How to ask her out for drinks when she said she's not big on weekends

When she said she likes her Saturdays to herself, she gave you a rule about how she spends her free time, and she did not say anything about you. People who protect weekends are often busy during the week, or they are recharging after a full week, or they have a standing thing with friends or family. Any of those is compatible with wanting to see someone on a weeknight. So the message to take from her comment is that weekends are off the table for now, and weeknights are still open. You are not being told no.

The mistake most people make is treating the comment as a test to pass. They either push back gently, or they go quiet and wonder what they did wrong. Neither is needed. Take the information, let it shape the ask, and move on. If she is interested, a weeknight with a clear time will feel easy to say yes to. If she is not, that will show up quickly and you can stop wondering.

A reply that fits here usually does three things in order. It acknowledges her preference in a sentence without making a thing of it. It names a weeknight and a rough time. It gives her an easy out or an easy yes. The first move can be as simple as agreeing that weekends are hers, which shows you took it on board. The second move should be specific enough that she can picture it, such as a particular evening that week and a particular kind of place. The third move leaves room for her to pick a different weeknight, so the decision stays with her.

What to leave out is any explanation of why you wanted the weekend, any joke about her Saturday plans, and any second question stacked on the first. You are asking for one thing. If the reply is doing more than that, it is probably doing too much. A good test is whether she could answer in two words. If she can, you have made the answer easy.

Send the ask in the evening or early afternoon, when people are relaxed and can actually look at their phone. Avoid late at night, which can read as lonely or rushed. If she answers with a yes or a different weeknight, reply within a few hours and lock in the details: day, time, place. Nothing else needs to happen.

If she does not reply for a day or two, do not add a second ask on top. A short check-in on something else you were talking about is fine if the conversation was going well, but the drinks question should wait. If a week passes with no reply to the ask, or she replies with something vague like 'maybe, I'll see', take that as the answer. You can keep chatting, but stop bringing up the drink. Asking once more after a clear non-answer is where people start to look needy, and it is the point where most of these conversations quietly end.