Met this girl on tinder. We met up at the mall (Festival Walk) and went to the food court for dinner. We paid for own own meal since this is a food court and you get your own food. After sitting down we started vibing immediately, she laughed at many of my jokes (reacting emotionally). We both get food and are sat side by side to each other. I am very relaxed at this point and we have good conversation such as what we have been doing recently etc. I make flirty comments here and there (e.g. she said I look Filipino earlier, and later in the conversation I said ‘So what do you normally do nowadays apart from meeting cute Filipino-looking guys off tinder ;)’ to which she laughs and responds positively. We joke and vibe a lot and there are moments of kino - she lets me brush some dust off her face, we let each other sip our drinks, I momentarily touch her hands and thighs very briefly at high points in the conversation and she doesn’t seem visibly turned off/uncomfortable.

I am open about my attraction to her body, saying she seems quite fit. She shows me some of her suntan bra marks (she is wear a top which reveals her bare shoulders). She doesn’t flinch when I touch her abs playfully to see if she’s fit. She also doesn’t hesitate to touch my abdomen. There are numerous times where I try to frame it such that she is chasing me (e.g. when she asks me what is my favourite part of a girl’s body, I say ‘you’re just trying to get me to check out your body aren’t you ;)’. So we vibe and conversation flows very naturally, she laughs at my jokes and has so far complied with some kino. We vibe by talking about how she has a resting bitch face, and both laugh over it. We also cover other topics such as interests, passions etc.

In the middle of the dinner, I excuse myself to go to the toilet. After coming out from the toilet I see her making her own way to the toilet (even before waiting for me to arrive back at the table). As a result, when I get back to the table, since there was no one there, our food got taken away. So when she came back to the table, I negged her about leaving the table before I got back, causing the clean up lady take our food (since the clean up lady thinks no one is sitting there anymore). She laughs at her own mistake and apologises, saying she will buy me some candy or sth. I tell her to buy me some starbucks, when we get there she buys me some cheese cake and we sit at starbucks side to side. I try to physically escalate by putting her arm around my waist and me putting mine around her arm when I was joking about her being my bratty little sister. Initially she pulls away slightly saying that she told me she finds that position awkward when sitting, and prefers it when standing, but eventually I persist through with it and she complies. The vibe is decent at this point.

Afterwards I bounce to the park to escalate physically. While walking to the park, I tell her to put her purse on her other hand (she is carrying a big purse). She says no, because she can figure out that I’m asking her to put it on the other hand so I can hold her left hand (she’s walking on my right side).

We sit down on the park bench. She sits some distance away from me, slightly closed body language (her arms are crossed and her purse is in between us on the bench). We talk more on the park bench. At one point I try to kino her by taking her hand and putting it on my thigh to see how she reacts. She takes her hand away. At another point I put my hand on her leg while trying to make a point, but she removes my hand and putts it back on my lap. So I interpret this as her not being ready to let me physically escalate because she doesn’t feel enough comfort. So I try to build comfort and verbally escalate by building on the ‘we’ frame - saying things like ‘we should never get married since we’re both so clumsy we would destroy everything’ and ‘If we live together in the future, I’ll kill the mice and you kill the cockroaches (since we had established that I am afraid of cockroaches and she’s afraid of mice). She seems to open up a bit more now, arms less crossed, facing me more, laughing more. We spend a lot of time talking on the park bench. I figured I would back off on the physical escalation for now and verbally escalate by using the pronoun ‘we’ a lot to build comfort, since RSD Todd says that if a girl resists your escalation on one channel, you should use another channel of escalation for now (in this case, she was resisting my physical escalation, so I used verbal escalation). She told me she is afraid of anything rubbing against her leg (alluding to how she would freak out if a mouse or something brushed against her leg). I kino escalate by tickling her knee playfully in response to this, to which she seems ok with since she’s still laughing.

She tries to neg me by saying ‘I’m like a baby boy’, and trying to beat me down into this weak frame by taunting me saying ‘nawh such a cute baby boy’ - I feel like she’s doing this to try to shit test me/belittle me. I tell her she seems like she likes to play hard to get and ask her if she gets hit on a lot by other guys. She says yes. She says they chase her like puppy dogs sometimes. Also tries to frame me as a puppy/dog, because when she takes out some mints and I ask for some too, she tells me to say ‘please Miss’ - she’s obviously trying to shit test me and see if I will obey her commands. I start negging her for trying to play hard to get, and playfully call her a dork. I use some push pull such as ‘Your hair smells really good but it’s kind of overpowering at the same time’ and then I sit further away from her on the park bench to tease her. It’s all quite light hearted. There are some points where she gets off her seat on the bench and stands for a while, but she always sits back down. Not sure if this means I am escalating too aggressively and she’s trying to break the tension, but I don’t think too much of it.

We keep talking and the vibe builds up. For example, there was this one point where she was showing off about herself, and I was like ‘blehhhh’, making a vomiting motion to neg her. She laughs and playfully pushes me at the stomach. At this point we are sitting close. I can’t remember completely, by I try to test again how much I can escalate by saying to her ‘Imagine we just fell asleep here on this park bench’. I then wrap her arm around my waist and my arm around her shoulder, and lean her head against my shoulder. I then lean my head against her head (which is leaning on my shoulder). She doesn’t seems generally ok with this, but we disengage after about 8 seconds, naturally. Afterwards our faces get closer. The vibe has been such that we are throwing a lot of verbal jabs at each other (e.g. she’s trying to belittle me as a puppy/little boy, and I’m calling her sassy and dorky). We playfully look into each other’s eyes and have a staring contest. My arm is around her at this point. I gaze at her lips and she doesn’t seem to flinch. Our faces start to get close to each other, as I am approaching a K-close. While doing this she says ‘say some bullshit’ (she’s from HK, and HK girls talk weirdly sometimes), so I joke saying ‘Kayla is cool. I like Kayla a lot’ - the joke is that this is bullshit, so I’m basically negging her. She laughs. I then say ‘I’m looking at bullshit’ - I thought she would be able to take it as me just joking, especially after all our banter, but she got pissed and threatened to leave right now to have a drink with her friend (she originally planned to have a drink with her friend after meeting me(, saying if I want her to stay I should apologise. I take it as her trying to shit test me/make me her dog and to see if I’m gonna try to fight for her. I playfully refuse, in an attempt to maintain frame. She then says ok I’m leaving then, and starts walking away.

After sitting on the bench and realising she won't come back, I walk after her (persistence), telling her I need to go to the toilet (which is in the same direction as she is walking anyways, to seem less needy as if I’m chasing after her), and I tell her to come with me. She agrees. I then realise she took it kind of offensively so I apologized since I had crossed the line with this playful remark (I apologized in a calm and non-needy way). I did this since RSD Julien says it is good to maintain your frame, but not at the expense of the girl. She accepted my apology but tried to make me apologize/succumb to her more (I felt she was trying to get me to beg for her forgiveness and hence, shit test me), which I refused. She started saying stuff like I should be more gentlemanly and have manners, which I remain unreactive to. I told her to walk one more round with me in the park, which she actually agreed to do (considering she had actually left me at the park on the way to the train station after I offended her earlier).

So after walking another round, I tried to get her to stay with me even longer and told her to sit with me again, which she did, to my surprise. We talked and vibe some more, she sat while maintaining some distance from me from the bench. We stared into each other’s eyes and had a staring contest again (first to win 3 rounds wins). I tried to use this as an opportunity again to k close but she pulls away, to which I remain unreactive. I then tell her I need to leave now (because if she’s the one who says she needs to leave, I will look very low value in light of everything that happened, so I make sure I am the one to initiate leaving. As we leave the park she says ‘So what’s your name again?’ I neg her for not even knowing my name. She says sorry and wraps her hand around my elbow continuously - I’m not sure if this is a sign of interest or if she’s trying to friendzone me. I was very surprised at her doing this, since she didn’t hold hands with me or let me kiss her earlier, making me think she was disinterested, but now she’s holding my arm. This makes me think she is interested and was just playing hard to get the whole time. I push her hand away playfully continuing to neg her for forgetting my name. I tell her to guess my name and she guesses it right, and I playfully say I’ll give her another chance. At one point while walking, we pinky promise (I forgot the context), and I playfully transition to holding her hand. We hold hands. We walk and talk for a while while holding hands and she tries to show me how strong she is by trying to twist my arm while holding my hand (I forgot the context), playfully of course (my right hand is holding her left hand). She then says it’s not a fair display of her strength because she said it’s her left hand against my right hand, so disengages and offers to hold hands to show me her strength using her right hand and my left. I say no I can’t, because my left wrist is injured (this is a fact). I try to re-engage holding her left hand with my right hand, but she pulls her hand away. At this point I am thinking she is trying to play hard to get or something, since she’s so hot and cold, but I am not sure.

As we’re going down the escalator I try to get her to massage my shoulders but she says ‘I don’t service anyone’ to which I reply with ‘Oooooh sassy there again ;)’

Eventually we hug goodbye and part ways. We said we’d see each other again (I told her earlier that to make it up to me for forgetting my name, she should take me to her local park next time to show me around since I love parks; which she agreed).

What I cannot figure out: - Is she 1. Not interested in me, or 2. Actually interested and was just trying to play hard to get? What do you think? The reason why I think she was just trying to play hard to get was because of her demeanour - she is quite sassy and seems the type to test guys a lot/play hard to get, in fact on our WhatsApp convo prior to the date, she’s even said ‘guys like a challenge’. I also think she was probably interested in me but was playing hard to get, since she actually agreed to walk another round with me in the park and even sit with me again (after I had offended her and caused her to leave), and she actually grabbed my arm and held hands with me momentarily at the end of the date. What is your opinion?