Don’t Get Her Number, Get Her to Give It to You

I’ve always known that a girl’s phone number is not worth the dirty napkin it’s written on. It just took me a while to realize how willy-nilly girls give it out. I learned that lots of girls will simply not answer their phone (if they don’t recognize the number) or they won’t return messages. Not picking up is just easier than telling a guy “no.”

Just as an experiment, I did a phone number mission. Plan: run normal game, escalate, but ask for her number way before I expected she’d give it. Lo and behold my cell phone filled up quickly. Not surprisingly, my callbacks and call pickups were rather sparse.

Then, as another experiment, I tried NOT asking for a girl’s number. Instead, I waited for her to ask or for her to just give it to me.

On one Friday, with one girl, I did the playful banter, flirting, teasing, and deep rapport. We talked about all kinds of things and I learned that her office was only two blocks from mine. She told me crazy stories about her and by the end she was saying, “I can’t believe you’re single.” At the end of the night though I went home alone she still didn’t give me her number.

The next Monday, sour from my defeat, I looked up her office number and called it. I phone flirted for a while and she asked if I was free for lunch. [step one: check].

While I was walking to the restaurant, I saw her talking to some guy who hands her a piece of paper. Two seconds later I met up with her.

Me: “Hey”
Her: “That guy just gave me his number.”
Me: “I hate it when that happens; its like ‘alright I’ll take your number, but get the hell out of here.”
Her: she laughs
Me: “Yeah, but his grunge wear and rusted bike is hella pimp.”
Her: “How you do you know that doesn’t turn me on?”
Me: “You got his number, call him up; he can have lunch with us.”
Her: “Maaaaaaaaybe I will.”

While at lunch I made an instant-date (aka plan for a new activity) for that night. I told her where to go, what time, and that I’d meet her there. All without asking for her number.

That afternoon, around three, I got an e-mail:

“Thanks for coming to lunch with me. Let me give you my number: XXX-XXXX”

She knew where I worked so she must have googled my company’s name, found my profile, and found my email. (I’d like to think that’s more stalker than me just calling her office.)

At that moment I thought she going to flake on me, but I didn’t want to call her for some reason.

I set up the instant date so if she flaked she flaked--not the end of the world.

But, she showed up.

Later that night she asked, “how did you know I wasn’t going to flake?”

“I just knew you wouldn’t. And if you did, whatever, I would have come to this by myself anyway.”

After that night, nothing else really happened between us. We talked a little, but I didn’t make the effort to call her and she only called me a few times. But, no matter, because I learned some valuable lessons.

Lesson: if I feel like I should be asking her for her number, I should really be making a plan to bounce or an instant date. Plan the new date and the numbers will come. A few months later, I learned that the best way to get a girl’s number (who will pickup) is to plan something in detail and she’ll usually say “let me give you my number so we can . . .”