The lost art of conversation...

When women are non-responsive after the initial interest, it could very well be that the girl wants to be pursued and you missed the signal or didn't get a clear signal and so you are trying to give her time to feel comfortable, and in doing so, you lose her because you took too long to ask her out. Men do this all the time, it is very frustrating for us gals. We want the guy who has the confidence to ask us out, and who gets that the traditional values where dating are concerned still stand.

Fewer and fewer men know how to just ask us out already. Some do it too soon, before any interaction, some wait and wait~and then the momentum and intrigue are lost. No matter what, the girl just likes the boy to ask her out and pursue her; it's romantic and exciting and it makes us feel desirable. We see it this way~you already know I'm interested in you, or there would have been no communication at all, and after a couple of emails go back and forth, what's the delay?! Are you gonna ask me out or not?

Also, safety is an issue for women. It actually isn't safe for women to stay on email for too long, and smart women know this. Too much information can be revealed too soon, and innocently, before meeting someone and getting a sense of who he is, but it is a fine line.

You can always ask how soon she likes to meet once she know she is interested...or tell her you like to meet after a couple of emails. Then we know when it's coming...but if you never ask us out and then keep trying to learn things about us, its a red flag and a little creepy and we move on to someone else because we start to think it will never work because you just don't get it. It gets down to courageous timing...the rest is chemistry and action. One final thought, remember, it is a dating website~so dates are what we are expecting and waiting for.

I have found repeatedly that once the eHarmony email stage is reached, that some ladies can't seem to carry on a conversation there. I'll write, ask some additional questions, I usually like to answer the same ones for her, and look for another topic to try to interest her.

I've repeatedly seen emails back that
1) answer the questions I asked in short form
2) have a superficial comment about whatever other item I threw in,
and
3) ASK NOTHING

worse, there is no mention of another communication .

Is it me? or do people just not realize anymore that a conversation is a two way street?

Women especially, I think, based on how often I see it in the "what I am looking for" want someone who is a good listener/communicator/conversationalist. (and many things spring from that)

So why is it that so many women who want that, suck at it?

I agree with you that it is better to meet sooner than later. However, there needs to be some preliminary communication to determine if you even want to take the step of meeting. Even if the method of introduction is IRL you still have a certain amount of "conversation" prior to popping the question of "would you like to go out". I have somewhat recently had a match that did exactly what the OP described. No matter what questions I asked, I could get nothing more than one word answers (and my questions were not one word answer type questions). Nor could I elicit any questions from her. Had she been SO interested in skipping the initial communications and jumping directly to meeting in person she could have done so. She did not.

The only conclusion I could possibly draw from her behavior was that she was not interested in me at all.

I guess I should have titled this thread THE LOST OF READING A POST.

I'm talking about AFTER THE FIRST EMAIL. not later in the conversation, buy the second or third email I usually volunteer information rather than ask for theirs so they feel comfortable.