Two Likes on Hinge and One Big Mistake
I got two women that liked me on Hinge yesterday organically, which felt amazing. One of these women looked like a fantastic match, so I got really excited and sent her a four minute and twenty second voice memo to introduce myself and to set the container. And as you can imagine, she didn't respond.
Now, I just made a video before this telling women that you need to filter on depth. I've talked to a lot of women, especially in person, and what I'm hearing from women is that they're so frustrated with shallow men — men that just want hookups, men that are lying about things like having a wife or a girlfriend. My advice for women is that you should look for guys that are deeper, and you should try to pull depth out of a man, because a lot of the guys that won't go deep with you are the ones that are going to be shallow. Meanwhile, a lot of us men who are willing to go deep move too hard too fast. And that's exactly what I've been struggling with. I got this match with this woman, I got really excited, and I sent her a four minute voice memo. She probably looks at it and feels overwhelmed, listens to it and feels pressure, and interprets that I'm a low value man who's not worth her time — because look at all this attention I just gave her off of matching on a dating app. That's unfortunately how the game often gets played. The solution is for women to invite depth with voice memos, and for us men to slow down.
How ChatGPT Turned My Five-Minute Ramble Into One Clear Text
I've literally applied this today. I had three voice memos I wanted to send women today, and instead I talked everything through with ChatGPT. I talked to ChatGPT for probably ten or fifteen minutes about these three different women — one on a dating app and two from real life that I wanted to ask out. And ChatGPT turned my five minute rambling voice memo that I almost sent this woman into a very quick text. Let me share the exact text I sent: "Hey [her name], I won't be going back to [the place]. So when you're back from traveling, let me take you on a date." A very simple message that's easy to digest, that's very clear about what I'm doing and what I want. That's slowing down. It asks clearly for a date. But if I send this woman a five minute voice memo explaining everything, I guarantee she's going to be turned off. At least with this message, it makes things clear.
Same thing with another woman. I sent her a message, she asked how my weekend was, and I said my weekend was great, I've enjoyed getting to know you, and I'd like to take you on a date — are you open to that? She said no, she's not ready to date. I said, thanks for being clear, I respect that. And she said she'd be open to continuing a friendship. With this particular woman, because of the situation, I am interested in continuing the friendship. She's a massage therapist, so I'd like to see her for a massage outside of dating her. I actually knew her outside of massage — I didn't even know she did massages for the first several months I knew her. So I go see her as a friend for a massage, and then it seemed like we had alignment for dating. In both of those cases, I was going to send long rambling voice memos, but I slowed down and simplified.
Here's why that matters: especially if you're a woman on a dating app, you're likely to have a lot of guys messaging you — at least the kind of women I'm messaging are. If you have fifty different guys all messaging you and all liking you, you're not often going to make time to even listen to one guy's five minute voice memo.
Slowing Down Is Easier When You Have Options
For men, what we need to do is slow down. And for some guys — often the guys that are dating the most — this just comes naturally. Right now, I'm not even sure how many women I'm talking to or asking out. I do know I asked three women for dates this morning, and it's only 1:30 in the afternoon. I just tried a Hinge boost, so I'm getting some likes coming in from that. I have one date planned with one woman right now, and several more I'm working on planning. And there's one woman I just finished dating. It's easier to slow down when I have lots of women I'm talking to. But even then, even with all that going on, I'm still willing to drop a five minute voice memo on someone.
With women, if you escalate too fast, too quickly, women will often interpret that as pressure. That's the exact mistake I made with the woman I talked about in a previous video called "She Asked for Space. I Made a Mistake. I Made It Worse." I thought I was respecting her; she felt rejected. In both of these situations, I moved too fast. I really liked this woman, so I kept escalating and escalating, and then she pulled back, and then I kept trying to get back to where we were before — which is not a good thing.
I was talking to a friend in yoga today about dating — an absolutely gorgeous woman. She's married, and therefore there are strict boundaries there. But she was talking about how women often want to move slower and can feel pressured very easily. And it makes sense in the other context of dating: a man that's coming on strong and being very forceful can be scary and trigger a woman's "this isn't safe" response. So as men, we've got to be conscious of that. We do need to make the moves, and we do need to try to escalate — but we need to escalate gently. Send a short text message to start. Then maybe send a little bit longer text message. Then maybe a thirty second voice memo. And if she responds to that, then maybe send a little bit longer one. You don't want to jump straight into the four minute voice memo, which is generally something you'd do with someone you were closer with, someone you'd already invested a little bit of time with.
The same thing has happened with women I've met in person. I've met women in person, poured my whole heart out to them, talked to them for a couple of hours — and then they were completely uninterested in me after that. Whereas if I'd spent five or ten minutes talking to them in person, exchanged numbers, and then asked them out on a date, they might have been a lot more interested, because they'd have wanted to get to know me more instead of getting way too much too fast.
Start in the Shallow End
So I'm applying this right now: slow down. For me, it's easiest to slow down when I'm getting to know a whole bunch of women at the same time, because I have a lot of attention and a lot of depth to me. It feels unnatural for me to just have surface level conversations. It feels a bit unnatural for me to be shallow. But it's just like swimming: if you've never swum in a pool before, you probably want to start in the shallow end and adventure out gently toward the deep end. If you just jump in the deep end, you don't necessarily know how deep it is. It may be too shallow. You may get hurt. There could be stuff in the water. You don't know.
For men, it's all about pacing, because men generally are not as sensitive to safety or danger. If a woman sends me a five minute voice memo, I don't feel pressured — I feel excited. I'm like, cool, she wants to go deeper. If a woman wants to have a call with me or meet up in person, I don't interpret that as pressure. I'm like, awesome. And especially slow down when it comes to expressing feelings. In most cases it seems like women feel this pressure more — and again, this is general. It can apply differently across gay and straight relationships, across different women and men, in different places and cultures. This is just my experience based on what I'm seeing in person and on dating apps.
Attention Should Be Even
What I'm seeing is that men don't often feel pressured. I might feel pressured if a woman were texting me all day — but generally I actually don't, unless I don't like the woman. If I like a woman, she can pay a whole lot of attention to me and I'll happily absorb all of it. It's hard to give me too much attention if I really like you. I like a woman to be obsessed with me. But at the same time, I can think of women who were obsessed with me that I didn't like that much, and that's a bad situation — because sometimes women interpret a guy being distant as a good catch. No, that's a guy that doesn't like you that much. Ideally, you want things to be pretty even. I'd prefer a woman where we feel about the same about each other — it's even, we both really like each other, we're all over each other.
But here's what I've done instead. For example, I went out with a single mom recently, and at the end of the date we were already holding hands. She'd already known me for about a year. At the end of the date, I should have just kissed her and said, have a great day. Instead, I told her that I liked her, that I was interested in dating her, and that I'd like to see her again. And I swear it killed her attraction right after that. Then I enthusiastically responded to her text message the next day, and it seemed like I moved too fast for her. And then when she canceled the date, I immediately offered to reschedule. I did a video about that yesterday: she asked for space, and I made it worse. In my experience, women especially seem to need to take things a bit slower than men.
When She's the One Moving Too Fast
Now, some women will go very fast, and I guess I do feel a little intimidated by that. My friend said he was on a date and this woman just grabbed him and took him into the back of a car. To me, that's a red flag. It's like — all right, do you really like me that much that we need to do it in the back of a car when we just met? Or is this a sign that you're doing this with everybody? And I don't know if it's a good idea to do that with you if that's what you're doing with everybody. So yes, there are some women that move very fast too. And if a woman moved that fast with me, my first move would be to put the brakes on. Easy, easy — we just met.
Listen Past the Words — But Watch the Pacing
I don't know that we need to be doing this right now. In fact, this woman told me she wanted to take it slow, and then she tried to kiss me — and I actually slowed her down, because I listened to what she said instead of her body language. Going forward, I would always prioritize body language.
So I hope this has helped you. Sometimes if you're moving too fast with women, you're going to push them away, and it's just about pacing. Slow down. Slow down a little bit. Gently escalate. Start off small and see if there's a response.
Protect Your Emotional Investment
It also sucks sometimes. Maybe with this woman I sent the four minute and twenty second voice memo to — and nice, I just got another match as I'm writing this — maybe if I'd sent her a short message, she wouldn't have responded to that either. But in that case, I would have invested a lot less emotionally. What really hurts as a man is when you invest a whole bunch emotionally and you don't get it back. Obviously this hurts for women too, but generally, at least the women I've encountered are slower to invest emotionally. Whereas as a guy, I'll meet a woman and I'm ready to marry her right then and there — but then I'll pull back very fast from there too, which is not good either.
Talk Dating With Me Directly
If you want to talk dating with a guy who's very real, and if you want a two-way relationship — you've just spent almost twelve minutes with me here, nearly three times as long as that voice memo I was talking about — I think there's something special between us, where I want to at least know your name, if not your story and your dating situation. You can join the family, get in there, join the community, and share your situation with me. Ask me exact questions. You can send me direct messages. I'm a person you can talk to about dating — a person who thinks very deeply about dating, who's constantly experimenting myself, testing and seeing what works the best, so that I can give you the most real, raw, authentic, heartfelt information designed to help you have a relationship.
Inside, you can post your dating profile, you can DM me your dating profile, and you can send me a video explaining a situation where you'd like my feedback. You can even have me make a private video — if you want me to make a ten or twenty minute dedicated video just for you and your situation, that's an option too. And if you want to see the whole ongoing story of these experiments — the wins, the mistakes, and everything I'm learning — I share all of it in my Dating playlist. Slow down, escalate gently, and let her want to know you more.