The second theory, which I've heard from
@deesade and I found it quite interesting and senseful, was that the man should initiate most of the time as that also has its own benefits, and when I think about it, it is also more manly, meaning that we are the go-getters, the hunters, the active ones, the ones who go for what we want, when we want.
As a woman I agree with this. The man's role is to initiate, the woman's role is to respond. The man's role is active, the woman's is passive.
First and foremost, as a man, make your intentions known to the woman that YOU are interested in. Let her know that you are interested in her in a sexual way, not just interested in her in a friends only way. "Lets grab drinks", "I would like to get to know you better, lets meet up at __ for dinner", etc etc.
After you make YOUR intentions know to her, that is when (and only when) her actions will tell you where her interest level is in you.
I have bolded and underlined the last sentence in what I quoted because I think lots of people confuse this (and therefore themselves.) I'll add that if you as a man make your intentions known to a woman you fancy, she will be accommodating and encourage your attention if she likes you back. But very early on in dating she doesn't know much about you so unless you and she are already familiar with one another her interest level could change based on how your interactions go, especially if she is a sought after girl who has several choices at any given time. This is why you keep communication minimal and hold frame and wait to really interact with her face to face where you get full communication (verbal and non-verbal). This is why too much texting early on may hurt your chances (it can't contain all the non-verbal cues and it may make you look needy). So until you have had a few dates you may not have a great handle on what her REAL interest level is because you need a little time to cut through the chatter and appear as her best option. And to be fair she may not know just how interested in you she is until she's had the opportunity to spend some time with you. Attraction can be instantaneous, but it can also evolve.
some girls are just not going to initiate, despite their IL. Usually women with old-school thinking allow men to do 100% of the courting.
Men, don't lose women based on your interpretation of her IL.
Initiate and ask for the date. If she accepts and appears, she's interested. If she declines or dodges, she's not interested. Simple.
The above is one of the hardest things I think for some men here to understand. In some instances women simply will not initiate as stated above.
Why not? Because they were raised that women await a man's contact/girls don't chase boys (that was DRILLED into my head all my life by my mother and grandmother), that hussies chase after men, ladies never chase after a man etc. etc. But it's more than just upbringing. If you have a desirable woman (attractive, nice figure, intelligent, pleasant personality etc.) that desirable woman is getting plenty of male attention everywhere she goes. She may not be able to get away from all the attention in fact. There are men expressing interest in her all the time. So if you as a man choose not to initiate with this kind of woman, you will get left behind in favor of men who are actively showing interest in her.
In other words, desirable women pick from among the men who actively show interest (initiate). And if she is that desirable (and especially if she was raised old school, to quote Guru) it does NOT matter if she noticed you or found you handsome or whatever. Her mind will understand that if a man DOES NOT initiate he IS NOT INTERESTED and she will dismiss him out of hand. As a man you do not know how a woman was brought up. You can't know her mental programming. So a girl may in fact have quite a crush on a guy, but if she was raised NOT to chase boys, she won't. Period. No matter how much she thinks you are cute. Could this look like low interest? Yes. That is why a man should reach out and ask a girl out that he likes. Otherwise he might never find out she likes him too because he doesn't make an action she can respond to.
I would suggest (and I may get flamed, but so be it) that the better quality women are raised this way more often than not.
A traditional minded submissive type woman will expect interactions to go like this:
Man: Initiate (AKA Lead)
Woman: Respond (AKA Follow)
That dynamic will not substantially change. Ever. Think about it. This is the dynamic from which a man leads the woman. If the man is expecting the woman to lead then the woman cannot follow the man. You can't have it both ways.
When women are in the position of initiating (which I agree can be quite the ego boost for a man) women cannot gauge how much a man likes her (because she has usurped her natural, responsive role) and so things like insecurity, the need for reassurance, clingyness and all those behaviors arise out of "Does he like me? I'm not sure/I can't tell" and this creates a downward spiral. Contrast that with a woman who is only or mostly responsive and she will be calm, chill, and confident in the fact that the man she is with likes her, because she can see the effort he is making.
Unless a man is himself extremely insecure he is always better served to initiate and lead the interactions with a woman. This establishes the man as the leader in the relationship from the jump and sets things up if a LTR develops. I think lots of STRs actually fail when 2 or 3 months in with a woman who is initiating constantly one of two things happens. Either the woman becomes insecure and needy (because she has over-ridden her own ability to observe the man's level of interest/investment) and this blows up the relation, or because suddenly the man wants to assume the reins and take over as leader, but he's abdicated that role up til that point and now she thinks he's trying to be controlling or something and that can blow up the relationship...not always, sometimes the man can successfully navigate this but it usually comes with "the talk" etc.
If men simply lead from the get go things run much more smoothly. The other thing that happens IMO if the man isn't the one initiating or leading, is this. The man is not actively choosing the woman if she is doing the chasing and the initiating and the contacting. Therefore he isn't investing in her. So the man has bandwidth to wonder, "Hmmmm, I got this one to chase after me, wonder if I can get THAT one to chase after me, etc." and so a man may not be fully invested in the woman he is seeing. Obviously that serves a man's needs but it doesn't serve a woman's...which is another reason the better women don't chase men.
