Ask a Guy: What to Text a Guy To Make Him Want You (How To Text a Man)

“I’ve been seeing this guy for a little while now and it seems like sometimes he’s interested and sometimes he’s not. I feel like I don’t really have him and I feel like I don’t know how to hold his interest and make him want me more.

I notice this the most when we’re texting. Sometimes he’s there texting back and forth with me, sometimes he disappears for hours or days or doesn’t really seem to engage in the conversation.

MORE: Exactly How to Get a Guy to Text You Back

There are all kinds of videos and articles about text messages that make him want you, but a lot of the advice seems unrealistic or ridiculous. Can you tell me what works to make a man interested over text?”

OK, let’s get right to the heart of what good texting is versus bad texting.

I want to explain all this in layers and keep it really simple but trust me, by the end of this, you’ll be much better at texting the man you like.

• Bad texting is boring.
• Good texting is fun.

If your texts are boring, they are worse than no text at all. Bad texting is worse than no texting at all.

If the text feels formal, planned or careful it’s probably boring. If the text feels like it could have been sent by an acquaintance, it’s probably boring.

• Bad texting is an interruption.
• Good texting is an escape.

Texting is an interruption to whatever the guy is doing at the moment, so if you’re going to text him, you want it to be worth it.

Guys, in general, tend to focus all of their attention on whatever it is they’re focused on in the moment and shut out distractions.

So as a good general rule, you want to recognize that guys don’t like interruptions and therefore texting can go against the grain of what men naturally like.

MORE: Ask a Guy- How Do I Get Him to Text Me Back?

This isn’t a problem if the text doesn’t feel like an obligation that he must respond to (there’s a hint there).

Even still, you want to make sure the text is going to be a welcome distraction when you send it to him.

With this in mind, the worst kind of text you can send is one where you yourself feel bored or empty and want to text him in hopes he’ll give you some kind of emotional boost.

If you’re bored or feeling empty and want to get a boost from chatting, text a friend and chat with them.

That brings up another good point about texting:

• Bad texting feels like an obligation and a chore.
• Good texting feels like an invitation and relief.

In general, women like chatting and texting more than men.

I’m not saying that men never like chatting or texting. They do, but it’s specific to certain kinds of conversations with a certain kind of feel.

I will explain more about that in a bit, but just know that men don’t inherently like texting and chatting in itself.

And if he feels an obligation to respond (or else you’ll be upset, get angry, get into an argument, etc.), then that’s when texting really starts to feel like a chore and he will avoid it or minimize it to the best of his ability.

On the other hand, if texting always feels open-ended and fun, you might be surprised to find that he starts to love texting with you.

MORE: What to Text a Guy You Like to Keep His Interest

That reminds me, this is a good place for me to point out a major truth about love and relationships:

It takes a long time and lots of interacting to build a strong, lasting love relationship. On the other hand, ruining a love relationship can happen incredibly quickly and easily.

Now, I don’t want that to come off as pessimistic or scary.

The only reason I bring that point up is because relationship success requires that you know what builds love and attraction, but perhaps more importantly, you know what you must absolutely never do if you want the relationship to last.

• Bad texting feels like you’re trying to force the conversation to keep the conversation going.
• Good texting has him excited to participate.

OK now we’re getting into the good stuff!

So these days, a lot of the questions I get and the coaching I do revolves around texting: what to send him, what not to send him, what works, why something works versus doesn’t, etc.

The worst kind of conversations I’ve seen looking like this:

• Woman brings up some thing or subject she thinks the guy is into
• Guy replies surface-level thoughts or opinions about that thing
• Woman brings up some other thing or subject
• Guy replies surface-level thoughts or opinions about that thing
• Repeats until guy disappears
• Woman wonders what went wrong

Well, what went wrong is that it was boring and pointless. There was no juice to it!

The woman was just throwing things out there in hopes that a conversation would continue.

I don’t know what trying to continue a conversation is meant to accomplish and usually I find neither does she. She just feels like if he’s texting with her that’s somehow good and if he’s not that’s somehow bad.

Listen, like I said before: No texting is better than bad texting.

MORE: 30 Amazing Questions to Ask Over Text

If your texts are boring and pointless, don’t be surprised when he stops texting with you or keeps it to a bare minimum.

Now, that said, texts like these aren’t bad in themselves. What’s bad is that the conversation overall is shallow, surface-level and pointless.

It doesn’t emotionally lead anywhere interesting. It’s just a shallow survey of stuff he’s supposedly into and it elicits shallow, unemotional answers from him.

So now it’s time to get into the good stuff.

What does good texting look like? How do you need to be? Who do you need to be?

• Bad texting feels like you’re searching for things to find common ground or impress him with your agreeableness.
• Good texting feels like you are an intrigued interviewer who’s excited by his genuine emotional disclosures.

If there was one great phrase to capture the essence of intriguing texting (and conversations in general), it would be, “Tell me how you really feel.”

No matter who the guy is, every guy has opinions and feelings about things that he wouldn’t dare express.

The reason could be because he’d be laughed at or he’d get in trouble or he’d be misunderstood or people would think he was foolish or whatever.

And, interestingly enough, the more successful or prestigious a guy is, the more he feels like he has to restrain himself against his natural impulses and feelings in order to maintain his station in life and attain higher success from there.

As a result, he has two versions of himself: He has the socially acceptable mask and the actual man underneath.

You might think I’m saying that the socially acceptable mask is polite, unoffensive and pleasant.

MORE: 55 Love Texts to Make Him Smile

That’s not necessarily true. I’m saying that the mask is the version of himself he operates from to maintain his status, social position and success.

So it’s possible that his mask is even rude, aggressive and obnoxious because, in the privacy of his subconscious mind, he feels that being that way gives him the station in life that’s important to him.

Regardless, the mask isn’t genuinely how he really feels about things or life in general. The mask is just a necessary social construct for him to survive in this world as best he knows how.

The big takeaway I want you to understand here is that there’s the version of him that everyone believes him to be and there’s the man underneath which may or may not be how he shows up on the surface.

The mistake women often make is to mistake the mask for the man and they interact with the mask version of him.

And because they’re not interacting with the real man underneath the mask, they never really connect with him. None of the conversations have any emotional juice to them.

This is a good place for me to point out: The only kind of connection with a man that lasts is an emotional connection.

So if you’re not connecting with his emotions on a deep level, you’re not going to hold his interest.

On the other hand, if you deeply connect with his real self and his real emotions, you will become a woman he deeply connects with.

• Bad texting connects with his surface level mask.
• Good texting connects with the real man he is underneath.

If you want to be good at texting with a man (and communicating with him in general), you must connect to the real man underneath.

In order to connect with the man underneath the mask, you need to become like an interviewer, who is intrigued, excited and fascinated with genuine emotional disclosures.

You want to turn up your curiosity to the maximum and find out what’s behind his actions, his statements and his opinions.

When he says something, you want to take it as a starting point to explore his emotional world, deeper and deeper.

You want to learn how he really feels about certain things. In order to do that, you’re going to need to approach conversations in a very specific way. If you don’t, knowing the real man underneath the mask will be impossible.

Your conversations must have:

• An absolute open space for him to express his true feelings without judgment, disgust or arguing from you.
• Your curiosity engaged and show genuine interest in his emotional disclosures.
• The understanding that he will emotionally disclose things slowly and gradually.
• The understanding that if he ever feels judged, attacked or shut down for a true emotional disclosure, it’s game over. He will put his guard up and it will be very difficult for him to ever expose his true feelings to you again.

In any kind of conversation where you’re drawing out how he really feels, he’s going to hold himself back and only give you surface level answers at first.

This makes sense since the entire reason for his mask is to protect the real man underneath.

When he sees that he can express how he really feels about something and it doesn’t have negative consequences, he will gradually make more emotional disclosures to you as you follow up.

Now again, understand that if he ever expresses his genuine emotions about something and it results in a negative response from you (horror, disgust, anger, arguments, etc.), rest assured that he will shut down and guard this part of himself from you going forward, often forever.

Like I said earlier, building a love connection takes time and ruining it can happen very quickly. It’s very important that you remember that.

OK, so let’s show some crappy surface level conversations versus conversations with juice.

• Crappy texting example:
  • Her: Have you seen XYZ movie?
  • Him: I haven’t really watched many movies in recent years.
  • Her: What’s the last movie you saw?
• Good and juicy texting example:
  • Her: Have you seen such-and-such movie?
  • Him: I haven’t really watched many movies in recent years.
  • Her: Really? How come?
  • Him: The movies recently just suck, at some point it just felt like watching recent movies was a waste of time.
  • Her: Yeah I know what you mean. What do you think it was about those older movies that made them worth watching?
  • Him: I think character development and having themes that resonated with me. It’s weird but I feel like I watch these recent movies and I can’t connect with any of the characters, I feel nothing for them whether they live or die and plus I don’t really care what happens in the story. Like there are good guys and bad guys and I don’t really care what happens.
  • Her: Yeah that’s so true! Like I’ll be watching a movie where a bunch of stuff is happening and then the credits roll and I was still wondering when the movie was going to start.
  • Her: What kinds of movies do you like? Like what had good character development or themes that you liked?

OK, so this example shows you how you can take something that’s surface level and use it as a starting point to dig deeper into what he likes and dislikes on a genuine level.

MORE: He Hasn’t Texted in Two Days, What Do I Do?

Notice the texting from her is very simple, she’s just asking simple questions about his reasoning, his feelings and his motivations.

What this accomplishes, however, is very valuable. She’s learning how he “ticks”, so to speak.

Now if you do this once, it’s a pleasant and interesting conversation. If you do this repeatedly, you’ll find that your interactions start diving deeper and deeper into emotional disclosures and that’s where the juice is (and that’s where the love connection gets built).

I’ll tell you something else that might surprise you: Men are craving to have conversations like this with a woman who understands this.

Men live with massive conflicting emotional forces on them.

Men desperately crave to be known and understood, but simultaneously need to hide their true self from the world.

What this means is that men have a fear of disclosing their true thoughts and feelings about things, but desperately long for it at the same time.

In your conversations, you always want to demonstrate that he never has to fear disclosing how he really feels about something and that you love his emotional disclosures.

Now this probably all sounds well and good, so I want to make something very clear: A man’s true thoughts, opinions and feelings about things are not often pretty.

A man’s true feelings might be weird, embarrassing, disturbing, gross, cruel, upsetting, insecure, fearful, taboo or any number of things. If they weren’t, why would he need to hide them?

I want to make it clear that if you walk down this path, you need to be prepared to hear ugly things from him from time to time.

It’s important to keep in mind that just because he says something ugly in the moment, it doesn’t mean that it’s his ultimate truth about how he feels about something forever and ever in all contexts. Sometimes a man will say something shocking and nasty because he’s in a bad mood.

The tradeoff here is that you get to have his heart and is genuine love for you. So on the upside you have his deep, unbreakable, genuine love and the downside is that occasionally he will say ugly things or you will see an ugly side of him.

If we’re being honest here, we’re all ugly sometimes and it’s the people we love who will get to see that ugliness, but that’s part of love.

Nobody likes the ugly side of people, so the question becomes whether or not you can accept it.

Lasting love requires understanding him (even his ugly side) and accepting him. That happens through communication.

All men deeply crave having a woman in their life who deeply understands them, accepts them and loves them.

I listed those 3 things in that order for a reason. A man can only accept a woman’s love if he feels she understands him (the real him) and accepts him.

MORE:What To Do If He Suddenly Stops Texting You

A woman can love a man very much, but if he knows that she doesn’t really understand him (the real him), then she hasn’t had the opportunity to accept the real him (or worse, he knows she wouldn’t accept the real him) and thus the love she feels isn’t real for him.

That logic might sound weird, but let it sink in because it’s very important.

If a woman doesn’t know the real man underneath, then he won’t be able to receive her love because it won’t feel real to him.

MORE: 13 Reasons He Didn’t Text You Back

The emotional connection I’m talking about in this article happens when a man feels that a woman understands who he really is underneath and how he really feels underneath and accepts him as he is. When he believes that she understands and accepts who he really is, he can receive her love and he won’t be able to help loving her back.

I could go on and on about this topic (how to reach a man’s heart through conversation, what makes a man love you, etc.), but I’ll leave it here for now.

Hope it helps,

There you have it, a thorough and in-depth look at exactly why guys don’t text back, and exactly how to get him to text you back. But there’s more you need to know. At some point, a man may start to pull away and seem to be losing interest. Do you know what to do when this happens? If not, read this: If He’s Pulling Away, Do This...

Another important thing a lot of women don’t realize is there will come a point in the relationship where he will ask himself: Is this the woman I want to commit myself to? His answer will determine everything. Do you know what inspires a man to commit and see you as “the one”? If not, read this too: The #1 Things Men Desire in a Woman

eric charles