Not Your Mother's Rules: The New Secrets for Dating by Ellen Fein, Sherrie Schneider Read Free Book Online Page B

excuse women use to get in touch with a guy and is not
The Rules
. Believe it or not, you actually have to wait until a guy texts you to turn him down or dump him so you can get your closure. Mandy fought a good fight but finally agreed that her motive should be to play hard to get. Obviously, though, you can’t play hard to get with a guy who is not trying to get you. After e-mailing us and
not
texting her fantasy guy, Mandy joined a gym and signed up for an online dating site. Ultimately, not texting him was liberating: she gave up a bad habit and made room for better things.
    Closure is one of the biggest
fake
reasons women give for making contact with a guy they never had a serious relationship with. They have been on only a few dates and then have not heard from him in weeks or months—he is probably dating someone else—but they need their closure anyway. (In our first book and in
Rule #6
, we explain when a call or text for closure
is
appropriate.) Closure for a guy is never calling or texting or seeing a girl again. A guy doesn’t need a final conversation or text chat. In his mind, it’s just over—that’s good enough for him. But for many women, a relationship is not technically over until they have gotten everything off their chest. One woman we know texted a guy who ended their one-month relationship, saying that she felt used and accusing him of stringing her along, even though he never said they were exclusive or told her he loved her. She felt she couldn’t move on without saying those things to him. We would have told her to write it but never hit the send button.
    When you finally stop making excuses to text a guy first, you will be on your way to becoming a
Rules
Girl. At first you may feel empty, the way you feel when you start stickingto your diet and skip dessert, but when you don’t give in to the temptation, you will feel empowered and free. You may be able to bluff yourself and well-meaning friends with reasons to text a guy, but no
Rules
Girl would buy into it. It’s so much better getting a text from a guy than sending one!

Rule #4 ____________
Don’t Ask Guys Out by Text, Facebook, Gchat, or Any Other Way
    T HIS
RULE
CAN be difficult because we are essentially telling you to be passive about dating, while you are powerful in so many other areas of your life. You may have a master’s degree and an expense account. You may be president of your sorority. You may have your own blog and hundreds of Twitter followers. You may sit on the board of your condo association. You may fly business class to Europe for sales meetings.
    But here, we are telling you that you cannot even suggest having coffee with a guy. Remember, the premise of
The Rules
is that men and women are not the same romantically. Men love a challenge and the feeling of pursuing. A woman can be as smart or smarter than a man; she can make the same money as a man or even more money than him; she can get a job doing whatever she wants—but when it comes to dating, she cannot be the aggressor without eventually regretting it. Just like texting or talking to a guy first, asking them out destroys the chase and rarely works out, as men know exactly what their type/look is and go after it. If you ask a guy out, he may say yes to be polite, for sex, or out of boredom, but eventually he will drop you for the girl he really likes.
    Most women agree that it would be unfeminine and potentially embarrassing to ask a guy out on a formal Saturday night date, but they rationalize asking guys out on other nights of the week and on dates that might not be so obvious. A girl might text a guy and his group of friends, “Hey, why don’t you all come to the pre-game at my apartment?” and not think she is asking him out. She may secretly be hosting this pre-game or throwing her BFF a thirtieth-birthday party just so she can invite her crush and think nothing of it. She might e-mail that cute guy from English Lit class and say, “Hey, do you want