way to call. He would feel arrogant to presume that she liked
him and would want him to pursue the relationship.
For many men, dating is like the process of buying a house.
If you are looking for your dream home, each time you visit a
house on the market, you don’t call back and say you are not
interested. It is expected that if you don’t make an offer you
are not interested. No one particularly cares what you think
about the house unless you go back several times and make
an offer.
In a similar way, if a man has actively pursued a relationship
with several dates, then generally most men will feel the need
to end the relationship officially with a call. Yet because some
men don’t know how to end relationships gracefully, they still
don’t call.
A man may think that by not calling he is sparing a woman
the experience of being directly rejected. One male friend of
mine was completely surprised when years later a woman re-
membered him with a lot of annoyance because he hadn’t
called her back after a couple of dates.
Commonly a man thinks by not calling
he is ending the relationship gracefully.A man tends to give what he would like to receive. If a wo-
man doesn’t want to go out with him, he generally doesn’t
want her to call and tell him directly. He makes a few calls and
she generally says she is busy or she is seeing someone else,
and so he gives up. He doesn’t go around complaining to
other guys that she didn’t call him back. And yet women do
feel neglected and disrespected when a man doesn’t call, par-
ticularly when he says he will or if he didn’t clearly close out
the relationship on their last date.
This is why women are annoyed. If it is a great date, he
242 / JOHN GRAY, PH.D.