TLDR: When you ask a girl out, you have to do in a way that forces her to either say "yes" or "no." In other words you want to make her reject you so you avoid falling into that "grey zone."

If you’re like me, you’ve suffered from the following problem: you meet a girl, hit it off, think you have a great interaction, get her number, but then when you try to call her and set up a date, it doesn’t work. She either flakes, or doesn’t respond, or loses interest. What gives?

Well sometimes you haven’t built enough attraction with her. If that happens, she’s not going to call you back or go on a date with you no matter what. Girls love giving their numbers out, it doesn’t mean anything.

But… sometimes the problem is that you’re not asking her out right. This article is about how to ask a girl out. The main point I want to make is that YOU WANT TO MAKE HER REJECT YOU. You want to avoid landing in her "grey zone" - you have to make her decide "yes" or "no".

Before we start, let’s start with some basic principles you need to know:

1) Girls want LOVE. LOVE, for the purposes of this article = (Confident, “alpha” man who will take control and plan every step of the interaction) X (Emotional connection with the man). To succeed with a girl, both elements must be there. Most guys make the mistake of forming an emotional connection, but not being alpha enough. But some guys (mostly PUAs) make the opposite mistake. Too much emphasis on being alpha and assertive, not enough on making an emotional connection. Now, before you go on a first date with a girl, it is hard to establish an emotional connection, but you need to establish strong emotions somehow. We’ll get to that later.

2) Girls HATE being rejected. Well, everybody hates being rejected, but girls are terrified of rejection to an insane degree. It might be nature, it might be nurture, but there is a reason why our society is structured so that all the risk of rejection lands on guys. As a guy, you need to use this to your advantage – if you can look rejection in the eye and not flinch, you have a huge advantage.

3) Girls (to a much lesser degree) hate rejecting guys. Don’t get me wrong, girls “reject” guys all the time, but girls don’t like to make an outright, clear, no-turning-back, verbal rejection to a guy they have any type of emotional connection with. For one, girls hate any kind of confrontation (especially with big scary men) so they would rather just not answer a phone call rather than to tell a guy “no.” Furthermore, girls try avoid outright rejecting guys because if a girl clearly and unambiguosly rejects a guy, there is a big chance he will reject her back, which takes us back to #2 (girls hate being rejected). If a girl says “I never want to see you again” the guy might say “ok, you’ll never see me again.” BAM! She just got rejected. This is why girls love to keep relationships with guys in a weird “grey” zone where she isn’t committing to doing anything with him, but isn’t formally rejecting him either. It’s part of your responsibility, as a guy, to stay out of that grey zone and force her to either hang out with you or outright reject you.

4) Girls are attracted to men that are leading awesome lives and are passionate about what they do. Guys that are living passionate, fun lives don’t need (or even want) girls to make them happy. Girls like that because it takes the pressure off of them in the relationship and it also makes it seem like they are getting somebody “above” them. Girls even “poke” you sometimes (also known as the shit-test) to see if you are actually passionately directed towards your goal.

So let’s use these principles.

The first thing you have to know is that when you ask a girl out you should always offer a definite time and place. Bonus points if you make it seem like you were going to go there without her. You need to make her feel like you have an awesome life going on and it is hard for you to even make time for her silly ass. “Meet me at Jack’s at 7,” or “do you want to go to dinner tonight at South City Kitchen at 9?” You also want to somehow inject a subtext into the conversation to make her think that this is her only chance to hang out with you. She either goes to Jack’s or you’re not inviting her out again (i.e., she gets rejected). You obviously can’t say that explicitly (although I have!), so you have to somehow inject that subtext into your sentences. We’ll talk about how to do this later. When you ask a girl out, you shouldn’t even give her multiple options (“do you want to do dinner tomorrow night or minigolf on Sunday”) – you should give her one option and make her feel like if she doesn’t take that option you won’t call her again.

You should never ask a girl out in a wishy washy way. Don’t ever say “hey we should hang out sometime” or “when are you free”? A wishy washy asking (basically, any type of asking out that doesn’t explicitly set a time and a place when she has to be there) violates all the principles we have learned. A guy who says “hey we should hang out sometime” isn’t taking charge and planning every step of the interaction. If you say “hey we should hang out sometime” or “when are you free” you are putting the burden on the girl to pick a time and place. Given that burden, the girl will not want to pick a time and place because she doesn’t want to take control and plan the interaction. Girls also don’t like “wishy washy” ask-outs because you are putting the risk of rejection back on her. If you say “when are you free” and she says Monday, you can say “oh well I’m busy Monday.” BAM! She just got rejected. I know that sounds stupid but girls are THAT SENSITIVE to rejection. I’m not a scientist but I suspect that girls’ desire for a confident man who will take the lead is somehow rejected to their fear of rejection.

I was on a date with a girl once that went very well so at the end I said “hey that was fun, we should do it again.” And she nodded “yes, definitely.” I then said “ok, when are you free?” and she didn’t answer; she just kept nodding. Feeling weird, I asked her again “when are you free this week”? Again, she said nothing and just kept nodding. I thought “maybe she doesn’t really want to hang out again.” But remembering what I read on r/seduction, I immediately said “hey do you want to go to Jack’s on Thursday?” And she said “yes!” and then we went to Jack’s on Thursday. Bizarre how a girl’s mind works.

Another reason to not ask in a wishy washy way is that it makes you look too available. Saying “when are you free” essentially means “I’m pretty much always free to hang out.” Not only does it make it look like you don’t have an awesome life full of cool shit going on, but it also doesn’t strike a strong emotional chord with the girl. She’s pretty sure you’re not doing something awesome every night, so “when are you free” basically means “pick a random night and we’ll do something – hopefully it will be good.” But if you pick a particular night and, even better, a particular event, she is more likely to get excited and emotional for it. Girls are always getting asked out and getting offered to go to cool events, so you need to really excite her if you want her to put her make-up on and leave the house. Also if you say “when are you free” she won’t be worried that if she doesn’t respond you’ll reject her because it is an open invitation. So, in summary, because you 1) didn’t take the lead, 2) she doesn’t want to risk getting rejected, 3) she won’t think you’ll reject her, and 4) you didn’t invoke any strong emotions in her, she just likely won’t answer.

Now here is the challenge: how can you make her feel like if she turns you down, she won’t get another chance? If she thinks she only has one shot, she is going to feel like this opportunity to hang out is more important (raising her emotions) and she is less likely to say no, because she doesn’t want to get rejected. But like I said, its kind of douchey to say “Hey you wanna hang out Friday? If you say no, I’m not calling you again.” So you have to think of a different tact. For one, your entire interaction, from the start, has to be structured in such a way that the girl thinks that you are very busy, you don’t have a lot of time for her, and you may not even be interested. There are other articles about this, so I’m not going to go into it, but the basics are:

1) Your body language/tone has to show you’re not overly invested

2) You should ideally flake once

3) You should speak to her very professionally and/or formally, to make her think you are “feeling her out” and may not even be interested.

Ideally, you should be involved in events/activities. You can invite her to these events and you won’t look needy because you have to be at the event anyway. Another technique is to text her immediately after you meet her and say “It was very nice to meet you Kelly. I’ll call you this week to set up plans.” This creates emotional distance because you are not immediately asking her out, which is technically a rejection. You are making her wait and she has no idea if you ever will ask her out (remember, most dudes in that situation probably immediately ask her out).

A key way to make her feel like she’s on thin ice is to be very formal in your texts (or when you call). Write in complete sentences and use proper punctuation and capitalization. You should always try to sound as formal as possible, using big words and such (without coming off as a pretentious douche). So I will text a girl “Hi Alison it was very nice to meet you. I will call you this week to set up plans.” Being formal has several advantages – for one, it makes you seem more intelligent, confident and valuable than all the other guys who text her things like “sup. u free?” But also, and this is a very sneaky point, it creates a stereotype of professionalism in the girl’s head. People think in stereotypes, and if somebody speaks to you in a formal way you immediately think of the professional world – people in nice suits working hard, people getting shit done, and the possibility of rejection if you don’t measure up. If you text in regular street vernacular (“yo, let’s hang out”), you invoke the stereotype of the lazy stoner on the couch who is probably not doing anything with his life and is probably going to ask you for something. This may sound like a silly point, but you need to remember that the only interaction you are having with this girl is texts (or calling) so your only impression of you is based on these things.

Speaking in a formal way also creates an emotional distance between you and her that lets her know that you’re not going to get invested until she is worth it. I work in a law office and one of the partners I work for speaks in a very formal, almost antiquated manner. Every sentence he speaks sounds like a sentence from a law textbook. Many see his formal style of speaking as weird, but it does make you feel like he is a better lawyer. In addition, his style of speaking creates an emotional distance: when he speaks you get the feeling that, “we are not friends, I’m at work right now.” It makes you almost want to do a better job so that you can break down his barrier of professionalism and get to know the “real” him. One night at a Christmas party he got a little drunk and “loosened” up and it was awesome to get to speak to him in a colloquial way. It was almost like I conquered a challenge. The only time you should lower your level of formality is if the girl’s texts are very informal as well – but even then, you should try to create some emotional distance so you don’t seem too available.

One final point: It’s seduction 101 that if you try to set something up with a girl and she doesn’t respond, or flakes without giving an alternative time, you just next her and don’t look back. I kind of agree, but let me tell you what I do: If I meet a girl under the pretense of “we should go on a date” and she agrees, and then I call her and she bullshits (i.e., doesn’t respond, keeps flaking, etc…), instead of just going silent I text her back something like “ok, well it looks like you aren’t interested. Nice to meet you and moving on!” A lot of guys may see this as desperate or needy, but here is why I do it:

1) It gives me the emotional satisfaction of knowing that I rejected her, not the other way around. Psychologically, it feels better to reject somebody than to be rejected and remember, girls hate rejection. I also psychologically take myself out of the grey zone.

2) I deprive her of the satisfaction of thinking that I’m sitting by my phone waiting for her to call me back.

3) I let her know that I don’t appreciate being put in the grey zone. We are either dating or not. Girls love giving a guy their number, and then putting him in the “grey zone” while they explore other options. Fuck that. I let you know right away that I have a busy life with lots of other girls waiting so I need to know ASAP what’s going on.

4) It gives ME psychological closure.

Like I said, a lot of guys will disagree with this approach. They will say “you need to act like you don’t give a shit, man.” Well, here’s the thing. I DO give a shit. I don’t want to date or her or marry her, but it’s rude to not call somebody back. I also need to know who I’m dating. If she says “I’m not interested,” I won’t give a shit because that’s the nature of the dating game. But if I pick up the phone to call her and she doesn’t respond, then well, she is being rude. Let’s say in the middle of dinner the girls pulls her pants down and takes a shit in your plate. Would you not give a shit? No, you would say something.

I’ve noticed that this tactic actually gets a lot of girls back – they usually text back “oh sorry I’ve been so busy let’s schedule something.” It gives them the impression that you are serious guy with a busy life that doesn’t have the time to take shit from anybody. Suddenly you look at more impressive than the average chump that keeps calling them and trying to hang out.