How Much You Should Talk & Text Before Meeting In Person

How much you should talk & text before meeting women in person.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who gives an update. A woman he liked only came to town once per month. They saw each other twice in person and texted constantly. 5 minutes after their second date ended, she texted him that there wasn’t a romantic connection, but he was a nice guy and blocked him. He wonders where he went wrong.

My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

So this particular email is from a viewer. He gives an update, and about a month and a half—or actually a little over a month—ago, I answered a previous newsletter of his, and that was titled “How to Become Her Boyfriend Instead of a Rebound.”

So obviously, one of the mistakes this guy made was he got to the point where he was basically texting all day, every day. And so he only met this woman twice because I guess she lives 400 miles away, but I think they’re in the UK. Yeah, they are, actually. He’s got a UK email address, so they live in the UK. She’s 400 miles away, but she comes into town like once a month. I guess she’s got family there.

And on top of that, she’s planning on moving back to London, where he is based, within like six months. I think she’s also going through a divorce, if I remember right.

So they talked for about—he said about seven weeks total, kind of seeing each other, but they really only got together twice in person. And after the first time they saw each other, she was going to be back in another month or whatever. And he said they were pretty much talking—or I should say texting—constantly. It wasn’t like phone calls.

So if you’re in a situation like this where you’re meeting a woman that’s out of town, I mean, and she’s not going to move there for six months, you’re kind of doing her a favor by seeing her because, I mean, somebody 400 miles away, that’s not really great logistically.

And ideally, it’d be much better to meet somebody that’s 15 minutes away and who’s living there. And especially if they’re in the process of a divorce, they’re done with the divorce, it’s completely finalized, because it can get messy and you get a lot of hot-and-cold behavior, especially if she hasn’t taken time to heal and get over the divorce.

So, as the book says, the whole purpose of, like, say you meet online—I think that’s how they actually met originally—you meet online, you send three or four messages back and forth because most women will tell you they want to see if you can carry a conversation, you’re not a weirdo.

And when that goes well, you send your number and say, “Hey, here’s my number. Give me a call and let’s chat for a bit and maybe meet up for a drink,” or, “Send me your number and I’ll give you a call. Let me know when you’re available.”

And you want to get them on the phone and talk to them. And ideally, maybe even switch it to a FaceTime if it’s going really well. You’re trying to find if you converse well together, because if you don’t like having a conversation with somebody and she doesn’t like listening and talking to you as well, and she’s 400 miles away, it’s like, why waste your time and your energy?

Especially when you get all focused on somebody like this and you get emotionally too invested, then you tend to neglect any other prospects you may have. I mean, she’s got kind of a messy situation. She doesn’t live in the area. So again, you’re kind of doing her a favor.

But you could tell the dude gets really kind of hung up on her. And so what she also does is—so she came for the second date, and he could tell it’s just not going well. He goes to leave. He’s like, there’s no vibe for kissing or anything. It’s like she just wanted to go because she was over it.

And so it also takes away the mystery. If you’re constantly texting and you’re available 24/7, it shows you don’t really have much going on or much of a life. Women like mystery. They like a guy that’s a challenge. They like a guy that they have to work to get to know.

And when you’re available 24/7 to text and chat and send memes back and forth all day long, there’s no mystery. There’s nothing to discover about you. And women lose interest. It’s just too much contact.

So again, ideally, if you’re in a city, you get on a 10-, 15-, maybe a 20-minute phone call. It depends on how it goes. If that goes real well, “Hey, we should get together for a drink. Hey, there’s a great wine bar around the corner, and they got great hors d’oeuvres,” or whatever. “Let’s go over there. What’s your schedule like? When are you available?”

And then you just make a date right on the spot, and then you go and you see how it goes. Because if it doesn’t go well on the phone, if it’s like pulling teeth to carry a conversation and she’s 400 miles away, you say, “Hey, well, when you finally do move into town, hit me up. You know, I don’t really want to do long distance right now. But when you get into town and get settled, hit me up and, you know, let’s chat and meet up for a drink.”

But obviously this guy liked this girl. So if you’re going to do it this way, where she comes every four weeks to visit because she’s got family there, or maybe she travels for business, then what you could do is set up, once a week, a FaceTime date. And then maybe occasionally she’s gonna text you in between.

But you want to save the conversation for the date, so she’s got something to look forward to. Because women need time and space away from you to wonder about you, to think about you, to miss you, and for their feelings to develop—for them to see how they feel about you over time when they’re not talking to you.

And right away, when you’re available 24/7, it’s like you’re a kid in college and you got nothing going on with your life. But if you’re in and out of meetings and you’re a busy professional like most guys are—and especially if you’re a young dude, like he’s 31—you should be busy on your mission and your purpose and getting things done and have other things going on in your life other than being able to be 24/7 on texting.

Because when you do that, you become like an emotional tampon, her gay male girlfriend. And you’ll see, he kind of talks about how they emotionally bonded. And so he’s kind of thinking like a chick.

And so that’s basically what happened. There was no sexual polarity there. She didn’t worry where she stood with him. If I remember right, after that first date, after they met up, she basically told him that, “I think you’re looking for a relationship. I’m just not there yet.”

And he says, “Yeah, well, I am looking for a relationship,” which obviously he shouldn’t have said in that way. And then she broke it off, says, “Well, I can’t give you what you want,” and then blocked him.

He sent another message saying, “Hey, it was nice meeting you. Hit me up if you change your mind.” And then eventually she unblocked him and then reached back out.

So she obviously looks like a little bit of a screwball too. So she’s not normal. Again, that’s why if he’s gonna engage with this woman, she’s got a messy situation and is already displaying screwball behavior. He’s doing her a favor.

So she should not be such a priority to where you’re talking and texting all day long. But again, if you’re in a situation like this where she’s in town every few weeks, then, like, a once-a-week video, like FaceTime date or something like that, where you can have dinner or drinks together and spend a few hours like a normal date. You just can’t see each other in person.

And then the once a week limits your contact. So in the meantime, she can wonder about you, occasionally text you. But when you are available 24/7, you basically are going to text her out of liking you, which is what happened here.

She just never had time to miss him, probably because anytime she backed off, he pursued a little more, and so there was never any space.

It’s kind of like if you look at how playing a song on a guitar is. Like, what makes music beautiful is the space in between the notes. You strike a chord or you pick a certain string, and then your finger’s off the string, and then you pick another one. And so there’s a space in between that. And so that’s what makes it beautiful.

But if you’re just constantly making noise with the strings, it just—that’s what it sounds like. And so part of dating and getting a woman to feel something for you is the space in between your contact, especially where—because remember, it’s a scientific fact: women are more attracted to men whose feelings are unclear.

And if you’ve only met once in person and for a month you’re texting all day, every day, but not talking on the phone, not doing FaceTime video dates once a week, you’re going to have happen what happened to this guy.

Because she just got together in person. She was bored, probably because she already knew everything about him. There was nothing to discover. She was not going to say, “Well, there’s just something about you.” As a matter of fact, she said the opposite. She’s like, “I don’t feel any romantic vibe,” and then she blocked him again.

So the girl seems like she’s cuckoo. But at the end of the day, this is just too much contact. And on top of that, he should mostly be spending his time with women that are in his city and kind of putting her on the back burner.

Viewer Email:

Hi Corey,

This is Bob again. Reaching out to you after originally emailing you to discuss my situation of hooking up with the divorcee, only for her to end up dumping me.

Again, I think she was married for quite a few years and she’s in the process of getting divorced. So again, it’s hot-and-cold behavior. He’s just, oh, way overinvesting in this girl and making it easy. And she’s just like—she gets bored after being in an unhappy marriage. She wants to feel something.

She wants to be thinking about a guy all the time and wondering what he’s doing, what he’s up to, because this makes her like him more. As a matter of fact, as her interest goes up, and especially as you see her and you start hooking up, she’s going to find other reasons to come to town more because it’s a great escape from where she lives.

And you can phrase it that way, that you love being the escape from her difficult life or unhappy divorce or whatever. And so anytime she’s around you, she’s hanging out, she’s having fun, she’s hooking up, getting her brains fucked out. Women want to be in a love story. So you got to make the love story happen. But when you become a digital pen pal like this guy did, you just dry them up drier than the Sahara Desert.

I’m 31 and am based in London, UK. I’ve been talking to a girl who I matched with on Hinge, who currently lives in Glasgow (400 miles away). She is looking to move to London in the next six months, and she visits London for one weekend every month, where she is originally from. I’ve been fully single for two years, and she has been out of a three-year relationship for five months.

So yeah, it’s pretty—I was thinking it was longer than that. But five months. So she’s putting some space behind it, but she’s in the middle of a divorce, so she can’t possibly be done with that.

And there’s always a chance that, because most of the time, 74, 75% of the time women are doing the dumping and the breaking up and the filing for divorce, that the ex probably wants her back. And so that’s another reason why women will be hot and cold in these situations. So it is essential that you let them come to you.

But you can’t make the mistake of just constantly texting all the time. If she wants to text that much, just say, “Hey, I can’t chat right now. I’m in a meeting, but let’s get together later on for a video chat. What’s your availability? And, you know, let’s eat dinner and have a couple of cocktails together and catch up on video chat. I’d love to see you.”

And do it like that. And then you can get her looking forward to your date. Maybe it’s later that night. Maybe it’s in a few days. It doesn’t really matter. Ideally, one a week is enough, and then the rest of the time she can be missing you and occasionally texting you.

And because some girls will text you a lot, you just got to take your time to get back to them, especially if you’re a busy professional. But you make the mistake of just answering right away and always being available. It’ll be two in the morning and you’ll wake up and text her back, or it’s 6 a.m. and you’re sleeping and you’ll wake up. “Oh, what are you doing?” You’re at work, you’re in a meeting, and you’re like—you got to run out of the meeting. “Oh, I’m in a meeting, but how are you?”

It’s like, that just shows that you’re kind of a beta. A man who’s a busy professional and is used to getting what he wants, he’ll get back to her when he can.

And there’s another reason why you do that: you’re trying to vet them as well. An insecure girl, a fruit loop, is going to get pissed off that you didn’t text back right away. And so you’re looking for signs of that, especially, again, she’s going through a divorce. She’s 400 miles away. Is she nice or is she a lunatic? Does she get pissed off? Does she assume the worst? Does she get mad at you because you’re not always available?

You’re looking for easygoing, easy to get along with, and a woman who’s nice to you. It’s most important.

For 7 weeks, we were talking with each other and getting to know each other via text.

Again, if you’re going to do that and you’re long distance, ideally the texting should lead to scheduling video dates and actual kind of dates where you can have a glass of wine, or if you’re not a drinker, tea, coffee, cappuccino, espresso, maybe a dessert together. You eat dinner together, whatever. It’s just like a date. It’s just you’re looking at each other digitally. You can’t physically touch one another.

So you do that. And when you’ve not really known each other, once a week is enough. And then say she comes into town and you have a really great date in person and you end up hooking up, she’s gonna want to talk more. And so in that case, you might be doing two video dates a week, every week, until she’s back in town the next time.

And again, as her interest goes higher, she’ll come up with reasons to hop in the car and drive to see you if you’re playing your cards right. But when you’re too easy or too available, you get in the way of her developing deep, strong emotions for you. And if you over-pursue, you’re going to push her away and turn her off. And especially if the ex is trying to get her back, you’ll literally push her right back into his arms.

You got to let women come to you at their pace. I talk about this in 3% Man. And if you’re new and you haven’t read it, it’s free to read in the members area of the website.

We continued to talk for a couple of weeks before arranging an afternoon date at a bar, where we shared a bottle of wine (of course I paid the bill).

Well, ideally early evening. But you’ll see why. This is another reason why you don’t do daytime dates, especially in the beginning, is that you want to make sure a woman’s into you.

I mean, he just spent, what, three, four weeks talking to her. So he makes an afternoon date. And guess what? She made plans right afterwards. So what does that tell you? When a woman makes plans afterwards and is okay with cutting the date short, she’s not super excited about hanging out with you.

But if you spent who knows how many hours texting for three or four weeks before you met in person, and you meet in the afternoon and you only meet for a couple hours physically, and then she wants to go do something else, that’s indicative of not super-high interest.

Now, oftentimes women will make plans afterwards that they’ll later ditch if the date goes really well. But when you’re making plans in the afternoon instead of a—you know, because again, the book says an evening date. Because if you’re making an evening date, that’s the last thing she’s going to do in the evening.

If you make it in the afternoon, you open up to her going, “Oh, we’re probably just going to meet for a couple hours.” Then she’ll just go and make plans to do something else. And again, she’s only there for the weekend.

And I suspect that she probably pushed for the afternoon date and he agreed to it because already her interest wasn’t really going anywhere. She probably thought he’s a really nice guy. I think, as she said at the end, “You’re a lovely guy,” which is the same thing as, “Hey, you’re a nice guy, and he dried me up.”

I did try to organise an evening date…

Here’s what—I should have read the next sentence.

…but she had plans that evening before going back to Glasgow.

So again, if you’re spending that much time texting and she’s just making a few hours to see you, her interest isn’t super high. So you got to pay attention to that too. And again, when you’re overinvesting for somebody that just basically squeezes you in to meet you face-to-face for a bit.

The date lasted for three hours; however, we did not kiss, although the conversation was flowing naturally.

Well, you should have gone for the kiss if you were unsure if she liked you or not. Because if you don’t go for the kiss, and then you spend the next three or four weeks texting, and then you go for the kiss on the second date, you’re like, “Holy shit, I wasted a whole fucking month texting this girl to get her cheek and going out on two dates and spending who knows how much money and getting the cheek and then getting blown off.”

We didn’t speak much after the date; however, two days after this date, she said she did not feel a connection with me and immediately blocked me on WhatsApp. I replied to her via iMessage, where I told her I understood, that I thought she was a gorgeous girl and that it was a pleasure…

Some of the English say “pleasure.” “It’s a pleasure to meet you. It was a pleasure hanging out.”

…to meet her, maintaining a light tone. She then unblocked me on WhatsApp, apologised for blocking me, and thanked me for being understanding. I told her it was fine about the blocking and that it wasn’t a big deal.

Well, again, that’s just kind of cuckoo behavior. It’s like you have a nice time, and then she’s like, “Ah.”

She then admitted that she wanted to see me again after some reflection.

So she asked for another date.

I then arranged and booked for us to go on a bowling date on the next weekend she was back in London…

Something else you could have both done, if you guys are successful enough, you could have met in the middle and maybe done something that—you know, because if you’re 400 miles away, I know here in the States, 200 miles is typically a three-hour trip. So if you each drive three hours, then you can meet up somewhere in the middle if the interest is high enough.

And maybe, like for me, I would have been like, cool, if there’s a cool city I’d never been to, I would have been like, “Hey, let’s go stay here.” And then you meet and you get a hotel or whatever and hang out. It just depends on how your connection is. Hang out, have fun, hook up.

…(four weeks after the first date). In that time, we’d been messaging each other pretty much every day to stay in contact.

It’s like, it’s too much. That tells me his thought process is, “I need to contact her. I need to text her to get her to like me.” You’re not going to talk a woman into liking you.

I mean, actually, the reality when it comes to attraction, less is really more. The less she knows about you in the beginning, the more she has to wonder about you, and the harder she’s going to work to get to know you. And women prefer that. Even if they bitch about it, it turns them on more because you’re a challenge. They don’t know anything about you. “You’re so different. You’re so mysterious. There’s something about you.” Those are the kinds of things they will say.

On the bowling date, we had fun playing the games, and I was giving her little tips on her technique, and I made sure to give her light physical contact without smothering her space.

That tells me he’s touching her without realizing she’s not really open to it. Is she playing with her hair? Is she touching your arm occasionally? Or are you just like a robot? Just, “Okay, it’s time to touch,” and then you’re touching her and she’s not reciprocating in any way?

After the games, we then went to the bar area and shared a couple of drinks there, where we talked some more. However, as soon as we sat down, her vibe changed, where her body language was closed, legs crossed away from me, and she was sat with space between us. I’m not sure what happened, but suddenly it felt like an interview setting, and it felt difficult to naturally escalate to holding hands, cuddling and kissing, despite her looking gorgeous.

Well, again, this tells me that he’s focused on how much he likes her and how beautiful she is, but there’s no signs of any kind of open—like, if she’s closed and her legs crossed away. Typically, you need to get her talking, and you got to ask questions and get women to talk about things they enjoy.

But when you’ve been talking and texting every day, it’s like she probably—you probably told her your whole life story in those seven weeks. And so by the time you got together in person, she’s probably thinking, “All right, I’ll get together and see if I feel any different in person,” which she does. And then at this point is when she realized, “Yeah, I’m not feeling it.”

That’s like when, “Check, please. Elvis has left the building.” She’s already decided she’s not interested, and she’s gonna probably block you again. Well, you’ll see, she does.

We continued to talk some more, but I most likely should’ve been fearless here to escalate in some sort of manner.

Well, again, if her body language is closed to you, there’s nothing really to escalate. She’s over it. So that tells me what you were discussing—maybe you were talking too much. I don’t know. But the bottom line is her body language became closed off to you. Maybe you put your foot in your mouth or you said something, or it was just the general vibe.

After an hour at the bar area, I could tell that she wanted to leave, so we then walked to the train station and said goodbye with a hug and without a kiss.

Again, I would have just gone for it, you know? Because at any rate, if the girl’s 400 miles away, you want to, like, “All right, I’m gonna see if she’ll kiss me back or I’m gonna get the cheek,” he says. But here’s what happens.

Five minutes later, she sent me a message saying that she didn’t feel a romantic connection, but that I am a lovely guy. She then blocked me on WhatsApp for a second time. I sent her another iMessage (like the first date) to tell her that I had a great time and that it would’ve been great to see her again, but that I completely understand. I thanked her for making the effort to see me for a second date and wished her the very best. This was the last time we had any contact.

Well, that’s pretty much all you can do there at that point. But you texted this girl out of liking you. You way overinvested in somebody that’s just not investing in you very, very much. You got to pay attention to that, guy.

What you did was you focused on how much you liked her, and you weren’t really paying attention to the fact that she wasn’t that into it. And since you liked her so much, you were always available, probably because deep down you’re worried if you didn’t constantly engage with her, she would lose interest. But how attraction works is that’s exactly what happened. You engaged too much, and she lost interest.

I’m not entirely sure what happened here. I know that the distance would’ve been an issue for around six months until she moved down to London, but what happened in the time we spent together?

Well, really, it wasn’t so much the time you spent together. It was everything that was happening before you got together. It’s too much talking, too much texting. Or actually, I should say, not even talking because, as you said, it was just constant texting.

The texting should have led to scheduled FaceTime chats. Those would have been the good dates. And then if the FaceTime dates go well, then making a date in person, because that’s a big place where you went wrong.

If you’d have had a really great date with her online, FaceTime, and three or four hours eating, drinking, her doing most of the talking, you making her laugh, that kind of thing, then when she got into town, she’s not—the other thing you notice, when you try to set a date, she only would make something in the afternoon. You know why? Because she’s cockblocking you.

She’s doing the afternoon date to prevent any kind of seduction or anything kind of romantic happening. However, she could have always blown off her friends or whoever else she was going to hang out with. Could have been another dude she was going to meet up with. For all you know, maybe Chad Thundercock, who she used to hook up with, that she’s hooking up with then. But she was open to see what happened with you.

But when she got together in person, she just wasn’t feeling it. So again, if a digital date went well, then you should have scheduled your first get-together in person. So that’s part of where you went wrong. Because again, you’re trying to attract a girl from long distance and you’re trying to talk her into liking you and wanting to date you by text. It’s not what I teach in the book. The phone is for setting dates.

And again, in this case, since you can’t get together in person, you’re going to do a digital date. It’s the closest you can get to in-person. You see each other, but you can’t touch each other. And so that’s the vibe you want to do.

And that always worked great for me when I was dating internationally because, like, what I would typically do is I would meet—usually it would be a girl reaching out from somewhere else through my Instagram—and we would talk maybe once or twice, and then I’d be booking a plane ticket to go meet her because it was a country I’d never been to.

I got this hot girl that likes me, and you get a hot tour guide that knows all the great places to eat, where all the great cultural sites are, the fun things to do. And you go have a nice little love story in their country.

And then in between, basically all I would ever do was one video date per week, and then there’d be occasional texting in between, but not a lot. Usually WhatsApp is what we would use internationally, and it worked great.

And so we would look forward to our digital dates because, I mean, you know, sometimes we’d talk five, seven—I remember one particular time it was like eight hours. We were having so much fun. We were, like, playing music that we were both into, and she was sharing videos and things she was into, songs I’d never heard before that were really good. And so we would listen to them together.

It was as if we were hanging out in her room or my living room, like, digitally. So it was just—we had an absolute blast, and it was always like that. Every girl I dated internationally was the same.

Even my old girlfriend Katie, who those videos are in the members area of the website if you want to check those out as well. We did a lot of that. We would talk at least once or twice a week on video date or audio date, depending on where she was or what she was doing, in between us seeing each other in person every month.

So usually she’d go back to the UK, and then she’d come back maybe three to four weeks later, and then we’d be together for like 90 days, 24/7. She’d live with me, and then she’d go back for a month and then come back again. Or I would go over there for a few weeks or a month or so to hang out, and we would do stuff in Europe.

So it was a lot of fun. It’s a great way to see the world when you got a hot tour guide that’s from that country, but you got to do it right. You got to follow the principles in the book. It’s just, this is how you adapt it to that.

I was looking good and was wearing a good fragrance to smell nice. I know that escalating with more flirting on my part probably should’ve been done in some way, but the instantaneous negative body language immediately made it off-putting to do that.

Yeah, because she was already turned off. Again, the key thing to pay attention to is that she’s making other plans after you. So it was almost like she wanted to see you face-to-face in person, and after she got a couple of hours, that was enough for her. Remember, she blocked you after the first time, and then she blocked you after the second time you met. It’s not a good sign.

Was she still put off from the first date, or subconsciously was she put off with the potential long-distance relationship?

How do you also explain her blocking/unblocking behaviour too?

Well, she’s a fucking screwball. The book is for normal women.

I’ve not come across this behaviour before.

Thanks very much,

Bob

Well, again, she’s kind of a nut. And quite frankly, it’s better that you don’t get involved with her. And quite frankly, there’s probably a 50/50 chance she reaches out in the future again. But she sounds like she’s kind of nutty. You’d be better off dating other women.

But again, the next time you’re in a situation like this, you got to do it like I explained. The right way to do it is move from getting the number to some kind of a FaceTime date or a phone call so you can talk and hear each other’s voice and see how that goes.

And if that goes well, then, like in this case, you can arrange a FaceTime chat. Or if the conversation is going really well, you can just switch to FaceTime when you’re on an audio call. I’ve done that a bunch of times when I used to online dating as well.

So the more you click, the more you can kind of open up to each other, if you will, digitally. You can see more of each other. But, you know, if she’s at home looking like a bum and doesn’t have any makeup on, she’s not going to want to switch to FaceTime with you.

But if she’s liking you and hoping it goes well, she’s ready to do that. And then you can see each other, which is a lot of fun because you’re like, “Oh wow, you’re even prettier on video than you are in your pictures,” which is always nice.

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