The Mystery Method Way: Pursuing vs. Chasing:

It’s Sunday afternoon. You met a great woman on Friday or Saturday night, and followed the Mystery Method perfectly. You opened, you created attraction, you qualified, and then you started to build comfort. The situation wasn’t right for you to take it further, so you casually invited her to join you for some exciting event on Monday. She gave you her number.

You phone. It rings a few times and goes to her voicemail. You leave a message. She doesn’t call you back. It’s now Tuesday. What do you do?

1. Maybe call her again next week, but that’s it. You need to have the frame that you have lots of women interested in you and are busy, or else she won’t stay attracted to you anyway.

2. Call or text every day or two with a variety of different approaches, to see if any of them make an impact. Delete the number after a few weeks if you don’t get anywhere.

3. Call every day until she answers. Once in a while call three times in a row to see if that works. After a week or so, drop back to once a week or so. Don’t give up until YOU are no longer interested.

What’s the right answer? Don’t look ahead…

Actually, any of them could be the right answer. In the right context, all of these are okay. Too many beginners in the Mystery Method are too inflexible with the frame that “I have value…she has to come to me” and default to (A). Yes, this is a good frame, and it’s important. However, sometimes you need to do a little bit of pursuing as well.

Why is this? If you obviously have value, why should you have to pursue a woman? Why does she want you to? In short, it’s because this shows that you are genuinely interested in her. In fact, the more value you have, or appear to have, the more a woman will want to see you put in a bit of genuine effort to pursue her. She recognizes that you can have easy conquests, and she doesn’t want to be easy.

Why else? Some women are simply flaky and scatterbrained (so are some men). She may adore you, but you called when she was having dinner, and then she met up with a friend, and now it’s the next day, and she could call you, but now she’s distracted and, anyway, if you’re really interested in her you’ll call again, right?

Why else? She wants to play the traditional female role of being chased. It’s exciting for her, and built into millennia of social programming. It’s not a great frame for men to be in, which is why we short-circuit it when we first meet a woman by disqualifying ourselves during the attraction phase. That’s easy in public, where you can plausibly start a random conversation with an attractive woman without being interested in her (until she wins you over, of course…). It’s not easy on the phone. By calling, you are confirming your interest. That’s why it’s so important to qualify her when you first met, so she feels comfortable with your interest in her, but it does mean that you might feel a little bit of “back to square one” on the telephone. So, yes, she may make you work for it by not returning your phone call. Don’t take it personally.

Why else? Some women are taught “not to call guys”. Yes, it’s pretty silly, but there is just as much silly dating advice for women as there is for men (both you and I are lucky that we found the Mystery Method). There’s nothing you can do about this. Call them. You can fix their silly ideas later.

Now, we covered ages ago some of the crucial tactics to making you she does answer the phone when you call (programming your number into her phone, telling her when you’re going to call, planning a specific event, making her verbalize some anti-flake routines, texting/calling that night, etc.) as well as how to leave a message (leave hooks, cut yourself off, etc.) so we’ll assume that you’ve done all of this, and are still not getting her on the phone. You can give up, of course, and focus your energies on new women. This is totally fine. But you can also set aside a few minutes a day with your “cold” phone numbers and do some of this:

* Vary the time of day when you call. Morning, afternoon, evening, night. If you’re getting nowhere, try calling at 1am. You’ll wake her up, so make sure you can be immediately entertaining from the second she answers. (Start with a high-energy, funny, short routine. Don’t even introduce yourself).

* Call from different numbers

* Try sending text messages – some people simply prefer these to phone calls

* Don’t ever acknowledge that you are calling and she isn’t returning your calls. Adopt the frame – to yourself – that she is just a flaky woman and it’s kind of cute. Don’t let it cross your mind that she might not actually be interested in you.

* Don’t ever say “this is the last time I’m calling” or “I’m calling to leave you another message” – see above. And if you do get her on the phone, don’t even bring up the subject of your previous calls or texts.

* If you phone, and it goes directly to voicemail (and doesn’t ring at all), hang up.You got a free pass. If it doesn’t ring, it won’t show up as a missed call on her phone. She won’t see that you called. If it does ring, leave a message.

On the other hand, don’t turn “pursuing” into “chasing”. If she tells you not to call, stop calling. Don’t be creepy.

Texting Eliminates Flakes

There are lots of theories on how to get the solid date and avoid flaking, but recently I've tested and proven an approach that works every time.

You have to just assume you KNOW when you're together whether or not it's on for the future. You can feel how strong the connection is. If it's really there, just don't screw anything up. Send her a cute SMS the next day, let her reply, then SMS telling her when you'll call. Then call, have a short, fun chat, and set the date and time to meet again.

Don't overthink this stuff or try to overgame with phone and SMS. This may be the biggest community-induced mistake I have had to undo. If she gave you her real number, she already likes you. So just assume all you need to do now is make it easy for her to get in contact with you.

Use text first. Calling first is always more of a risk because people do NOT answer their phone unless they know the number (and people like me don't answer their phone even if they know it, choosing instead to time-shift with voicemail).

The text allows her to see who it is, and lets her THINK and FEEL about you before replying. It lets her remember. It also prepares her to talk to you, so she's looking forward to it.

Personally I have always HATED the phone. I hate when the phone rings, I hate talking on it, I hate not being able to see the person, etc. But I love little notes. That's what text is. Little love notes passed in class to keep the fire going until you see each other again.

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Here's my classic failsafe... I've probably sent some variation on this 1000 times.

"hey cutie... it's weird... i was just thinking of you... :-)"

With text, be quick and cute. Don't go for too cocky. Remember, cocky doesn't work without body language and non-verbal cues. Your text should be like a cute little note you drop in her purse that pings her to remember the good feelings she had when with you. That's all.

My RULES for text messages:

1. I always address them with pet names like darlin', sweetie, cutie pie, sexy, gorgeous, adorable brat, etc.

2. I use proper grammar. I don't use the normal abbreviations. If you do, U R 2 stop. I do abbreviate stuff like family to "fam", San Francisco to SF, etc. I hope I don't have to say this, but NEVER USE LEET SPEAK (wikipedia it if you don't know). Know the difference between "your" and "you're", "to" and "too", etc. A side rule to this, the more sexual the message, the more proper the grammar you should use. Which feels sexier, "I want 2 slowly kiss Ur lips…" or "I want to slowly kiss your lips…"?

3. Sign your name when it is the first one or two text messages you send (credit: Robert1). All you do is write your text, then at the end add "-Sean." Replace "Sean" with your own name though, or include my cell phone number in the text if you don't.

4. I use a lot of smiley faces This replaces the big friendly smile you would have on your face when you deliver a banter line. Text messages should basically be banter lines. I do not use any other faces other than smiley faces. No winky face no "P" face (I actually don't even know what this is supposed to mean), etc. Some might disagree, but personally I think this borders on leet speak, which is not ok. Furthermore, I want my words to convey my message. If my words, punctuation and a smiley face aren't enough, then I feel I am doing something wrong.

5. I use rich descriptions. If I do say how I am doing, I make it descriptive. In response to "how R U?" I might reply "Just saw the sunset over the bay, the sky's glowing orange - looks incredible!"

6. Jump on the offers a girl makes. An "offer" is a term from improv acting. It is when one actor says something that describes something about the other actor.

Example, one actor says to the other, "I like that large funny hat you have on", the other actor then would go on with that theme of wearing a large funny hat.

It is a little different with text messages, but if a girl sends you something that you can make fun and sexy, do it. For example, I got a text message from one of the girls the other night, "buenas noches. Dulces suenos guapo." [translates: good night. Sweet dreams, handsome]. I replied the next morning by writing, "good morning, beautiful. Have a good day." Except I wrote it in french. I took her theme, and replied in a way that was similar, but original and charming.

Your TOOLS:

Brevity: You have to say everything very quickly. If you can't say it in about 10 to 20 words, then rework it until you can. It is ALWAYS possible to flirt in less than 12 words, in my opinion. If you don't think so, "you are a dork :) " (see, it is that easy). Get rid of everything and anything that is not necessary, by not necessary I mean not flirty and fun.

Punctuation: The main punctuation techniques I use are CAPS, ellipses… exclamation!!! Question marks?? both?!?!, [brackets], and (parenthesis). And smiley face as I mentioned before :) These all have different emotional effects, use them! Caps are REALLY EXCITING!! Wtf?!? [roll my eyes] don't make me.. come over there… and wrap my arms around you… (I won't spank tooo hard)