I know something you absolutely hate.
You’ve got a cute guy you’re texting.
You’re excited about him and hoping to make a connection.
Yet it’s almost impossible to get anything out of him.
You ask him a question and he answers but doesn’t give anything back in return.
One-word or one-sentence replies only.
What do you do with these guys? When should you cut them loose? Is there
anything in your control to elevate the conversation into something more fun?
I’ve got all your answers. Stick around.
I’m Evan Marc Katz, dating coach for smart, strong, successful women and your personal
trainer for love. Welcome to the Love U Podcast. Keep listening to discover how to deal with one
word replies when communicating. When we’re done, I’ll let you know how you can apply
to Love U to create a passionate relationship that makes you feel safe, heard, and understood.
I know something. There are a thousand dating coaches online,
but when I started doing this it was just me, really. Like it was just me. I wrote one
of the first books about online dating called I Can't Believe I'm Buying This Book in 2003.
And while online dating has changed a lot, human nature and healthy communication haven't changed.
In Love U, there's this core premise that I try to impart to you in these podcasts. There is no right
and wrong. They're only effective and ineffective. Is what you're doing working or is it not working?
If it's working, keep doing it. If it's not working, let's find a different way
to approach it. So, we never have to have moral judgments, value judgments. Is it
effective or is it ineffective? Texting with men is a perfect example of this phenomenon.
And before I explain how to do it better, I want to briefly explain and it's important why things
are the way they are, why guys act like they do. It's not so frustrating. It's not so mysterious.
If you've ever talked to a guy, you can get some version of this story. And I
would suggest that you talk to your guy friends about their experience as well.
If you're a guy, you go on to an app and you know that unless you're a top 10 percent man,
you're going to get rejected. No joke. Ninety-five times out of a hundred. And if that's the case,
if that's the real math and go do your own online research, you'll see that as it is,
you can't be too precious about who you swipe on using very basic game theory, a guy should swipe
right on every woman he finds remotely attractive, since most of the time she's not going to match
with him right back. And thankfully, for guys, anyway, apps make it really easy to do this.
You can eat dinner, watch TV, swipe on hundreds of faces per night, and that's what men do.
So, if a guy is indiscriminately swiping on two hundred women
over an evening and you're one of them, what does that mean? Does it mean that he likes you,
that he's really closely read your two-line profile and is interested in a relationship
with him? That he believes that you are going to be a good girlfriend and wife and mother,
that he's emotionally invested in you in any meaningful way? No, no, no, no.
Now, you may think that's obvious, but if it's obvious, by swipes on two hundred women,
one hundred eighty, 90 percent reject him. Twenty swipes back. Now, this guy,
not a 10 percent guy, just a solid guy, has a solid guy who you can be interested
in on our one to ten scale. He's a solid seven. So, now the guy has twenty notches.
What is he supposed to do with these twenty matches? Put yourself in his shoes and recap.
So, we've got twenty matches. Do you think if you keep track of twenty women in his head,
do you think he can carry on twenty meaningful conversations via text? Do you think he has enough
time to take out twenty women this week? Of course not. And that is what explains
all his dating apps, all of his texting behavior? Of course,
his replies are going to be short. Of course, he's going to forget what you were talking about.
Of course, he's going to flake out in the middle when he finds someone else that he's connected
with in real life. Of course, you're going to feel like you're disposable. That's because you
are disposable. As long as getting somebody's phone number is as easy as swiping. Everybody
is disposable in the medium itself. Tinder hinges on Bumble. It's not about people,
it's what the medium brings out in people. So, if you're going to use these apps,
and I never recommend it to my clients, I understand people are going to do what they
do. But if you're going to use these dating apps because, hey, this is just the way things are,
what can you do to elevate the conversation? That's what we want to tackle right now.
First of all, it's important to understand you can't control what men do. I said this
in another podcast a few weeks ago. You can't control what men do, but you can influence how
they react to you. All right. Here's a few ways in which we could do that. Number one,
if you have something specific in your profile, it becomes much easier to make conversation.
If it's all lists, if it's all adjectives, if it's all hobbies, it becomes much harder, give better
written material for someone to latch on to and you're going to have a better chance of creating
conversation. And if you just put again, I don't know how this would fit in the bumble profile,
but writing I just finished American Dirt and I don't see what the conversation in a
way that I like to read doesn't not that reading is again the sexiest,
sexiest hobby, but specific is always better than generic.
Number two, if a guy writes one line again, this is the topic of the podcast. If a guy
writes one line in his initial query, do not do the same thing back. This is
really hard because people are natural mirrors of each other. One line usually begets
one line. We talk like that online. Hey, what's up? Not much you. How's your day? Chilling. What
you have for breakfast. Like that's how it goes. The problem is that it's like a form of mutually
assured destruction. Destruction. Everybody hates that. Everybody is bored with that conversation
in real life is what we're trying to capture online. It's livelier and more discursive than
a typical online, especially texting conversation.
So, if the dude gives you a one sentence question instead of giving him one sentence back, give
him a one paragraph answer. Make it look like an email, not a text. Go there. If you give the same
thing guys are giving, you're not elevating the conversation. And it can't be terribly
surprising that everything loses momentum and that you both are bored with this exchange. You have
to do better than these men, not just complain about how terrible they are.
Number three, if you think the conversation is just about questions,
you're missing something. Important questions. And I know this is challenging stuff, right,
that is the study of why certain conversations are scintillating in certain conversations like
pulling teeth. But here's one of the reasons why questions don't reveal your personality,
your opinions and your observations do. That's who you are, your opinions, your observations.
In week seven of Love U, we discuss my opinion opener technique, which shows you how to offer
your opinions and observations based on the details in his profile. So, if he says he
likes the red socks, which again, an unimportant thing that you may have no strong feelings about,
it's far more provocative to tease him that the Red Sox are like the Yankees with an inferiority
complex than it is to ask, so how long have you been a fan? The former starts a conversation by
being a little snarky and poking him. The latter sets up a one-word answer. Fifteen years. See
the difference. One invites a conversation, the other invites an answer. But no follow through,
no fault. If you've offered your opinion, given an observation, written a paragraph
through it, back to him with a question and the guy still gives you one sentence, one line.
What do you do? My answer. Give him one more great text, which again, sounds more like an email,
like a person talking that tries to jump start things, do it one more time
instead of giving up. If you write too great, easy to respond to texts and the guy gives you nothing
in return, you don't have to get upset. You don't have to say something. You don't have to block him
just using love you terminology. Fill your funnel, get more guys right.
And don't waste any more time on the men who can't be bothered to give you good conversation and
differentiate themselves from the pack. There's no reason to string along as some boring guy
just because you think it's your job to keep it alive.
Life is simply too short otherwise. And after all that and again, I ran through a lot in a short
period of time, if you think that what I said might be bullshit because nothing actually works,
please take a second to consider how you react when a man is actually good at online
conversation, how easy it becomes, how smooth, how effortless, how fun it is to respond a guy
to a guy who's good at this. So, if a man can make conversation really easy on you, doesn't it stand
to reason that it would be equally effective if you. That's right. It would. I appreciate
your time. Let me know if these tips helped you out in the comments below
and do me a favor. Share the one thing that you got out of today's episode
in the comments below. I love you. I appreciate you. I'll see you next week.
I’m Evan Marc Katz. Thank you for tuning in to the Love U Podcast. For more episodes like this
on YouTube, click the subscribe button and ring the bell and choose all to ensure you get notified
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world. And if you want to find love right now and are committed to making healthier choices with men
so you can have an easy relationship that makes you feel safe, heard and understood,
look for the link below and apply for coaching with me in Love U.