Will Legend is a featured dating columnist and founder of DecodeHer, a website where he interviewed dozens of women to help men understand women better.

Get 4 free videos here to see interviews with women on sex & dating from Will Legend.

Boy meets girl. Boy and girl have a decent conversation. Boy gets girl’s phone number. The next day, boy send girl a text message. Hours pass. No reply. A couple of days pass. No reply. One week passes. No reply. Damn.

So why hasn’t girl responded to the texts? There’s a couple of reasons why this happens, and we’ll break it down for you.

REASON #1: YOU DID NOT STAND OUT

In today’s world, girls are fairly receptive to giving out their numbers.  That means on a typical night out, the average girl will give out her number to multiple guys.

Now imagine things from a girl’s perspective. She goes out, and gets approached with a typical cookie-cutter pickup line. Maybe the guy tries to buy her a drink. Maybe he compliments her on her style. Then, cookie-cutter conversation proceeds. After typical small talk, he gets her number. And later, he sends her a cookie-cutter text: “Hey, this is ABC from XYZ bar. It was nice to meet you.” Yet, he still wonders why the girl doesn’t reply to his text.

It’s easy to look from a bird’s eye view and see what the issue is: the guy clearly failed to stand out. And yet, we often times we become that guy. We are mechanic in our approach, we play it safe, and we hope for the best. Fail. The guy who differentiates himself from every other guy is going to be the winner. Always.

REASON #2: YOU DID NOT BUILD ENOUGH ATTRACTION

Even though we discussed the perils of not standing out, girls might still give you a chance to redeem yourself over text or on a first date.
But, it’s another thing to not build attraction. This is a reason why girls will never respond to your texts. And why should they, if they don’t feel the attraction? Remember, women are turned on by being desired, so you need to make sure your actions are congruent to what’s going on in your mind. If you’re attracted to the girl, then show her. Eye contact and physical touch go a long way.

There’s another common mistake – you might have built attraction throughout the night, but when it was time to part ways, you failed to make a final impression. An easy way to guarantee that a girl responds to your initial text is if you say you’d have interest in meeting up again, and she says the interest is mutual. What’s better is to agree on a specific activity that you two will participate in. It could be as simple as getting frozen yogurt together. What’s even better is to set a time and place for it.

Maybe she’s just taking selfies all day.

REASON #3: SHE HAS OTHER SUITORS

Sometimes, the timing is just bad. You might have done everything right, but she may realize she’s madly in love with another guy. Or maybe the guy who chatted her up after you was more compatible for her.

And that’s fine. Rather than her making you the backup option, it’s actually better that she has ignored your texts. Just remember, you just can’t take it to heart. At times, it’s just external factors that are beyond your control.

REASON #4: SHE NEVER WANTED YOU TO BEGIN WITH

Some girls just want validation. They sit back and are receptive to the guys who hit on them. They happily give out their numbers, but at the end of the day, they never wanted to have sex with you or date you to begin with. It’s fairly common, and yes, guys are guilty of this too. I’ve gotten a girl’s phone number and never contacted her – not because she wasn’t attractive, but it was just bad timing for me. For example, I was so busy with other projects that I just didn’t have the time to allocate to dating.
   
Other girls are too nice. Too nice to reject you right away. After all, it’s easier to reject someone over text than it is to reject someone face-to-face.

There’s a lot of reasons why girls do not respond to a guy’s text. A lot of it has to do with the poor (or mediocre at best) impression that the guy has left. Many girls have so many random guys’ numbers that they will only consider a standout guy. Other reasons are situational and aren’t within a guy’s control. Never take things too personally, and if a girl has ignored you, then don’t invest much time or thought into her. You can send another casual text after a couple of days, but if there’s still no response, then you can safely delete the number from your phone and move on.

Written by Will Legend