Preemptive Rejection

One thing that comes with dating a lot of women is an improved ability to detect when her level of enthusiasm isn’t matching yours, and when to cut off investment when the profit outlook is poor. Inexperience and lack of diversification causes a lot of men to hold onto a girl’s stock far longer than is wise, dragging out first dates that should have been cut loose after 15 minutes, or chasing after girls for second dates when the first date ended on a cheek peck note.

But there is another factor. Men, with a few exceptions like very empathetic artist and salesmen types, don’t have the highly refined intuition for gauging subtle social cues that women have from birth. Men’s intuition — or gut instinct — is underdeveloped. Their communication channels between their decision-making process and their subconscious have a lot of static. Women, by contrast, are always locked in to their sixth sense.

There is a reasonable explanation why this is so — as choosers of mates based on criteria less visually based, a woman with a superior sixth sense in terms of accuracy and speediness was fooled less often into bearing the children of beta schemers than a woman who had trouble judging the true character of her suitors. But as relatively indiscriminate chasers of T&A, men never needed to develop the sophisticated bullshit character detector system that serves women so well in separating the weenies from the Shaft. Lunkheaded persistence was more useful to men.

The kind of raw numbers dating experience that modern players have which never existed in the tribal environment that is still the heritage of our hindbrains plays a big role in altering this mating dynamic. A fearless guy who plucks a new woman out of the giant anonymous dating pool of the urban copulation carnival every week starts to get a good sense of his chances of closing the deal. He’ll listen better to his inner voice and cut dates short that aren’t progressing as steadily as he’d like, and he’ll avoid calling a woman for a second date when he feels based on her lackluster vibes from the first date that there’s a higher than average risk of her delaying sex, canceling the date, or taking too long to return his calls. Persistence and chasing women benefits a man less when his options are so numerous. Time and inexperience replaces rejection as his number one enemy.

But like every sea change in human behavior there is an unintended downside. I’m now so finely attuned to the slightest negative feedback from women that I get skittish at the first red flag of foot-dragging. I’ll walk away from dates after ten minutes before the condensation has formed on our drinks if she hasn’t inched closer to me on the couch or if she glanced around the room more than once instead of maintaining solid eye contact. I won’t follow up for a second date even if the first date ended with her telling me to give her a call if I suspect, based on her bad body language, that she will flake.

A woman who is too self-possessed on a first date will not get a call back from me. I need to see real physical and emotional escalation quickly or she drops off the face of the earth in favor of the next girl in my queue. The dating scene is that cutthroat now.

There is no doubt that my improved sixth sense and skittishness to avoid wasting time and resources on dead end dates has cost me girls who might’ve put out had I stayed the course and pursued a little more aggressively. But I believe the downside is worth the greater upside of saving time and headaches and minimizing the odds of a Rules girl exploiting me. Plus, I suffer less second date rejection, which is worse than approach rejection, and my ego stays strong and inflated.

Many times I have run into women at bars or on the street I had one date with but who I never called for a second date because I figured they would flake. They have always looked at me with a hint of discomfort on their faces and walked by muttering terse hellos. I take great satisfaction when this happens because I know that even if the girl never intended to see me again I robbed her of the opportunity to call the shots.

No matter how badly the first date went and how much she doesn’t want to hear from you, if you don’t call a girl for a second date it will leave her confused and less full of herself. You will have lowered her self-esteem and made it easier for the next man to nut inside her. The good karma this selfless act generates will return to you a hundred easy first dates that end the next morning.