Confidence

The other day, a reader wrote in with a question about keeping your cool when women are being flighty or slow to respond, in reference to the post on what to do when girls flake:

“In your article on girls not returning texts, I was wondering what your idea of a socially savvy way to deal with it was. I've found it hard not to take this personal, especially when it's from girls I've known longer that still do it. I understand it's quite common, but to me there's really no excuse. I'd much rather hear "I'm not interested" than waste my night waiting around, especially when considering how girls get when guys don't call them back.”

You know, a long, long time ago -- it almost seems like another life -- I made it a point to respond to every single person who texted or called me, no matter what. I looked at it as a matter of honor, and took it as a point of pride -- I was reliable.

And it annoyed me to no end when people didn't respond. Like the reader above, I couldn't understand people who didn't respond -- I thought it rude, and I considered it inexcusable.

Of course you can take 10 seconds to text a reply, or 10 minutes to return a phone call, I'd think to myself.

I considered it a personal slight, those people who didn't respond.

I see things a lot differently nowadays. Often, I don't even notice when one person or another -- when one girl or another -- hasn't responded, until maybe much later -- and perhaps never at all. And, for all my earlier "principles" on being 100% reliable in responding to those who contacted me, I'm now sitting at somewhere decidedly below a 100% response rate -- maybe 85%, maybe 90%. I still try to respond most times, but it's no longer an unbreakable rule.

The reason why I changed -- both in how I saw it when others didn't respond, and in why I don't chase women with texting or phone calls anymore and why I don't always respond when people chase me anymore -- is what I want to share with you here.

A few conversations I've had lately have revolved around me discussing with guys how simple things are with women. You just talk to them, and then... boom! They chase after you. You don't even have to do any work; girls take care of all that themselves.

Because that's how it's been for me lately. But I keep getting pulled back down to reality; guys confess it doesn't work that way for them. And then I stop and think, and for a long time it didn't work that way for me, either.

What changed it for me? Well, one of the biggest factors was figuring out what to say to girls. All you've got to do is get that figured out, and you're set.

But that's tough, you say. Why? Well, because you're not a girl. And if you're like a lot of guys out there, you have, starting out, no idea what it is women want to hear, what they like to hear, or what they need to hear, whatsoever.

Here's how it goes for most guys: they start out talking to women too literally, and the women get bored out of their skulls and leave. So then a guy tries a few witty pick up lines, or he tries busting on girls to be a challenge, only to have them start snapping at him and shutting down. Eventually he comes full circle again and decides to try to be a lot nicer than he was, only to find that, once again, the challenge has disappeared and the interest women showed at least some of the time when he was being a jerk has disappeared.

That's the point a guy realizes that, despite all the time he might've spent trying to get better with women, he still has no real idea about what to say to girls.

Argh.

Fortunately, all's not lost, and you can figure it out. In fact, that's why I made this post -- it's something of a guide on the wild, woolly world of talking to girls. In other words, herein lies the machete you'll need to hack a path through the conversational jungle and emerge on the other side with that beautiful, smiling girl you've had your eye on.

Walking back from the gym this afternoon, under the hot summer sun, I was a bit of a mess. My shirt was drenched in sweat; my arms were stiff and wooden; my hair was a little messy; and I was still breathing a little heavy.

I noticed a girl walking toward me, dressed in rather fancy garb, and as she saw me, she pulled her face into a mildly contorted look that spoke somewhat of disgust. But, at the same time, she also couldn't seem to take her eyes off of me, and I noticed those eyes scanning me up and down; she brushed her hair back, and as she walked toward me, she ever so slightly veered toward me.

I've met lots of girls like this before. Girls that, on first glance, might appear to be completely put off by you. But if you read between the lines, their more subtle actions tell a different story. In fact, I've taken some of these women who gazed upon me with what looked like disgust as lovers, oftentimes rather quickly.

What I want to get across here is, how to tell if a girl likes you -- or not -- isn't always as cut and dry a case as you might think.

Sometimes it can even be the opposite of what you initially thought -- and that holds for both the girls you think like you, and the girls you think don't.

When I first decided to start tackling women and dating as a skill set to methodically improve at the end of 2004, I went into it with three distinct aims:

• Be a seductive, charming bad boy,
• Constantly test the limits and push to improve, and
• Make women feel special.

I didn't know exactly what I was doing or how my learning curve would look, but I trusted that as I chipped away at learning the ability to do better with women, I would indeed get it down, as I had a diverse array of other skills.

It wasn't until a year later that I found the pick up community. Many parts of it excited me; I couldn't believe there was an entire group of men who'd worked to develop this same skill set too, some much further along than myself. But there was one part that mystified me:

These guys didn't seem to know how to make a girl feel special.

So much of their stuff revolved around spitting out scripted lines and "canned routines" at girls, which I tried, briefly, but tossed aside after only a few weeks. It didn't feel genuine at all, and it wasn't how I wanted my interactions with women to be.

They had lots of great advice, to be sure; studying the findings of these guys who'd already been down the path I'd set myself out on was immensely helpful. But in that one department -- in making girls feel special -- I was pretty sure I had something they didn't.

About a day ago, we had a commentator on the post on how to become romantic who weighed in to let me know that it's silly to try and get better with people, and that most people have better things to do, and that in fact you really should just be yourself, and anyone who doesn't realize how awesome you are is simply intellectually stunted.

Where do people come up with this malarkey?

I know he represents a vanishingly small minority on this site -- and likely was just a passerby -- but this mentality represents the majority of the thought on the subject in mainstream society.

"Just be yourself. If people don't like you for who you are, who needs 'em?"

Quite likely one of the most counterproductive mindsets a man could possibly have. Anyway, I addressed that commentator's individual points pretty thoroughly in the comments section of that article itself, so I won't revisit it here, but I do want to talk about this mentality of "just be yourself" -- and why it's such terrible, terrible advice.

Women do some strange, confusing things.

Things like getting rude and angry with men who are treating them as well as they possibly can. Things like telling a man they're not wearing any underwear... and then walking away when he gets too excited. Things like saying "no" when they mean "yes," and "yes" when they mean "no."

So you'll be forgiven for thinking it must be impossible understanding women.

And to top it all off, most women don't even understand themselves. They can explain some of the simpler things they do, but if you start asking them why they (or other women) do the more complicated things they do, you get answers that are full of holes. They sound good on an pure emotional level, but take a moment to analyze the logic and you'll realize it doesn't hold water.

Women really honestly don't know why they do what they do. So how could you possibly know? But, in fact, learning to understand women actually isn't an impossible task. It's a lot easier than you might think, in fact... so long as you understand a few little things, first.

I sat there in a café by myself, staring blankly at a couple of abandoned plates of food.

"I won't let this make me bitter," I whispered under my breath.

I'd spent the night talking and moving from club to club with a girl I liked a lot and had been pursuing for months. She was smart, funny, tall -- beautiful. Everywhere she went, she attracted men to her, like moths to a flame. But she treated me different than all the other guys rotating around her; them she'd be polite but dismissive toward; me, she'd spend hours just sitting there talking to. She didn't do that with anyone else. That night, it'd been just us, the entire night -- and she'd been talking about the two of us going to an "after-party" together -- I started thinking that finally, after all this time and effort, I was getting somewhere with her. I suggested we could just chill at my apartment.

And then, in the middle of us eating at a café at the end of the night, before heading to our "after-party," some guy she knew happened to show up, just as she'd gotten up and was heading into the bathroom. She was excited to see him -- then, they disappeared around the corner together. When they came back, they were laughing like little kids... and they sat down next to each other across from me.

I'd been sitting next to her before she got up.

It was early 2006. I didn't know what I was doing -- I'd only been trying to get better with women for a year, and only actively doing it -- religiously -- for about 2 or 3 months now. But I figured I had to try to save this; I'd try anything I could. It couldn't fall apart -- not now. Not when we were so close, after months of hard work.

So I tried boyfriend destroyers, even though this guy wasn't her boyfriend.

I tried seeming as calm and nonplussed as possible as they flirted in front of me.

I tried going over the top and telling them what a beautiful couple they made as they fed each other food across the table from me, hoping she'd protest that they weren't a couple. Instead, she only played along more, telling me she'd been chasing this guy forever but that he kept turning her down.

And then, despite my efforts, the moment I went to the bathroom to collect my thoughts, they disappeared.

The bill was waiting on the table for me when I got back. And they were gone... off into the night together.

"Don't be bitter," I said to myself.