The Secret Psychology of Ignoring a Woman

Dating >Attraction > Ignoring a Woman
by Bobby Rio • Updated: August 10, 2022

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ignoring a woman

When and Why You Should Ignore a Girl

How much of your attention should you be giving a woman you’re interested in?

Does ignoring a woman make her want you more, or does it make her forget about you?

In this article, we’re going to be talking about the secret psychology of ignoring a woman and how to make sure you’re doing it right.

How often should you contact a woman

I ask my clients sometimes, “Why do you feel the need to constantly text the woman you like? Why do you feel the need to constantly ask her to hang out?”

Most guys reply, “Well, if I’m not contacting her, I’ll be ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ I need to stay in front of her so she’ll remember me.”

The fear is, “If I ignore ignore a girl, she’ll forget about me.”

That’s the fear that scares guys into ruining a woman’s interest.

That’s the fear that scares guys away from taking advantage of powerful psychology.

  • Psychology that can make a woman more interested.
  • Psychology that can make a woman chase you.

I hear clients say, “If I don’t respond to her text right away, or if I cancel plans with her, won’t it make her want me less? I bet it will make her say, ‘Screw this guy, forget about him.’”

That’s when I ask my clients a question:

When a woman does this to you, do you want her more or less?

  • When things are going well and you text a woman, then you don’t hear back from her until the next day… while you’re waiting for her to text back… do you forget about her?
  • Or do you stare at your phone waiting for that text?
  • When you’re all excited to hang out with a woman and at the last minute she cancels plans… you might be annoyed, but do you want her more or less in that moment?

You always want her more.

It’s counterintuitive. But when something is uncertain or slightly unavailable, it’s human nature to want it more.

It’s the psychology of attraction.

Ignoring a woman will make her want you more.

What It Means to Ignore a Woman

But let’s talk about what I mean by “ignoring a woman.” It means:

  • Ration the attention that you give her in person.
  • Don’t text her every day.
  • Don’t predictably text her “goodnight” or “good morning.”
  • When she texts you, don’t immediately reply.

Example #1: Not replying to her texts right away.

Don’t feel the urge to immediately respond. Reject the idea of time-sensitive pressure.

When a woman texts us and we’re not able to respond right away, a lot of guys get really nervous, they’re like, “Oh no, if I don’t get back to her, she’s going to think I don’t like her and she’s going to immediately go find some other guy.”

Simply relieve yourself of that pressure.

Example #2: Ration the attention you give her

Maybe it’s a woman from your social circle that you’re interested in, maybe it’s a female friend, maybe it’s a coworker.

If that’s the case, you need to understand ATTENTION CURRENCY.

Your attention that you give her is like money. If too much currency hits the marketplace, the currency will be devalued. If you give her too much attention too predictably, your attention will be devalued as well.

How much of your ATTENTION CURRENCY are you giving her when you see her?

Is she getting all of it? When you see her in person, do you always jump to say “hi” to her? Do you always run over to her?

If you’re at a party and your female friend is there, does she get 90% of your attention, or are you comfortable ignoring her at that party for a while?

When you walk into work, does that cute coworker get all your attention? Or can you just go into work, not say “hi” to her, and just do your own thing?

That’s what we’re talking about when we mean ignoring a woman. We’re talking about withholding your attention.

The 5 Key Points About Ignoring a Girl

Here are some reasons why it works, how to do it right, and how to know if it’s working.

Key Point #1: You Don’t Need to Check-in

Clients get nervous when I tell them, “You don’t have to check in.”

Checking in is when you’re sending a woman a text just to check in. You’re really just saying, “Hey, I’m still here. I don’t want you to forget about me.” There’s no need to send that text except your neediness for her reassurance.

Women can sniff out neediness. So when you’re checking in with her and you’re doing it to get reassurance from her, she senses it and becomes less attracted to you.

Now on the opposite side, some guys will say, “It’s the nice thing to do to text her back right away. Don’t I want to be polite? It’s it the nice thing to do.”

Well, the problem with always responding right away is that human nature is flawed. We don’t value the things that we have all the time. We take those things for granted.

Human nature places more value on things that are less available.

Imagine that you sent an email to your favorite celebrity. Would you expect them to respond to your email?”

No. You wouldn’t expect that because you know their attention is valuable and they don’t know you very well yet.

If they did respond, you’d be, “Oh, that’s awesome. That celebrity’s cool.”

But what would happen if you wrote him back and then he wrote you back and forth all day. He started texting nonstop about mundane things. His texts started to interrupt your day.

You’d go, “Whoa, you’re not as cool as I thought you were. You have all the time in the world to text me. Seems like there’s nothing else competing for your attention, which makes me think no one likes you.”

On a very subconscious level, a woman feels like that. Because a high value man is in demand, he’s got a lot of things going on. So he doesn’t time to text every second of the day.

Once she suspects you’re not a high value man, she’ll test you. Guys don’t understand that this is a text and so they think, “Well, she’s texting me a lot, I’m just keeping up with her.”

No, my friend. She’s texting you a lot to see how much of your attention she can get… and how quickly she can get it. It’s a test.

If she gets your attention quickly and often, she places less value on it. And when she values your attention less, she’ll pull back. Because it will mean that getting validation from you is worthless.

Key Point #2: Longing Equals Love to a Woman

Now, the second aspect of ignoring a woman is one of the most important. Women equate longing with love.

Let me repeat that, women equate longing with love.

In a woman’s mind, when she wants something, that feeling of wanting a guy to text her, that feeling of waiting to hear from you, that’s how she imagines love to feel.

Look at romance novels or any TV show geared towards women.

Look at Sex And The City and the main character Carrie. She eventually married Mr. Big at the end of the series. But throughout that series, one of the main focuses was her longing for Mr. Big.

She never fully got his attention. So that feeling of longing, she equated that with love.

Women do that all the time. The problem nice guys have is that when you never ignore a woman, when you give her all your attention, she has nothing to long for.

She doesn’t get that experience of wondering, “When is he going to text me back?” because you text her back right away.

She doesn’t have that experience of “When am I going to get to see him again?” because you make yourself completely available to her.

When you walk into work, she doesn’t get that experience of wondering, “Is he going to come over to my desk and say ‘hi’ to me today?” Because you always come over to her desk and say, ‘hi.’

You’re depriving her of longing.

Nice guys will often say, “I just want to be me.”

They think they’re saying something noble, the nice guy thinks he’s “being himself.”

But he’s depriving her of what she really wants.

So is that really a good thing? No, you’re being selfish. You’re depriving her of that experience of longing, which is why the psychology of ignoring a woman is so powerful. When you ignore a woman, it allows her to long for your attention.

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Key Point #3: Women Crave a Mental Challenge

The third element of the psychology of ignoring a woman is a mental challenge. Just like women experience longing with love, women crave a guy who is a mental challenge.

What do I mean by “mental challenge”?

Mental challenge means that you’re not so easy to figure out.

Women want to WONDER about you.

They want to ask themselves, “Does he like me? Does he not like me? How much does he like me? Is he seeing other people? Where do I stand with this guy? Can I get this guy’s full attention?”

That’s the challenge for a woman.

Since men want sex, women can keep a guy interested by planning, “I’m not going to sleep with this guy immediately, I’m going to make him wait, keep him interested longer.”

For a guy, it’s the opposite. Women want a mental challenge, so a guy can keep her interested by planning, “I’m going to keep her a little confused, make her work for my attention.”

Women like that, it’s the mental challenge.

A woman will love going home, calling her best friends, and analyzing your behavior.

She likes to tell her friends the story of the date, wondering which things you liked or didn’t like. Wondering what you meant when you made certain statements. Wondering whether you liked her enough to give her a second date.

“Why didn’t he call? Do you think he likes me?”

It’s woman thing, it’s girl talk.

If you deprive her of that, she loses interest because then she’s around her friends and she’s like, “Oh yeah, it’s going well.” Without that extra element of challenge in figuring you out, she feels like she’s missing something.

That’s why she’ll often say, “Something’s missing, I don’t feel that spark.”

All because of a lack of mental challenge.

Key Point #4:  “Hot” and “Cold’ Behavior is Addicting

The funny thing about “hot & cold” behavior is that not only should guys use it on women… but women are constantly using it on men.

I’ve seen it in over 13 years of coaching guys. If you take a deep look at the women you’ve loved in the past… nine times out of then, SHE was using this tactic on YOU.

There is something fundamentally addicting about “hot & cold” behavior.

Men say, “I hate when women do this.” Women say, “I hate when men do this.” But universally we all chase hot and cold behavior.

Scientific reason Ignoring a woman works

There’s a scientific reason for that. Psychologist B.F. Skinner published works on what he called THE PSYCHOLOGY OF UNPREDICTABLE REWARDS.

The reason gambling is so addictive is because there’s always the moment of thinking, “Am I going to winner or am I going to lose today?”

When that roulette wheel is spinning, and you’re waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting… and then the ball drops. Then either you win or you lose, but that endorphin rush becomes addictive.

The dating game is similar.

Let’s say you’re dating a woman and sometimes she’s super happy to see you. She’s got her hands all over you. She’s “hot.”

But other days she’s kind of distracted, she’s more indifferent towards you. She’s “cold.”

Every time you go to see her, you don’t know which one you’re going to get, and it makes you crave the times when she’s “hot.”

You’re never able to take the good times for granted because there’s no guarantee when the “hot” side of her will show up again.

 More on “hot” and “cold”:

It’s all about the sweet mix.

 If you’re always “cold”: If you’re always ignoring a woman, she will lose interest. She’ll think you’re not interested, maybe she’ll think you’re gay, maybe she’ll think that you met somebody else. She’ll give up.

If you’re always “hot”: If you give her your full attention all the time, she will lose interest. She’ll see you as a guy with a low price tag. She won’t value you anymore.

It’s a balancing act: To keep the balance, you always want to be conscious of whether you’re moving too much in one direction. If you find you’ve been giving her too much attention, pull your attention back for a bit. Make her long for it more.

Still wondering whether “hot & cold” behavior is addictive? Think about the way it has worked on you in the past.

Maybe it was a new woman at work. Some days she would walk over to your desk and be flirty and talkative. Other days, she would just do her own thing like you didn’t exist.

That woman was magnetic to you because of the unpredictable nature of her behavior.

You can make this tactic work for you, instead of against you.

Key Point #5: It Demonstrates Autonomy

Ignoring a woman shows that you are autonomous. And autonomy is one of the absolute most attractive qualities in a man.

Autonomy is being independent, self-governing, uncontrolled by a woman or by anyone else.

If you want an example, the book The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand is a great portrayal of autonomy.

But autonomy can look like “playing games” to someone who is not autonomous.

When I tell a guy, “Hey, sometimes you have to ignore a woman, sometimes you have to not reply right away,” a guy will often say, “I don’t want to play games.”

The reason he’s saying he doesn’t want to play games is because he gives a woman 100 percent of his attention naturally… because he is not autonomous. He puts his relationship with a specific woman ahead of everything else in his life.

But when you meet a guy who he’s really focused on a variety of different areas of his life – a career he’s really into, physical fitness, a large circle of friends, exciting hobbies – he naturally ignores a woman from time to time.

That’s what makes him so attractive.

So it’s not about ignoring a woman as a manipulative tactic. It’s about becoming authentically autonomous. The more things you have going on in your life, the more willing you are to put those things first. The less willing you’ll be to give all your attention to a woman you just met.

Example of the the right way to ignore a woman

Imagine that you’re hanging out with a woman. She says, “I’m getting off of work early on Tuesday. Can I come over and see you?”

Your first instinct is to think, “I like this woman too. I want to see her.”

But imagine that you already have a fun plan for Tuesday. Imagine you and your best friend are training for a marathon. You had planned to go with your buddy to a park and do a five-mile run.

The autonomous man tells the woman, “Hey listen, I’d love to see you, but I’ve got a run with my buddy Dave planned for that day. Maybe a little later in the evening, or maybe we can do it another time.”

She will instantly become even more attracted to you. She’ll value her time with you more.

On the other hand, the nice guy who is afraid of losing this woman, who’s afraid she’s going to forget about him, he will cancel that run to spend time with her. He’ll rationalize it, thinking, “Well, I really want to spend time with her and I can do the run any other time.”

But the decision is coming from a place of fear.

It’s coming from a place of “If I don’t see her, she’s going to forget about me. If I say ‘no’ to her, she’s not going to like me.”

But the reality is… when you say to her, “You know what? Tuesday I had this run planned and I don’t want to skip it,” she’s going to think, “Wow, he chose his run over me.”

That actually makes you more valuable to her.

It shows her that you’ve got your own life. You’re not making her the center of your attention right away.

She’ll have to work hard to earn the top spot in your life.

A DISCLAIMER:

I’m not saying that you never can put a woman ahead of something in your life. There’s going to be days where you can skip your run, but the mentality is: don’t always skip the run.

If you have a night out with your friends planned and she says, “Oh, I really want to see you,” go out with your friends. Most guys swing too much in the opposite direction where they’re willing to cut off their friends and hobbies to get time with a woman.

The Bottom Line: Why its Good to Ignore a Woman

Quite simply, it’s good to ignore a woman from time to time because she wants to feel like she’s slowly winning you over.

Little by little, she wants to feel that she’s getting more of your attention because you’re discovering how special she is.

Allow her to feel like she’s earning it.

Then she’s going to place more and more value on being with you. She’s going to be the one chasing you.

Mastering the Art of Ignoring Women

If she immediately realizes, “I have all this guy’s attention,” she’s going to forget about you.

You’ve got to be able to draw her in instead of doing it all at once. You’ve got to be sure you’re doing this right.

That’s why I created a page about my program UNLOCK THE SCRAMBLER. You can watch it at the link below this article.

In the video, Rob Judge and I talk about how it’s really a step-by-step thing. We give a variety of techniques on how to do this. We teach the overarching theme of slowly getting her working to win you over instead of the other way around.

Learn how to implement the psychology of ignoring a woman

Key Points of Article

  • Ignoring a woman can make her more interested in you.
  • Ignoring a woman means rationing the attention you give her in person, not texting her every day, and not immediately replying when she texts you.
  • Ignoring a woman means treating your attention like currency and not giving her too much of it.
  • When you ignore a woman, you’re withholding your attention from her, which can make her more interested.
  • The key points about ignoring a woman include not needing to check-in, letting her come to you, creating a sense of uncertainty, using other people, and using jealousy.
  • When a woman ignores you, you want her more, which is counterintuitive but part of human nature.
  • Ignoring a woman doesn’t mean you should never talk to her or be mean to her.
  • It’s important to strike a balance between ignoring a woman and giving her the attention she needs.
  • Ignoring a woman can be a powerful tool for attracting her, but it’s not a guarantee that she will be interested in you.
  • You should use your best judgment when deciding how much to ignore a woman and how much to engage with her.