The Special Occasion Texter

Many men will recognize the Special Occasion Texter. (To be fair, many women will recognize this stalker subspecies as well. I bet men are more frequent SOT violators than are women.) The SOT is the tease-slash-desperado who texts you out of the blue to commemorate a holiday or some other day that is ostensibly important to you.

Commenter ‘meet me’ has a question about the SOT.

What do you guys make of a girl who texts you randomly on holidays or birthday, but always delays for a strict meet? I don’t try again after suggesting, just looking for attention/orbiters?

The female SOT is a cocktease in digital form, especially if she dodges any offers for a meet-up. But she’s no ordinary attention whore tease. There are three common reasons a female SOT would behave this way.

1. Beta Orbiter Maintenance

She texts birthday messages to all the beta male orbiters she has accumulated over the years, and she does this as part of a maintenance program to keep her orbiters from spinning too far out of her orbit (or, conversely, too close to her planet). What good is a beta orbiter who wises up to the futility of pursuing her for sex that will never come, and manages to achieve escape velocity from her pull? She needs those suck-ups sucking up to her emotional needs, and sometimes that requires sending a tiny sliver of romantic hope — say, a birthday text — to her cuckubines.

2. Relationship Anxiety

A woman who is in a shaky relationship and fears its end is nigh, but hasn’t yet emotionally abandoned her current lover, will reopen backchannels to once-interested men. But she’ll do this with sneaky nonchalance, as is the wont of her sex. A birthday greeting is the perfect set-up to maintain plausible deniability. “but it was his biiiirthday! i was just being frieeeeeeendly!”

Similarly, a single woman who has started worrying about ever getting a man to commit to her, but hasn’t yet found that Charming Jerkboy of her dreams, will, with wavering reluctance, contact old flames or new suitors to pump her ego and to calm her anxiety. The thought of numerous men “waiting in the wings” is very comforting to single women on their first approach to the Wall.

3. Garden-Variety Mindfucking

She’s a wicked mindfucker who gets off stringing men betas along.

***

Whatever the reason, the female SOT is best handled by, most crucially, refusing to chomp on her bland beta boob bait. Don’t respond right away to her SOT text. Don’t thank her for her thoughtfulness. Don’t move immediately to pin her down for a real date. Instead, wait a day, then reply “did u wish me happy labor day? weirdo.” Or, “you’re so cute when you stalk me”. The female SOT needs to know that you aren’t the kind of desperate guy to ask “how shiny?” when she tells you to polish her pedestal. She needs to be reminded in so many words that SHE’S the one who texted YOU, not the other way around, and this reminder of her active solicitation will reinforce the implication in her mind that you are the higher value company to keep.

PS If you want to use a SOT to open the lines of communication with a prospect, one irresistibly jerkish maneuver is to text the girl “happy bday” two weeks after her actual birthday. When she responds (and she will) that you’re two weeks late, grace her with a laconic “woops”. This is a small but powerful tactic to close the organic chaser (man)-chased (woman) gap, and thus improve your odds-to-lay.

PPS The rare SOT who is really interested in getting banged out won’t be circumspect with her texts. If you suspect your SOT girl is DTF (based on, say, past history), then it won’t take much more than a ‘thx’ to coax her to leap at the chance to continue the banter and move negotiations to the bedding table.