// intel / psychology

why acting terrified of women is insanely attractive on dating apps

tldr: Women spend the first few texts filtering to see if you're dangerous, not if you're attractive. When you act afraid of her first, you flip that dynamic and she starts pursuing you. Playing it cool and confident just makes you wallpaper.

#dating-apps#texting#attraction#openers#cold-approach

When you match with a woman, you're running one calculation. Is she hot. That's it. You look at the photos, you decide, you swipe. Everything else you'll figure out later.

She's running a completely different one.

Yes, she wants to see you're attractive. But at the start, she's mostly filtering for one thing. Is this guy safe. Is he a weirdo. Is he a creep. Is he going to be a problem. Every text you send in the first exchange, she's reading it through that lens. She's not asking "do I like him." She's asking "is he dangerous."

Most guys have no idea this is happening. So they walk straight into it.

why does trying to seem confident make her suspicious?

Here's the trap. You think the answer is to be confident. Lead the way. Be masculine, be assertive, be the man. Or if you're the softer type, you think the answer is to just be normal and chill so you don't come off as a predator.

Both of those lose. I've written about why being normal on the apps gets you unmatched faster than anything. Normal reads as forgettable. And forgettable is the same as ghosted.

But the confident approach fails for a sneakier reason. When you lead hard and come on strong, you're stepping directly into the exact role she's screening for. The pursuer. The one with all the intent. The one she has to keep her guard up around. You think you're being a catch. She's running threat assessment.

The whole thing is built on Signal Inversion Theory, which is the idea that the behaviors you think make you look high value are the exact ones that read as low value to her. Confidence in your inbox looks like every other guy performing confidence. She's seen it a hundred times today.

So flip it. Act like you're the one who's scared of her.

what does acting afraid of her actually look like?

A buddy of mine wanted to test The Guy with me. He'd just matched with a girl he called, his words, very hot. The app asked him what he was thinking of sending. He said:

"You seem a little intimidating, but in a good way, haha. How's your weekend going?"

Let that sit.

That's a text a lot of you are sending right now. You think it's smooth. You complimented her. You softened it with a "haha." You asked a friendly question.

Here's what The Guy told him. That's the move that gets you left unread. You complimented her, called her intimidating, which puts her on a pedestal. Then you asked the weekend question every single guy in her inbox already sent. She's hot. She's drowning in messages. And here comes "how's your weekend." You just became wallpaper.

This is the same disease as trying to impress her after she matched. You already won the match. The compliment is you re-auditioning for a job you already got.

Here's what The Guy served up instead:

"My grandma sat me down and warned me about women who look exactly like you. She's been dead for six years. She came back just for this."

Read it twice.

It's paranoid. It's damaged. It makes you the terrified one who got a warning from beyond the grave. You're not hyping her up. You're treating her like a certified hazard your dead grandmother rose from the grave to warn you about. She has to ask what your grandma said. She has to respond. You didn't hand her a question to answer, you handed her a story she needs the rest of.

Notice what happened to the dynamic. In the first text, he's the pursuer and she's the prize deciding whether to grant him a response. In the second, she's chasing the punchline. The roles flipped. That's the entire game.

why does this work when nothing else does?

Because no one else is doing it. Think about it. Are you going to find a single dating coach on the internet telling you to act scared of women. Of course not. It sounds insane. It kind of is insane. That's precisely why it works.

Every other guy in her inbox is running the same play. Compliment, pedestal, safe question. You writing "you're intimidating in a good way" is the texting equivalent of opening a LinkedIn DM with "I'd love to pick your brain." Technically polite. Completely dead. She's read it forty times before lunch.

When you act afraid of her, you're doing something her brain has no filed response for. And here's the part that matters. She wants pursuit. Look at every romance novel. Every rom-com. It's always the woman going after the guy. That's the fantasy. Not a guy who compliments her nonstop and glazes her 24/7.

That constant hyping isn't attraction. It's a transaction. You're hoping that if you're nice enough and offend her never, she'll eventually reward you. She can feel that energy through the screen. It's the same reason nice guys get ghosted. You're not fooling anyone. You're just filing the paperwork and waiting for approval.

how does acting scared lower her guard?

This is the counterintuitive payoff. You would never be scared of someone who is already visibly scared of you.

She cannot run threat assessment on a guy who's acting like he's about to jump into the deep end without his floaties. There's no danger to screen for. When you take the predator role off the table by playing terrified, her guard drops. And once her guard drops, you can actually be yourself and the conversation can go somewhere. Like a date.

You're not manipulating her. You're removing the exact thing that was making her cautious. This works the same way failing her test on purpose does. You stop performing safety and the whole interaction relaxes.

does this work in person too?

It does. I run this in broad daylight all the time.

Standard cold open, be direct: "Hey, I saw you walking, thought you looked absolutely gorgeous, wanted to introduce myself." She says hi. Now instead of interviewing her, drop this:

"My therapist says I need to avoid the stylish preppy blondes, but I just can't help myself."

Most guys would never say that. First, most guys won't cold approach at all. Second, the ones who do would panic at that line. But look at everything that one sentence does. One, I've got emotional damage, I have a therapist. Two, I'm self-aware enough to know I need to work on it. Three, I can afford a therapist. And four, I'm framing her as the irresistible risk I was warned to stay away from.

The reactions I've gotten off that would not be believable if I typed them out. It keeps the whole thing flirty and light from the first breath.

the actual takeaway

Stop trying to prove you're safe. Stop trying to prove you're a catch. Both put you in the role she's screening for. Play the terrified one instead. Treat her like a beautiful hazard you were warned about. Let her chase the punchline. Let her guard drop on its own.

If you want to see what this looks like on your actual matches, screenshot her profile, upload it, and get three tailored recommendations for the exact match in front of you. If you're this far into reading about your text game, you already know it's not working. You've got nothing to lose.

try The Guy at asktheguy.app. paste your conversation, get the version that actually works.

video transcript

She's spending every single text trying to figure out if you're dangerous. So just beat her to it. Let me explain. Guys, as I've talked about on this channel in the past, women are running an entirely different calculation when they first match with you. Most of you guys, and there's nothing wrong with this, most of you guys when you initially match with a woman on the apps or even in person if you're striking up conversations, you're really only filtering for if she's attractive.

Let's be honest. That's totally fine. Over time, you'll get to know her personality and, you know, fi- figure out if it's a good match for you from there. But women are taking the opposite approach. Yes, they wanna see you're attractive, but at the start, they're actually mostly filtering to see if you're not a weirdo, not a creep, and not someone who's dangerous.

The traditional dynamic is that they're the ones typically afraid of the man from the start. And so what we have found running The Guy app, that what actually works so much better is if you flip the dynamic from the start and act like you're afraid of her Now I get what you're saying.

This goes totally against everything what you think you know about how to approach a new match on the apps. You think you're supposed to be confident. You think you're supposed to lead the way, be masculine, be dominant, be assertive. You think that what you're actually supposed to do is that to avoid this dynamic of being viewed as the predator, that you should just be normal and chill.

But that's the trap, gentlemen. That's the trap. That will just make you boring and irrelevant and get you ghosted, and the match isn't gonna lead to anywhere. What you instead must do is act afraid of her, and I'm gonna give you a couple examples in a short while. But what you have to understand is that this completely shifts the dynamic and will get her to pursue you.

This is not manipulation. Rather, what you should think about it of, as a high level, is just think about it as a framework you can use to always keep the conversation flirtatious and your interest level mysterious and unknown. And ultimately, like, like I said, this is going to get her pursuing you. And the thing you have to understand before we talk about some examples real quick, is that the reason why this works is because no one else is running game, quote, unquote, like this.

Think about it. Are you gonna be here on YouTube and find some other pickup artist or dating coach who is gonna tell you to act scared of women? Of course not. That would be insane. It kind of is insane, but that's why it works. Now, let me give you some examples. And this is all from The Guy app. Link in the description if you wanna learn more.

It's helping quality men text like the catch they are. So A buddy of mine recently came to me and he was like, "We wanted to test the guy out together." And he had just matched with a very hot girl, his words, and he said... So the guy is not just some AI pickup line generator, right? No, it's an AI text coach.

It's gonna coach you through every single interaction, and it's gonna give you an analysis of what's going on in the chat so you can properly navigate it. So he said, so it asked him, "What are you thinking about sending?" And he said, "I'm thinking about saying, 'You seem a little intimidating, but in a good way, ha ha.'"

'Cause of course, you know, we can never just say anything verbatim. We always have to soften it up a bit. Let me repeat. He said, "Thinking about saying, 'You seem a little intimidating, but in a good way, ha ha. How's your weekend going?'" That's probably a, a message like a lot of you guys are sending right now.

The guy said, "Now, that's the move that gets you left unread. You complimented her, called her intimidating, which puts her on a pedestal, then asked the weekend question every guy in her inbox is going to send already. She's hot, she's drowning, and how's your weekend? You just became wallpaper." By the way, guys, it's a bit windy out here.

Hopefully you can hear all right. If you handed me your phone, I'd send one of these: "You have... You've got the face of a woman who runs a counterfeit maple syrup operation, and I want no part of it." Number two, my grandma sat me down and warned me about women who look exactly like you. She's been dead for six years.

She came back just for this. Or three, you look like you've replaced a man's entire family with lookalikes and he hasn't noticed it yet. Then the guy recommends, I'd go with two. It's paranoid, it's damaged, and it makes you the terrified one who got a warning from beyond the grave instead of the guy hyping her up.

She has to ask what your grandma said. Send it. I agree 100%. That's the move right there. Because no other guy is going to ever send a message like that on the dating apps. And that's exactly why it works. And here's the thing. She wants, she wants a pursuit, okay? That if you look at all the romantic novels, it's always, or the romantic movies, if you will, it's always the woman going after the guy.

That's what they kind of want deep down. Because doesn't everybody want that? I mean, that's just what makes the whole dating game fun. She doesn't want the opposite, which is just a guy who's going to compliment her, who's going to hype her up, who's just going to glaze her nonstop 24-7. Because guys, like I've talked about in past videos on this channel, that's just nice guy transactional energy.

You're hoping that by hyping her up, by giving her compliments, by not saying anything offensive, she's eventually going to put out. But she can feel this energy, guys. So you're not fooling her. In fact, this is a very sexist way to think about the entire dating paradigm. And so that's what we're helping guys do with the guy.

So if you need help with the text game, guys, you have to get on the guy app. There's one last thing I want to mention here before we wrap up. And that, like I said, this is going to just lower her guard and allow you to actually be yourself at the end of the day, allow you to land a date. Because she can't be afraid of a guy who is about to crap his pants because he's going to get into the deep end of the pool without his floaties, okay?

You would never be scared of someone who's already scared of you. So just flip the dynamic from the start and you will see things change entirely. And guys, I got to say, this works in person too. So if you're like me and you're focused primarily on going out in real life, IRL, and meeting women in broad daylight, just like today, you know, you can open with something direct like, hey, I just saw you walk by and thought you look, oops, camera's going around.

You can open with something direct and be like, hey, I saw you walking. I thought you looked absolutely gorgeous. Wanted to say hi and introduce myself. She'll say, "Oh, hello. Hi, what's up?" And then you can say, you can implement this exact tactic and be like, "Hey." Be like, "Yeah, my, my therapist says I need to avoid the stylish preppy blondes, but I just can't help myself."

Now, most of you guys would, one, not cold approach, but two, you would be like, "No, you can't say anything like that." But you have to understand how deep it goes. By just saying something like, "My therapist says I shouldn't come to you, come talk to you, but I am anyway," it's like, number one, I've got the emotional damage and I need a therapist.

Two, but I'm self-aware to know that I need to work on it. And three, I have the financial means to afford a therapist. Women love this. You would not believe some of the reactions I've gotten. And it just keeps the conversation flirty and fun right from the start, okay? So guys, if you need to fix the text game, check out The Guy, link in the description.

If you have a new match, screenshot her profile, upload it to The Guy, and get three custom tailored recommendations for what to send. Think about it, guys. What do you have to lose? If you're already watching this video and you're here at this point still, it means you're struggling on the apps. You have nothing to lose.

Free trial, link in the description. I'll see you tomorrow. Subscribe. Drop a comment if you have anything you want to add to the conversation, and I'll get back to you. Talk to you later. Bye.