Just a short email for you today, as I’m fairly sure I’ve mentioned this in the past. But a situation with a client the other day reminded me how important this topic is.
Basically, he met a girl at a party. And the girl was very interested.
So interested that she made most of the moves. Flirted heavily, and even suggested they hang out. My client thus made a move and got the girls number, which she was very enthusiastic about.
She was cute, and he was interested in seeing her. But her viewed it much more as an easy hook up — he was far less invested than she appeared to be.
Which is why it was surprising to him that when the time came to ask her out, she stopped responding. He was confused and annoyed, and thought the interaction was dead when she didn’t answer his suggestion about a date that Friday.
Now, understand there are a couple of things that need to be addressed.
First, while in theory his text game could have killed attraction, that’s not what happened here. She was very responsive to his earlier messages. The difficulty only arose when the time came to ask for the date; it was very abrupt.
Second, it should be noted that a lack of a response in these cases doesn’t always mean disinterest or simple attention-seeking (more common with women in their early 20s – this one was not – and her behavior in other ways did not fit this pattern). A woman might be slow to respond because the logistics didn’t work out well, but she didn’t know what to do about it. I know it sounds absurd, but the stress of this causes many women to shut down and avoid the situation. Indeed, it’s very likely this played *a* role in the breakdown.
(The solution in these cases is simple: send her a “eye roll” or “angry” emoji, and unless she’s truly out of pocket she’ll clarify her non-response. A majority of the time this succeeds in getting interactions back on track — assuming there was any attraction there to begin with.)
But it’s the third factor that is the most interesting and relevant here. Because very often the reason women who were not only extremely engaged — but who started the whole interaction — “drop off” is because they put the effort in early on.
You see, women do not like pursuing men. It is depolarizing to them, and to a certain extent humiliating. Which is why you almost never see it except from women who are “beneath” you and need to act in order to get you.
As an example, if you are a “male 8” — generally a “female 9” won’t offer any signals at all, an 8 will give eye contact, and a 7 will go out of her way to talk to you. But a 6 won’t be subtle; she will try to monopolize your attention and may go so far as to get your number. A 5 — if she is bold enough to even consider herself in the game — will require little coaxing to sleep with you that night.
(It’s one of the reasons many attractive guys don’t have an issue with quantity, but quality. These 5s and 6s are “easy” and do all the work for them, and these guys lack boundaries to brush them off and pursue the women they actually want. But this is a separate topic, and I digress)
These women who go out of their way for you, however, tend to need reassurance about their value in their eyes. They need to feel like YOU are pursuing them — especially if your interaction extends past that evening — even if this is not really the case. And so at some point they will “go cold” and wait for you to put that extra bit of effort in, which affirms to them that indeed you care and really do want to see them.
You might call this resistance a “comfort test.” Which it is. But it’s also her simply asking you reset the polarity — as the man you must desire and pursue the woman. Maybe she put more work in at the outset to catch your eye, but in the end you were capture by her beauty. It restores her pride and allows her to sleep with you without it damaging her self-esteem. Moreover, it is effective girl game: by making you do more, you inadvertently invest more in her.
So as you can see, it’s not always straight forward with women. Even when it looks like a casual stroll to the finish line, there are obstacles that come along the way.
The good news?
When you work with me, you will avoid them… or get the rapid feedback to calibrate quickly. Which means you not only learn faster, but make less critical mistakes in the process.
Apply for coaching here: www.patstedman.com/application
– Pat
