for women unnecessary – it actually hurts your odds of ending up with a girl! Bear with me if that seems to insult your sensibilities a bit – before you pass judgment, allow me to invite you to come along down this rabbit hole with me.

Back in the old days, when I was much more a relationship-focused kind of guy than a seduction-focused kind of guy, I built this model for relationships, since I hadn’t seen any good concrete models out there and I thought it could be useful. The idea didn’t get a whole lot of interest from folks at the time, so I didn’t bother to do a lot of writing on it or really lay the model out anywhere, but it was called GISS, and the “G” in GISS was the central point the others connected to, and it stood for “Growth.” Growth was the keystone of a relationship that supported the other three pillars and was the key defining aspect of what made a solid, successful partnership.

I’m recalled to this today by a fascinating article I just read in the New York Times titled “The Happy Marriage is the ‘Me’ Marriage”, which could just as easily be about long-term relationships in general as it could marriages specifically. The central element of the ‘me’ in the title of the article is, as it turns out, all about shared personal growth in one’s relationship. The title might perhaps have been a bit more suiting were it worded “The Happy Relationship is the ‘We’ Relationship”, but the point is it’s about that keystone element that’s so essential to the proper running of a long-term relationship.