Another loser in need of dating advice!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Humble opinions sought. Below is a brief timeline written in an annoying ‘boy meets girl’ voice.

Saturday: Boy sees advert posted by girl looking for Mr Right on Craigslist-style local site. Boy sends email to girl (attaching picture as requested) as girl sounds like good match to boy.

Saturday night: Girl replies to boy’s reply, saying that boy intrigues her and that she wants to know more about him. Boy is overjoyed that girl is not an email-harvesting bot, that she is pretty (as evidenced by attached photo) and that she writes full sentences with spelling and grammar intact.

Sunday to Tuesday: Girl and boy exchange several emails and come to realise that they have a lot in common, especially overlapping tastes in movies and video games(!) and one particular TV show and lead character. Boy jokes to friends that he knows this girl will ‘break his heart’.

Tuesday night: Girl writes “let’s get down to business” and initiates process of meeting up. Boy arranges to meet Thursday night for a few drinks, saying that he is busy later that night (true) and also tomorrow, Wednesday (not true).

Wednesday night: Girl sends last email before meeting up confirming plans as well as typical chat. Boy decides not to reply and instead answer the relevant questions in person.

Thursday: Girl and boy meet up in town, exchange a hug and go to bar. They then proceed to spend a couple of hours talking over a few drinks until girl needs to catch last train home. Boy and girl have conversed freely and chattily with few awkward silences and mutual compliments exchanged. Boy offers to walk girl to station, accepted. Boy says goodbye, “I had a good time”, “drop me an email”, etc. Boy and girl hug a second time, boy walks home.

Saturday: Boy replies to previous email of girl’s, cognisant of leaving the infamous ‘one day gap’ in between seeing her and contacting her so not to seem over-eager. Boy says how he had a great time, loved chatting to her, would love to meet again, as well as a few fluff questions to keep the conversation going.

Today: Boy sits at home, asking strangers on the Internet for possible reasons why girl has not replied to his email. Boy has sick feeling in pit of his stomach that he will never hear from this girl again.

2

Send one more e-mail asking her how she is. Do NOT mention her not replying to your last one. Pretend you never sent it in the first place.

Send it and forget it, and move on.

3

Just a possibility:

Girl has been chatting with more than one boy on site and is busy right now.

I suggest boy do the same - girl won’t be busy forever.

Good luck!

4

I was under the impression that following up your own contact was tantamount to sexual suicide. At a barbecue on Sunday, where people asked about my date, and I mentioned that I had emailed the evening before, the girls there were like ‘and you don’t send anything else until you hear back, right?’. Right, I said, I know dick all about women but I’m not completely clueless.

It’s possible, I guess. When we met up I enquired about the response to her ad. She said she had 57 replies, but that I was ‘one of about two normal people’. The thing is, she always replied to my emails pretty quickly, so these four/five days have seemed painfully long, and it’s not like I have a string of other women to keep myself entertained in the mean time.

5

Maybe she has the stomach flu. There’s no telling, you know.

I’d say you can e-mail her again after a week. But don’t mention the first e-mail. And only the once can you do that.

6

It is, but at this point, you don’t have much to lose. And it does sometimes happen that people forget to reply and need gentle reminders. I’ve been in a number of situations recently where a followup contact paid off.

7

I would send her one more email just asking how she’s been. Be breezy - casual - just a “hey, haven’t heard from you - how are you?” type of thing. If you don’t hear from her in 48 hours, it’s time to move on.

8

Yep, one more email is allowable by Dating Code 42, section B, subsection f.

And look…about these “rules”…they’re much more like guidelines. After all, what’s the real goal of dating? To find someone who you like who likes you. If you follow the “rules” so closely that you’re not being you, then you’re undermining the whole point! If YOU would be upset if she didn’t return an email or a phone call, then you need to let her know that. If that’s not the kind of person she wants, then yes, you might lose her. But better now than later, right? Be yourself means act as yourself, respect her when she says no, and find out if you’re what she wants and she’s what you want. If you’re not being you, you’re misrepresenting the goods and wasting both your time.

Sorry. I had this exact same conversation IRL three days ago. She stopped worrying about “the rules”, called him again, and they haven’t stopped snogging since. He even owned up to the fact that he’s lousy about returning calls and is working to change that. She owned up to the fact that not getting a call back within hours drives her nuts, and he’s fine with it, now that he knows.

9

What about lying about being available Wednesday? :wink:

10

[Dr. Who, Tenant division] Weeelllll…once he said it, he wasn’t available, so it wasn’t reeeally lying, now was it? Look, what’s that over there? d&r

:smiley:

11

I agree. A non-accusatory second email, after a generous amount of time for a reply, is the right way to go.

If she’s not into you, the second email isn’t going to make her any less into you.

If she drops you because you “broke a rule”, then you can figure you’d have broken some other rule some other time, so you’re cutting your losses and moving on.

If she’s into you, and not handcuffed by silly rules, she won’t care, she’ll just be glad to hear from you.

12

OK, I’m warming to the idea of a ‘last chance saloon’ email. I’ve resigned myself to the likelihood that I will have to ‘move on’, which in my case is going another couple of years with no female contact.

But [pause]. There’s a small part of me that really, really wants to rescue some sort of closure from this. If she’s ‘not in to me’ I would kill to know the ultimate question: WHY? So do I trade the last stand email for one basically along the lines of

“I know I blew it but could you do me the small favour of telling me why? Be as brutally honest as you like”

I mean, she mentioned that she finds shoes important, and is turned off by bad teeth. What if there’s the slight chance she didn’t like my shoes, or my teeth? I want to know the brain mechanisms involved, the thought processes behind just ignoring the email, especially as it all seemed to be going quite well.

Yeah, yeah, I’m at that youthful, zealous stage where everything has to have a reason, truth is beauty and good things happen to good people.

13

NO!

She won’t answer you anyway.

Your best bet is to come off as 100% non-needy.

14

Don’t do this. There is no possible good that can come from it, and a decent amount of bad.

Send her another email like others have said, but wait until tomorrow. She may be playing her own game, she might just not be into you. If she isn’t into you and won’t even send you an email to say so…you really didn’t want her anyway.
People with spines are always preferable to those without.

15

My husband of six years (last Sunday, as a matter of fact) didn’t follow the rules and called me the next day after we met. Before we met, I didn’t think he liked me very much because he hardly said anything when we talked on the phone (I decided if he didn’t like me, he’d quit calling, and he was just a lousy phone talker, which he is). The rules are a good guideline, but they are just a guideline. You like this girl, you seemed to have a good time, if she’s a nice, normal girl who also liked you, she won’t cut you dead for one more “Hello? Anybody home?” email.

Good advice also to keep talking with and meeting other women (your nice girl might be a game-player who will never email you again. Or the other normal guy might be normaler than you. :slight_smile: )

16

I forgot to say this.

You’re not a loser because a chick you don’t really know hasn’t responded to your email. She might just be a flake. It’s not your fault.

You’re not a loser since you’re making an effort. Good for you!

Giving up after just one possible rejection might start you on the road to loserhood. You will NOT go another couple of years without female contact! You will contact the next person on the site and see how that goes.

Wishing you all the best!

17

No!!! I know less than nothing about anything but this is wrong. Besides, it’s so individual that she won’t tell you something that would hold true for others you meet later. Keep looking on Craigslist and elsewhere and play the field, like perhaps she is doing. It’s been a while and you’re pinning your hopes on one person; keep looking. You did this once, you can do it again.

ETA: PS, what kind of shoes did you wear? :wink:

18

NO! No demanding to know why she isn’t into you (unless you really want her to disappear forever). She doesn’t answer to you, and no matter how you word it, that’s how it will come across.

19

OK, OK, no bitterness. Just a follow up email maybe tomorrow night or Friday. Would saying ‘Hello stranger’ be too accusatory? Or just “Hi, how are things, yadda yadda, how is work, yadda yadda, we should get together for a drink or a flick sometime, yadda yadda, drop me a [del]GOD DAMN FUCKING[/del] email sometime, stay classy, San Diego.” (She can’t make it through the day without an Anchorman quote - sigh, told you she was a heartbreaker)

Tan loafers, with jeans. Was going for smart casual. They’re not bad considering how little time I had (to buy new ones, natch), and that most shops don’t carry my size.

20

Rather than ask her for a date “sometime”, just propose a specific activity at a specific time. You don’t have to come on too strong, but you don’t have to let her off the hook with too much ambiguity. Don’t ask her to drop you a line, just ask her if she wants to go to the pub with you on Friday. If she doesn’t reply to that, you know you’re done. Real simple.