What to Do When a Girl Rebuffs You

What do you do when she rolls her eyes or sticks her hand in you face? How you handle it is down to if it’s a soft rebuff or a hard one.

Three girls in a nightclub, dressed flashy, keeping to themselves. The redhead was in a shiny, sexy beige dress. The blonde was in tight jean shorts and a white top with no bra. They had an older gal with them, perhaps late 30s, curly black hair and defiant.

I watched one man walk up to them, get spurned, roll off.

Another guy approached; snubbed, and he left.

So, I waited. And after a time, I saw my opening: we’d all moved out to a quieter part of the venue, and at some point the three girls moved out into the same area, out of the loud dance club part.

I was with a few friends who were good with girls but weren’t habitual cold approachers, and they debated whether to make an approach or not. I was just there to spend time with my friends, not to meet girls per se. But I set down my glass and walked over to them.

The girls saw me coming and closed ranks; another sad man to reject. When I reached them, the older gal gave me a half second of eye contact before she put her hand up in my face dismissively and turned away; the blonde wouldn’t look, and the redhead stared off, a bitchy look on her face.

A minute later, I had all three girls laughing and smiling with me. And when after I chatted with my friend, who’d watched the whole thing, all he could ask me was, “What did you say to them?”

It Isn’t Always a ‘Real’ Rejection

One of the details you pick up over time is that a rejection isn’t always a ‘real’ rejection from a girl.

Sometimes it’s just a test.

Girls will reject a man just to see what he does, and they do this all the time. If he slinks off, tail between his legs, they may get a slight boost of ego. Or they may feel a slight pang of disappointment, if they liked him and wanted him to proceed.

If he hangs around and tries to push through but does so inelegantly, he loses social power rapidly, and he looks worse and worse. To stick around while girls wave you off and tell you to leave without any kind of turnaround reeks of chasing and desperation. It is anti-Law of Least Effort.

Most men know this instinctively, so cut their losses as soon as a girl gives them a firm, “Not interested,” or snubs them without words.

It looks bad, they know if they stick around it’ll only get worse, so they bail with a bit of a status/ego hit, but not as much as what they’d have gotten had they hung around.

Of course, these kinds of tests are not so nice for the men who receive them, so guys will often come away saying, “She’s a bitch!”

And that’s the single best way to tell the difference between a rebuff that’s real and one that’s a test: if the average guy would walk away and call her a bitch, it’s a test.

Some examples of real rejections that would not be tests:

• You approach her while she’s on the phone in a heated conversation, and she indicates she cannot get off the phone and talk to you (she’s too occupied and cannot entertain a suitor now)
  

• You approach her, talk for a few minutes, and she tells you she’s sorry, but she just wants to talk to her friends right now or says she has a boyfriend (she gave you a few minutes, but you two did not click)

• You run up to her on the street and she waves you off without even a glance at you (your approach startled her too much and she treated you like someone who wanted to get something from her)
  

She’s not trying to test you in any of these situations. She’s legitimately saying, “I’m busy,” or, “I’m not interested.” Even with these, the situation is still sometimes salvageable... but you’ve got to be able to recognize where things went off the rails, and get them back on the rails.

For instance, the girl who gave you a few minutes then said she’s sorry, but just prefers to talk to her friends. Once you’ve seen this a few times, you start to realize it’s a sign she’d considered you at the outset, but you messed up in the chat.

Sometimes you can save things by telling her, “Okay, sorry. Let me start over,” in a firm, playful voice tone with a playful/tired expression (kind of... rolling your eyes at yourself, you might call it?), and then run a completely different style of game (whichever you think better suits her). If you’d just been making small talk with her and she grew bored, you might course correct and then tell her, “I don’t actually care about what city you come from or what you do for work. I think you’re attractive and there’s something intriguing about you and I’d like to get to know you,” and a solid half of the time she will perk right up and get that okay, let’s give this guy a shot look, and you’ve got a second chance.

Just make sure you knock it out of the park on that second chance.

But what about the ones that aren’t ‘real’ rejections? How can you recognize these, and why would a girl even reject a guy in the first place if she wants him to proceed?

When She Rebuffs You... And It’s a Test

If you spend time in upscale nightclubs or other hoity-toity venues, you’ll tend to encounter this: the status-conscious girl who rebuffs men left and right, while still clearly advertising herself. She’s dressed sexy, she’s standing out in space in a conspicuous location, and she’s keeping her body language open enough to invite approach.

Yet, when men approach her, they just get shot down one after the other. What’s her deal?

When a girl’s doing this, she’s really after two things:

• The ego/status boost she gets from others who see her reject suitors

• To find that super confident, yet socially savvy, guy who’s able to persevere

It’s not just girls in clubs who rebuff you to test though, either. Some other rebuffs that are often (not always... nothing’s 100%) tests include:

• When you go to kiss her, and you know she likes you, but she turns away

• When you invite her somewhere, and you know she’s interested, but she says no

• Girls you approach in bars, parks, cafés, etc., who look at you, smile, yet wave you off
  

Now, handle the test wrong, and her interest in you craters.

Yet handle it right, and you’re the most intriguing man she’s met in weeks. Maybe more.

That’s because girls really, really like confident men. Like, really. Ask any girl what she likes most in a man. Confidence, she’ll tell you. When she throws up a test that most men crumple under, and you bound over it with a grin, the stink of confidence is enough to overpower.

Do girls consciously know when they test a guy this way? Sometimes. Sometimes it’s only partial awareness. She’s distracted and some cute guy walks up, but she smiles and waves him off. It might be she knows she’s not in a social mood and she doesn’t want the pressure of a fresh conversation. But if she likes the looks of you (i.e., you have good fundamentals), some part of her usually thinks I hope he finds a way to talk to me.

I can relate to this. I was an anxious kid who was afraid to talk to people, and pretty girls would come up to talk to me and flirt with me and I’d turn them down... usually because I just didn’t know what else to say. But I always hoped they’d push through anyway. And when a girl did, it just made my day.

One of my former girlfriends smiled, then ignored me on my initial approach. She was tall, beautiful, had a tiny waist, and great big breasts, and she was used to approaches from men... And necessarily reserved. Had I just accepted the rebuff, I never would’ve gotten to date her or have sex with her (and we had some really great sex... she was the first girlfriend I had with a body like that).

But, I wanted her. So I just assumed attraction and treated it like a test. I pushed through, got her to talk to me, and not so long after that I had her huge naked tits shoved up against the picture window of my apartment while I gave it to her from behind, and told her everyone on the street below was watching her get fucked.

When I talked to her about it after, she said she’d reacted to me the way she had because she wasn’t sure about me. She thought I was just some player. But then when I kept talking to her, she decided she liked me.

I’ve heard this same sentiment repeated by other girls whose rebuffs I pushed past. It’s a broken record, almost.

The test, then, might be summed up like this:

The guy who’s just playing around, pinging girls, looking for an easy lay, that’s the guy she wants to screen out with that rebuff. The guy who’s going to stick around, who can push through, and do it in a cool, smooth, socially savvy, confident way, that is the guy she wants to meet.

But of course, the cool, socially savvy way is key. You can’t just stand there and say or do just anything.

So how do you react when a girl rebuffs you?

When She Rebuffs You Soft

A soft rebuff, like the one my former girlfriend gave me, is best reacted to with a gentle withdraw, a short pause, and then a gentle resumption.

On the open, you can use slow opening, if the situation permits, to break, then resume.

On a soft kiss rebuff (she gently turns her face away from your kiss), you can slip back into regular conversation, be casual, then try again. On the other hand, manhandle kisses actually work well with soft rebuffs (and often not so well with hard rebuffs).

The keys to remember about a soft rebuff are:

• It’s not a hard rejection. For this reason, you really want to avoid doing anything to reinforce the rebuff. For example, asking her why or what the matter is. Don’t do that. You’ll only cement the emotion and make a bigger deal of it than it is. Instead, you want to minimize the emotional impact of it as much as possible.

• Gentleness + composure is usually best. A soft rebuff can often just mean, “I wasn’t ready for that just yet, but maybe try again in a minute.” So it’s vital you stay unfazed and don’t get pushy. Just be calm and gentle. Let her feel you are a man who is not flustered by her rebuffs, but isn’t going to downshift into chasing or pushiness either.

• You can just try again after a short while. All you have to do after a soft rebuff, most of the time, is just wait 30 to 45 seconds, then try again. Often, that’s all it takes, and the second time you get what you want.

• Manhandling can work great. It depends on the scenario, of course. If she gives you a soft rebuff on open, that usually means she needs to get more comfortable with you, and if you manhandle her then you will frighten her off. However, once she’s comfortable with you and attracted to you, if you go for a kiss and get a soft rebuff, a manhandle kiss will often work perfect.
  

Just remember that with the soft rejection, you do not want to highlight her rebuff, and instead just want to stay calm, give it a moment, then try again.

When She Rebuffs You Hard

When I walked up to those girls in the nightclub, I was already expecting their rebuff. So when I got eye rolls and a hand in my face, it didn’t bother me. They’d been doing it to guys all night, and I was just the next one in line.

They’ve been rejecting guys all night.

So I walked up to them with a few thoughts in mind:

• They’re going to reject me
• It’s probably going to be nonverbal
• Which means I have to win them over in kind
  

I couldn’t respond with verbals to a nonverbal rejection. It’s too high effort for a low effort rebuff. In addition, I’m really good with eye contact and facial expressions (because I learned to be... I used to have the most wooden facial expressions on Earth). So I knew I stood a pretty good chance of getting them laughing with a little facial flirting, or at least I could use a slow-spreading smile and trigger those mirror neurons in their heads to get them to smile back.

So that’s all I did. I just walked up, got eye rolls and a hand in my face, and then leaned on the corner of the bar they were at. I didn’t say I word, I just looked at one girl from the corner of my eyes, then the next girl, then the next, all with a mischievous smile on my face.

At that point, they began to watch me, and the blonde cracked a little smile. My eyes locked on hers.

“So that’s all you’re going to do, huh?” I said. “Just stand around all night, and do this,” and here I tilted my head up in dramatic, snobbish fashion, tossed my hair back over my shoulders, and rolled my eyes. The blonde’s smile widened, and the redhead smiled a little and then stifled it. I could almost see her telling herself must not smile.

“Yes, that’s all,” said the blonde.

“Well that’s not very exciting,” I said. She started to laugh. The redhead finally cracked a smile. “You are all from here?” I asked.

“From Brazil,” the blonde said. She was messing with me (not Brazilian). But now she was smiling.

“You need a very big butt to be from Brazil,” I said, motioning with my hands and pointing to her behind. She laughed, and the redhead grinned. Even the older brunette who’d waved me off earlier snickered a bit.

“Where are you from?” asked the blonde.

And there I was, getting smiles and laughter from three girls who’d spent the entire night refusing every man who walked up to them.

In this case, I didn’t get the girls (as soon as the older brunette realized the blonde and redhead had warmed up to me, she immediately turned and told them it was time to go and dragged them off before I could react – all the blonde had time to do was lean into me and say “We’re going now” before the brunette led her away by the arm), but it was a fun little chat and I thought a nice illustration of how this works.

I’ve used this same process plenty of other times. Sometimes you get the girl, sometimes you just have a nice chat... But you always get to do something most guys are terrified to do... Or go deep into auto-rejection over.

The Hard Rebuff Process

The process you use to handle a hard rebuff is simple:

• She rebuffs you
• You lean in a bit and give her a look of playful incredulity
• You hold eye contact / keep your eyebrows raised / slowly expand your smile
• Hold that face until she cracks (best if she laughs, but a relaxed grin is okay)
  

She cracks to defuse the tension that you create when you look at her like she is, in effect, behaving ridiculously. When she laughs, she submits to your frame.

If she does not laugh (say, she just outright ignores you / turns away from you), there’s not a whole lot you can do. You can try to make a comment, but this never works in my experience (though if you have a way you’ve found to reverse rebuffs with words, do let me know in the comment section, I’d love to have more tools for this).

I know a few guys who will do a little wrist-grab, where they loosely take the girl’s wrist between their thumb and forefinger and gently pull her forearm toward them as they lean in and start to talk to her. This one requires a great deal of finesse and if you’re not expert at touch it usually doesn’t do well to grab the wrists of girls who’ve just rebuffed you. So I don’t recommend this one unless you really know what you’re doing. If you do know what you’re doing, it seems like the key to this one is to use it when you’ve got a hunch she’s really playing with you... And that this is the maneuver you need to get her to look at and consider you again.

For most purposes though, it’s nonverbal or bust. You’re going to stare at her with the bored look / not face or another similar expression, and she’s going to crack. After she cracks, then you tease her a bit. Doesn’t work nearly as well if the teasing comes before you make her crack. Crack first, tease after.

With something like a kiss rebuff, you’ll use the same exact process, only when she cracks you’re going to say, “Why don’t you want to kiss me?” in a half-playful, half-sad voice, while still looking at her with a mischievous face (or bedroom eyes and a wistful smile). The goal here is to tease out her objection, so you can address it.

Then, proceed.

Note that difference between the soft rebuff and the hard rebuff, too.

With the soft rebuff, you do not talk about the rebuff, because you don’t want to highlight it. With the hard rebuff, you do talk about the rebuff: either you tease her about it or you get playfully sad/teasing/patronizing and ask her ‘why’ (very important that you do this playfully and not seriously; the goal is to show her you don’t buy her frame of she’s the approver or denier, and instead you just treat her like a silly little girl).

But Should You Bother?

Should you even bother if a girl rebuffs you?

Is it even worth your time?

Aren’t these girls all bitches?

Well, depends on you and what you’re after. For me, taking 15 seconds to turn a girl who’d rebuffed me into one who is laughing with me and smiling with me is worth the extra quarter minute. Particularly if she’s hot.

And I enjoy what follows – if you’re the one guy who’s broken through her rebuffs in weeks or months, you either get a SUPER compliant girl who’s incredibly excited to be with you, or you get a really fun girl who’s going to flirt with you and give you a challenging, interesting interaction. I usually prefer the former (just because it results in you and her in bed a lot more often), but the latter is a great time too.

She’s a lot of fun once you break through that barrier.

I will tell you from doing this plenty of times that these girls are not bitches (well, not all of them). It’s more often a defense system or a screening tool than it is her being mean (and even if she is mean, usually that’s just because she’s horny). The reason men react poorly to it is because it makes them feel inferior to the girl (which is why it’s such a powerful screening tool... if you know you’re the man and she’s just a cute, silly girl, you can just give her the bored look and wait for her to crack and then give her a hard time about it).

Of course, any test like this has two potential outcomes: you lose, and feel inferior; or you win, and feel superior.

As such, the other thing this rebuff-handling process gives you is control over the courtship and your own status again. If she rebuffs you and you just retreat, you look beaten. You’ve taken a value hit. But turn it around and make her laugh, smile, and flirt, and not only does she get into it, and not only do you get loads of preselection from warming up the girl(s) every other guy around can’t handle, but you get that winner effect testosterone boost and get to feel good.

Lots of nice things about this, really. I recommend it.

If you’re out there, taking your shots, trying to get somewhere, you might as well find ways to win even if at first you don’t succeed. Right? It’s what all crazy successful men do, after all. Wrestle with adversity and turn it into more success; more of the things they want.

Chase