The 4-Way: Playing the Numbers

Dear 4-Way,

Why do guys ask for your phone num­ber and then nev­er call?—JT

The gay wo­m­an’s per­spec­tive: Jody Fisch­er

News flash: girls do it too. Next time ask for his num­ber. This puts you on an equal play­ing field. Have you ev­er been the one who has to make the call? It’s not easy to put your­self out there. Un­for­tu­nate­ly for some, sim­p­ly ask­ing for a num­ber and gett­ing it means you’ve al­ready “won” be­cause you GOT THE NUM­BER. Some­times the fear of pos­si­ble re­jec­tion out­weighs the risk of the mak­ing a se­cond con­nec­tion. I’ve learned that life is short, so don’t wait for things to come to you. Get his num­ber and make the call.

The straight wo­m­an’s per­spec­tive: Re­bec­ca Brown

The hell if I know, JT. Maybe the fun is just the ac­tu­al act of gett­ing the num­ber, Swingers style. A guy friend once hy­poth­e­sized that maybe the ask­er had too many drinks and for­got that he had got­ten my num­ber—un­til he came across it a few weeks lat­er all crum­pled and il­leg­i­ble in his wal­let. My friend thought maybe the guy felt too stupid to call at that point. Sigh. Maybe you should get their num­ber or email ad­dress from now on, as an in­su­r­ance pol­i­cy.

The gay man’s per­spec­tive: Dar­ren Mad­dox

Be­cause some­where dur­ing the re­quired three days (the time need­ed to pon­der what he will ac­tu­al­ly say when he calls you), a strange pheno­menon oc­curs. Many men—es­pe­cial­ly those in their twen­ties and ear­ly thir­ties—ex­pe­ri­ence a most un­for­tu­nate side ef­fect when a phone num­ber is ob­tained. He mis­places the balls he once had which al­lowed him to ask for your num­ber in the first place. Try as he may, he can­not lo­cate them again and there­fore lacks the courage to dial you from the de­vice in his pock­et. But there is hope. Once he ma­tures, he won’t lose said balls af­ter gather­ing a phone num­ber and he’ll show the courage and re­spect need­ed to ac­tu­al­ly call the per­son who seemed so in­trigu­ing in the first place.

The straight man’s per­spec­tive: Chris Kennedy

For the same rea­son(s) girls don’t call a guy back af­ter she’s giv­en him her num­ber. There are myri­ad rea­sons peo­ple have se­cond thoughts: they slept on it (or have al­ready slept with it) and de­cid­ed they’re not ready to date, they’re more in­ter­est­ed in pur­su­ing some­one else and don’t want to jug­gle, or their sig­ni­f­i­cant other found out. Each case is in­di­vi­d­u­al and since it’s un­like­ly you’re go­ing to get an ex­pla­na­tion, you just have to let it go. The dat­ing world is a jun­gle and you’ve got to heed the call of the wild… even when there is­n’t one to heed.

First pub­lished March 2008