When I first got into online dating in my early 20s, I didn’t really know what I was doing as I was messaging/texting like a headless chicken for the most part while bsing my way to a few dates. 

It took me years to figure things out, but I can say that I’ve truly mastered texting as I understand the game and developed my own framework where I could set up dates as quickly as possible (within the same day even). I found my girlfriend through the apps and still practice what I preach after that as I advise and sometimes run convos for guys that work with me (age ranges from 21 to 45). And for the doomers looking to discredit me, I’m a 30 year old, 5’7” Asian guy. 

I’ll share with you three concepts regarding texting that you need to understand so you can stop texting without purpose and actually get more dates so you can have more fun times. Examples will be included.

1 - Understanding Goodwill

The first thing you need to understand to improve your text game is the concept of goodwill. Goodwill is the idea of having friendly, helpful, or cooperative feelings or attitude. This applies to dating heavily because you will deal with women of varying interest and thus different levels of goodwill. 

When you start a conversation with a girl that’s interested in you, she’ll usually be excited about it and give you back engaging and prompt responses. But as the conversation drags on, her level of patience may slowly drop, and you will get slower and less enthusiastic responses until she straight up ghosts you. 

Texting is a very simple action, but it becomes tedious if you have to do it again and again with someone who has no direction. Remember, every time you have a text back and forth, the other person has to pick up their phone, look at your message, think about how to respond, and then respond. Let’s go through an example from one of my guys.

So this guy managed to soft close a date with a chick off OKcupid within a few back and forths using my messaging framework. He gets her phone number and uses the first three texts to clarify the day for the date, which is a week out. He goes off on his own from here and we’ll see where it leads him. 

The very next day, he starts some small talk with her. Her response rate here is minutes, so they’re just talking about what they’re doing with their day and her responses are quite enthusiastic with emojis like 💕 and ✨. Here are the questions/texts he sent for the day:

  1. Did you get a chance to relax today? 
  2. What does a normal chill Sunday look like for you? 
  3. You doing anything fun for the rest of the day? 
  4. What he’s doing for the night
  5. A closing text with some simpy emojis (💕)

The next day, he starts small talk with her again. Here are the questions/texts he sent for this day:

  1. How was your day so far?
  2. What are you having for dinner?
  3. How was your dinner yesterday and where did you guys go?
  4. His response on her dinner and what he did last night
  5. What are your plans for the rest of the night?

On the 3rd day with her #, he starts small talk once again for no reason at all and gets left on read before deciding to bail on her. She went from sending double hearts to gone in the wind like farts.

Within two days, this girl had to pick up her phone and respond to this guy 10 times, and that was all it took for her to become sick of him. She was highly interested from the start too as she was sprinkling in a bunch of emojis. All of these back and forths were things that could’ve been talked about during the date and instead, he traded it in for temporary validation over text. 

2 - Have the End in Mind and Calibration

The second thing you need to understand to improve your text game is to have the end in mind and calibrate your words. I get it, texting a baddie that you could potentially have fun times with can make you excited and giddy. But that can also drive you to nosedive the conversation. The main drawback of texting is not being able to visually or verbally demonstrate your tone, but the main benefit is that you can take your time in crafting up perfect responses and you have full control over where you want the conversation to go. The problem is that most guys have no plan in mind and text about random sh*t and then get surprised when they get ghosted after taking things nowhere.

Girls have options and if you’re gonna waste their time, they’ll find someone else who can lead them comfortably to setting up plans. So first off, you need to figure out if a chick you’re talking to is open to setting up a date or if she’s there for fun and to waste your time. If I’m trying to move things forward and she redirects the convo into a gutter, I’m gonna unmatch and head out. 

But if the interest is there, then I need to lead her comfortably to the promised land. I know where we want to go, but we have to do it at her pace. So that’s why during the app messaging phase, I try to build a little bit of rapport not to get myself off for being a rizzlord, but to make her excited about the prospect of meeting me.

And as we work our way towards the date, we have to make sure that we’re not jumping the gun by being too forward over text. Here’s an example from another one of my guys.

Him: Hey this is Him! I look forward to our walk. If you have won any speed walking competitions, let me know so that I can get a head start

Her: Hey! Lol I feel I’ll mostly have to keep up with your pace! I’m def no triathlon runner

*Him: Then I’ll make sure to keep it nice and steady. We’ll work on endurance later 😏

This one text immediately shifted the vibe and went from date set up to damage control. My guy was overconfident because of prior success on other dates and brought it over to a new girl, so he had to spend the next few texts trying to explain himself before things fizzled out. This is why even though I aim to move things quickly, I avoided innuendo as much as possible so I could keep things cool and save that energy for the date.

3 - Focus on Logistics First, Add Rapport as Needed

The third thing you need to understand to improve your text game is to focus on logistics first and add rapport as needed. The sole reason why I’m even texting girls in the first place is because I want to set a meetup plan. Anything else is just a waste of time and pointless to me. Pressing forward in a timely manner allows me to capitalize on interest, sort out logistics, handle objections, and expose disinterest.

So that’s why I have an escalation ladder as part of my messaging framework, and within it, there’s a logistics ladder. Just because you’re dealing with an interested girl doesn’t mean she wants to meet up with you right away. You want to take things one step at a time to maintain goodwill and solidify plans without unnecessary backtracking. Here are the steps in my logistics ladder:

  1. Suggest the date -> She agrees and date is soft closed
  2. Number close -> She sends her # and I send an intro text
  3. Probe for her availability -> She gives me specific dates or a timeframe that she’s free on
  4. Suggest a day and a time -> She agrees or declines, suggest again if the latter
  5. Suggest a place -> Date secured if she agrees

What some guys do is jump the gun on this because they assume the date is going to happen no matter what and they can just make all of these decisions right away. But if you do that and pick wrong, not only will you damage goodwill a little bit, but you will then have to backtrack and do more back and forths to fix things up if it can even be salvaged. Again, that means more phone pick ups and set downs.

So for some quick examples, here’s how the first guy soft closed the date off OKcupid:

Him - What’s your schedule looking like?

Her - I’m free all week except for Monday and Thursday

Him - Thursdays works for me, let’s do 7 pm?

Her - 7:00 pm works perfect 

She explicitly says she’s free all week EXCEPT Monday and Thursday, and my man blindly suggests Thursday because he read things wrong. She agrees on the timing but fails to address him picking the wrong day. So he has to spend his first few texts after getting the # to clarify things. 

And then we have this convo from my other guy. He built up some good rapport talking about traveling with this match and at the high point, here’s how he attempts to push on. 

Her - Oooo New York sounds fun I have never been there. Were you there for vacation? Yes I’m totally up for meeting up sometime soon to compare travel notes.

Him - Yep I went to New York for a week. Let’s do a wine tasting at (some winery) later this week on a Friday or Saturday.

That’s a load of decision making to place upon a girl who’s just down with the idea of meeting up. While he did still get her number, this interaction did not pan out to a date, and I wonder why.

So let’s put it all together. This is how you develop solid text game that gets you dates without bringing in loads of nonsense. First, you understand that girls have limited goodwill and you text in a way that moves things along without abusing it. Second, you keep the end goal in mind of texting for dates and calibrate the words in your messages so you’re not scaring girls away. And lastly, you handle logistics with her cooperation so you’re not stepping on any toes setting things up, and then only text for rapport if you have to wait a few days.

My texting framework is so efficient and effective that if you compare my conversations with most other guys, it only takes 1 to 3 swipes to get through my convos versus many more than that for them. I’m not texting like a headless chicken or dancing monkey. I got things to do and games of Smash to play. Hell, after some Smash sessions, I’ll read some convos from other matches for pillow talk and go down multiple thumb swipes just to see guys still talking about what they had for lunch and shiii.

Texting is a delicate art you need to master as everything after getting matches depends on this. I’ve seen guys that are 6 foot Chads fumble girls because they choose not to get better at texting, and I literally take it upon myself to micromanage convos for some of my guys because I know they'll unintentionally nosedive them.

I hope you guys can see the value in what I’ve said, and if you want a visual and verbal explanation of it, here’s a video version.