Not Your Mother's Rules: The New Secrets for Dating (7 page)

Short term, sure, a guy will take you up on the party or movie or study session. But he won’t be coming for
you
! Guys will see through these contrived invitations eventually and start to think “desperate” or “aggressive.” They will want the girl who is invariably too busy to ask them out or seems barely to notice them!

Remember, a guy likes who he likes and an invitation to a game or party won’t change that. If you’re his type/look and
somewhat of a challenge, he will find you and ask you out. Even if he thinks you’re pretty, but not the type he goes for, nothing will make a difference in how he feels about you. The sooner you accept this truth, the sooner you will become a
Rules
Girl!

As unfair and unfeminist as it sounds, a woman can do absolutely nothing to start a relationship. We understand it’s frustrating for many women, especially movers and shakers. Some argue, “What’s the worst that can happen, that he will say no to drinks—so what?” Wrong. The worst that can happen is that he will say
yes
and date you, have sex with you, and lead you to believe that you are in a relationship. But eventually he will dump you for the girl he really likes. So you will have wasted time and possibly gotten your heart broken. We cannot stress this point enough: men were born to do the asking!

So if you have any thoughts of sending that Evite to a guy or quick text to invite him and his friends to drinks after work, think twice—and don’t do it! Any energy that is going into manipulating guys to be with you should be used to create your online dating profile and to go to clubs, bars, parties, and singles events where you can meet guys who ask you out. Like it or not, being the asked out, not the asker, is the only way it works with men!

W
HILE TALKING TO
or texting a guy first is clearly aggressive behavior and not
The Rules
, you might be wondering if sitting next to a guy you like in class or standing next to a guy at a bar or party or flirting with him is okay. Isn’t “innocently” sitting or standing or walking over to his area or making flirtatious eye contact relatively benign? No! It shows much more interest than you think!

Such flirtatious behavior is a futile way of trying to get him to notice you—and a complete waste of time. Remember,
The Rules
are about not making anything happen with a guy, because he has to notice you first or you will most likely get hurt. In consultations, many women have said to us that they didn’t realize that flirting with a guy first was the crux of their problem. They spent years in therapy talking about the guy and never understood why he sometimes behaved badly and eventually ended the relationship. We help them see it was because they started the relationship. A light bulb goes off and they can trace the problem back to the first moment they met the guy and flirted with him!

If you ask someone to switch seats with you on a train so you can sit next to a guy you think is cute, you are wasting your time. You will never know if he would have switched
seats to sit next to you, and you may be initiating a relationship that was never meant to be. A guy knows within minutes or even seconds of boarding a train or walking into a party who he wants to sit next to or approach, and doesn’t need any help figuring it out. So even if you sit next to him or make eye contact from across the aisle, he will still track down the girl he thinks is pretty or is his type.

Women create situations in which they can subtly flirt. They reach for the same item at the grocery store, they wait next to him for a drink at a bar, they purposely brush up against him at a crowded party, or they take the elevator going down instead of up. You can stand next to him all day at the gym, pretending to be waiting for the elliptical machine, and you can put a force field around him, but he will eventually find the girl he likes and walk over to her, chat her up, grab her phone, and even call himself from it so he has her number for sure. Don’t even bother! If you see a guy you like, wait for him to walk over to you. That’s the only way it works with men!

You are probably wondering how he will know you like him if you don’t sit or stand next to him or make eye contact or flash a smile. Many women ask us about flirting techniques and other ways to get a guy to notice them. We don’t believe in flirting or staring because it is a dead giveaway of interest—the opposite of being a challenge. A guy knows you are interested if you give him your number when he asks for it and if you say yes when he asks you out. Really, guys don’t need you to tap them on the shoulder or even glance in their direction.

You might argue, “But what if he is quiet? Can’t I stand next to him if he is a more passive type?” No! We have found that even a shy guy will ask a mutual friend to introduce
him to the “cute girl over there.” He will point to her and say, “That’s the one,” and then his friend will bring them together. Or a shy guy will pretend he likes the pretzels that she is standing next to at a party. He will figure out a way to meet her, even if he has to trip her to get her attention!

Not only should you refrain from doing anything flirty to get his attention, but you should actually do the complete opposite and pretend not to notice him at all. You should look the other way or walk the other way because sometimes it’s hard to disguise the fact that you think he is good-looking. It may be written all over your face. And if he notices you staring at him, he will know that you like him. He might typecast you as “easy” and lose interest.

We are not making this up! We have heard countless stories about women who stood next to guys at a bar all night, hoping that would make them take notice. Sometimes such behavior leads to a mercy date or two, but the guy texts only to hook up or he texts to talk about another woman who won’t go out with him or who cheated on him. He wants the girl who doesn’t give him the time of day! Invariably, standing next to a guy at a bar or party makes you his consolation prize, his free therapist—not his girlfriend. Sometimes flirting first does lead to a longer relationship, but there is usually some fundamental problem. There are fights or miscommunication or intimacy issues.

Lexi, twenty-six, told us she would never approach a guy at a bar, but asked what was so wrong with “standing next to him and swaying to the music” to get his attention? Lexi had seen her Matt Damon look/type and thought her dance moves would catch his eye. She danced around him for fifteen minutes while he gazed around the room. He finally looked her way and asked her if she wanted a drink. She said sure
triumphantly. She was proud of herself for not speaking to him first and confident that he was interested. He talked about his ex-girlfriend the whole night and then asked for her number and said he would text her soon. But he didn’t, and she wanted to know why not. We explained that he was never interested in the first place—just bored. We told Lexi that swaying next to him created a conversation that would never have happened otherwise, that got her hopes up, and that wasted her time. He spoke to her the way you speak to someone you sit next to on a plane or in a doctor’s waiting room: simply out of politeness.

So lest you think you can get into a guy’s heart by invading his space, think again. If you have to even walk over to his area, forget it. He is supposed to notice you and find you on his own. The guy who likes you will ask if the seat next to
you
is taken or ask the other guy to move. He will be obvious about it and you won’t have to wonder if you’re reading him right. He will sit or stand next to you, pretend he drinks coffee so he can wait on line near you at Starbucks, and get your name and number. So think twice before “innocently” sitting or standing next to a guy in class or flirting with a guy at a business networking seminar or museum.
Rules
Girls wait for guys to sit and stand next to
them
. They don’t make anything happen or waste time, and neither should you!

N
OW YOU ARE
probably wondering how and when to respond to a guy who
does
text you first. By far the most frequently asked question we get from clients and readers is “I just got a text from a guy I like. When do I write back and what do I say?
Please get back to me ASAP.
”

We all know intellectually that this question is not a real dating emergency. We have true emergency consultations like finding messages from another woman on a guy’s phone or a boyfriend walking out after a fight. Obviously, we drop everything to help these clients. Yet there is something about receiving a first text from a cute guy that feels like life and death. A little bell goes off, bringing about a sense of urgency to answer it. We live in an instant-gratification society, and texting is the pièce de résistance.

All
Rules
Girls know not to call men and to rarely return their calls, a
Rule
that still applies today. But technology has changed so much in the last fifteen years that a text cannot always be treated in the exact same way. After discussing with our daughters and through many consultations, we realized some major differences. A guy will call again if he doesn’t get you, but texting is sort of like a phone call that reaches you
every time: there’s never a bad time for either party and it’s never intrusive. If you don’t text back at all, he may not know you are waiting for another text or even a phone call. He may just interpret it as a rejection—as if you actually said, “No, thanks.” Or he may think you are playing some kind of a game.

Indeed, not answering a guy’s text at all or taking too long to do so when the whole world is glued to their phones will raise all kinds of red flags: Did she read
The Rules
? Is she not interested? Or is she just pretending not to be interested? We want to avoid any such possible problems.

Before our first book came out, no one questioned a woman when she took hours or even a day or two to call a guy back or even rarely returned his calls. But for the last fifteen years or so, with the popularity of our book and its infiltration into our culture and lexicon—
The Rules
has been mentioned on sitcoms, talk shows, and in magazines and newspapers—guys sometimes get suspicious that you are playing a game if you don’t contact them back in a reasonable amount of time. All the more reason, we are saying, not to ignore texts or wait days to text back. Don’t be
impossible
to get. Don’t give guys reasons to find you rude or difficult before the first date. We have interviewed guys on this subject, and while most said that not hearing back from a woman for hours wouldn’t stop them from asking her out, they felt that not hearing back at all would be irksome and a possible sign that she was not interested or employing some dating strategy. As Oprah famously said on her show, “Guys like a
Rules
Girl, they just don’t want it to be because she read a book.” We don’t want to teach women to insult men!

Our official answer about when to respond to a first text is to wait somewhere between four and twenty-four hours, depending on your age. Four hours is for the younger set—for those in college and women in their early to mid-twenties
who grew up with texting and Facebook. The older you are, the longer you should try to wait. For example, a thirty-year-old should wait more like twelve hours, and a forty-plus-year-old should wait a day to reply.

But it’s a little more complicated than that. If a guy texts you for the first time at, say, 9 or 10 a.m., you wouldn’t write back exactly four hours later while you’re at school or work because, theoretically, you are not checking your phone all day long. You would wait until after you clock out and leave, whenever that is. If our suggested minimum wait time falls during the middle of your day, keep waiting! Remember that it is a
minimum
and you can’t be expected to look at your phone all the time—or give the impression that you do.

If a guy texts you for the first time in the late afternoon, say at 3 or 4 p.m., you should write back later in the evening, after the time you would be at happy hour or dinner with friends. You can even wait until the next morning—what if you got home late from a movie? In this case, you’re giving the impression that you’re out doing something fun in the evenings rather than sitting around and fiddling with your phone.

If a guy first texts you after 8 p.m., you should not write back four hours later at midnight, even if you are in the younger age group. You’re better off waiting until the next day to avoid late-night texting. In this case, you should write back on your way to class or work the next morning.

These text-back times do not apply to weekends, specifically from Friday at 6 p.m. to Sunday at 6 p.m.; this zone is a “blackout period.” Just like airlines have blackout periods in which you can’t use your frequent-flier points, so do
Rules
Girls! Weekends are a dead zone. You’re unavailable, you’re unreachable, you’re busy, you’re gone! But don’t get mad that he’s texting you on Saturday. He may have been spoiled by
non-
Rules
Girls who put up with or even initiate weekend text chatfests—but you aren’t one of them! Don’t text lecture him with “Why are you texting me on Saturday? Why didn’t you just ask me out by Wednesday for Saturday?” Instead, silently show him that you are not available by not responding at all during the weekend so he knows he must make plans in advance in the future. You can text him back on Sunday night, “Thanks, sounded good, but I already had plans.” The
only
exception to this
Rule
is if he already asked you out by Wednesday for Saturday night and is texting during the dead zone to confirm plans. Otherwise, you are blocked out from casual texting on the weekends.

There is, however, one exception to waiting: if he needs an answer right away because he wants to buy concert tickets or something else time-sensitive and needs to make sure the date is good for you, you can quickly write back, “Hey, the 14th at 8 p.m. sounds great tx!” But
do not
abuse this exception or use it as an opportunity to start an unnecessary longer conversation.