Either through memes or comments I keep seeing this sentiment pop-up from time to time. And I’m wondering what your (yes, you) consensus is on it.
I for one am too pessimistic to do anything with potential hints. Like even if there is a good chance I still just don’t want to risk it.
We’re not bad…we’re careful.
Make the wrong call and you are considered a creeper or worse.I think most men are so infamously dense because they don’t want to misinterpret things. It’s a really thin line to walk and falling might ruin a friendship or make things very awkward. Very good manners/kindness and flirtatiousness are very difficult to distinguish.
Making the first move and reading things wrong can really hurt, especially if the other party wants it too. I had a female friend that was very friendly, who’d hug and hold hands with me at times. Friends told me to go for it. When I did she told all of her friends and I was collectively humiliated by the whole school. You could say I dodged a bullet, but it felt like I was by a car.
I’m over it now but I’m now very risk averse. Unless somebody are practically yelling at me to date them, I will only assume friendly intentions
One problem is that it’s very socially unacceptable to mistake not-a-hint for a a hint. Maybe people should stop trying to ‘hint’ and be more direct.
This right here. I do not try to take any hints. If you like me say so.
It’s worse when they do that shit on purpose like it’s some stupid power move. I catch wind of that and I’m immediately flaccid. All interest is gone. I don’t need that shit in my life.
I’m an autistic woman, and I’ve found great success in leaning into my autistic tendencies. By that, I mean just being blunt and upfront. One of my favourites is that if I’ve got chemistry with someone I don’t expect to see again, before I bid them farewell, I’ll give them a note with my number on and say something like “I had a great time hanging out with you tonight, would you like to go on a date with me sometime?” And then I hand them my number and scuttle off like a crab because I can only put on a cool face for so long before I crack under the anxiety.
Aspie man here, it’s harder for us to do that. I have a friend who I gave the standard, “Hi, my name is MapleEngineer and I have Asperger’s. That means…” speech to when I thought she was hinting. She said, “Ok, you don’t like hints?” “No.” “Ok. I’ve always found you attractive and have fantasized about sucking your cock. We should get together.” We did. It was awesome.
Life would be so by easier if the normies didn’t muddy the waters so much with their hints and clues.
Oh yeah, it’s why I mentioned I’m a woman - it’s certainly relevant to my experience here. I don’t have to worry about being perceived as threatening - if I flirt with a woman in an upfront way like I described, I never feel like there’s a risk of frightening her. Whereas on the flip side, if a guy asks me out, I’m always a bit on edge because of the small minority who are not safe to politely turn down. “Privilege” is definitely the wrong word for this, but being perceived as non threatening does make some things simpler.
I have been accused of being incredibly dense because I mask by playing all new relationships with women as completely natural. The woman I mentioned in my comment was hinting hard but I played it neutral. After I had a couple of hours to think about it I went back and said, “I have Asperger’s and here’s what that means. Here’s what masking is. I mask by playing hard neutral. I think you might be hinting. Hinting doesn’t work with me. If you’re hinting you need to stop and just say or ask what you want to say or ask. I won’t be offended. I will probably say, ‘Yes’ (I’m a sexy Aspie and I always say, ‘Yes’. )” So she just asked, I said, “Yes” and we had a good time. She told me that she had always found me and my attitude toward sex very appealing but thought I didn’t like her because I never flirted or expressed any interest. She said that in the almost 15 years we had been acquainted I had never even touched her. I said I thought it would be fun if the first time we touched was a kiss. The first time we touched it was a kiss. Now I’m waiting to find out if she’s going to go with me on a short road trip with one or two nights in a nice hotel this weekend.
I could’ve written this comment word for word. It really does make things a lot easier to just be direct, being able to do this is one of the very few outright advantages of our non-standard brains imo!
dog bless you
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“Why is this man so dense? He never responds to the subtle clues I carefully place behind a veil of plausible deniability.”
If you’re trying to make a move without making a move, that might be the reason he’s not responding. You’re asking him to take on all the risk of misinterpretation. At some point somebody has to be overt. If you’re presuming it should be him, you should ask yourself why you think that.
You’re spot on, I no longer deal with said “veil of plausible deniability”
This is 100% how I approach all sorts of relationships in my life, not just romantic. That’s called direct and open communication.
I will straight up ask (politely) that someone clarify what their explicit stance is, if they refuse or try to play coy about it I simply let them know I don’t know where they stand and I don’t know what they want.
I’ve done this with bosses, siblings, my son, and my partner. I have grown to respect people much more because I understand them better and have also cut out some toxicity from my life that I didn’t know was eating away at my happiness.
It’s true, I basically had to learn to be super blunt to men.
“I think you’re cute, want to go on a date with me”
Because literally nothing else gets through :|
Could you help fellow lemmings by saying how even approximately pick hints, i mean, many men mistake goodwill and good chat for relationship hints, as for me, I’m like op, I’m way too pessimistic to trust hints
Picking up on hints is a thing that requires a lot of social context and emotional empathy/intelligence. Unfortunately I don’t think there’s any pro tips I can offer to help you better identify them except interact with girls more and have honest conversations where you’re not trying to get the girl to date you - it’s learning the hard way, but bridging that emotional understanding gap is the only good way to get a better understanding of girls as people (and get your heart rate down so talking to them isn’t a panic).
That said, if you can find the confidence, being a little blunt yourself can work as well. Girls can be dense too.
A lot of the reason girls are doing the subtle hint stuff is because they’re also not confident / unsure / scared of rejection / scared of coming off too strong. It’s a way of feeling out a situation without strong commitment. We kind of expect guys to do that back so that we can have a sort of subtle social fencing game to figure out if there might be mutual interest. (unfortunately, most of the time, everyone involved is too dense for this to be effective)
Honestly both sides kinda suck at this in their own ways.
Thank you)
It gets through, but we’re not 100% and don’t want you telling your whole circle of friends how much of a creep some dude is because he shot his shot.
The hints are sometimes trash
Proviso, comment is based on old memories.
There was some research done on how women flirt. Women particularly put out IoIs (Indicators of Interest). These include things like hair flick, lip touching etc. When a woman is attracted to a man, the rate of IoIs goes up, sometimes 200-300% baseline.
Unfortunately, the catch is the baseline. Women vary widely on this. Some normally use 2-3/hour, others all the way up to 120/hour. This is where men can often get in trouble. A woman sending them 60/hour might be a 20 flirting outrageously, or a 120 who is actively disinterested. Trying to advance things will get vastly different results with these 2 women.
Because of this, a lot of men get risk adverse. Even if they pick up on the hints, they are not sure if they are reading them right. Conversely, a few men go the other way. These men tend to have a disproportionate, problematic effect on women. This is why most men don’t think that sleazy, overly handsey men aren’t much of a problem, but women vastly disagree.
Basically, men are stuck in a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” situation. Even worse, the men who figure things out tend to find a good partner and pair up, taking them out of the pool.
To add to the confusion, what women say they want, and what actually works can be quite different. The same applies to men. However, since men are generally expected to make the first move, they tend to screw it up a lot more (and get burnt).
Even worse, the men who figure things out tend to find a good partner and pair up, taking them out of the pool.
Why does this get an ‘even worse’ qualifier?
Because it leaves the blind leading the blind, leading to really stupid ideas getting too much traction. Both in being too aggressive, and being too passive. Neither work well.
It also creates a biased pool, which helps fuel the really negative views of women.
It’s the same effect as happens in weight loss groups. Those who succeed tend to move on. Those that hang around and gain “authority” tend to have failings.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing for the people involved, but bad for those left.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/
This is about only hiring the top 0.5% of software engineers, but it applies to dating too! The people in the pool the longest are the least attractive.
I always pick up on women’s hints… the next day, when it’s too late.
I think my personal record is about 6 years.
…ohh, THAT’S why she wanted to go back to her place. Damnit.
Try 15 years. There was this cute girl who’d always kind of hang around in the background, but never said a word. She made a big mistake by repeatedly sending her solid-10 friend to talk to me about her, and we fell in love instead.
Years later, another girl tried the genius tactic of inviting me and about a dozen gorgeous female friends of hers to a bar, then sitting straight across the table from me and just glaring at me intensely. I started thinking “gee, she must really hate me” and made my move on the girl sitting next to me. Who was the only one I could actually talk to, because it was just too noisy in that bar.
There were other times when I immediately picked up hints from girls because they made it abundantly clear what they want from me, but they simply weren’t my type, so I basically ignored them, which only made them try harder. I realize now that to them, genuine disinterest and blissful ignorance must be indistinguishable.
If you get a “hint” wrong you could end up having a meeting with HR, being told to “fuck off, creep”, or some other negative result. So men might see what could be a hint, but the price of getting it wrong is too high for many reasons. So you either stop looking for them or just stop acting on anything that isn’t direct.
It’s also kinda the woman placing the responsibility and the work on the guy for making the “real” moves in an encounter or relationship. He needs to pursue her and pay attention, not the other way around.
I would also add there is an element of the expected pursuit of the woman after she has said no. Like, no means try harder. I think it’s a good thing that a guy (or whoever) backs off once someone says they aren’t interested. You shouldn’t expect the guy you like to push past the first rejection then call the guy you don’t like a creep for ignoring your no.
Like there isnt decades of movies that hinge on this whole premise too.
Especially in a workplace. If you decide to actually ask out a coworker No doesnt just mean no, no means “be very careful about what you say and how you act towards them for the immediate future in case they take something you say or do as a further advance and decide to report you to HR. Or decide that you are now treating them poorly because they rejected you and decide to report you to HR.”
Just to be clear, these arent the ONLY outcomes and yes are extreme but I have seen both happen first hand.
Generally speaking, don’t shit where you eat. Which is another way of saying, don’t try dating in the workplace. That is almost always a bad idea, in many ways.
Regardless of any other fallout, I’d rather be someone women feel comfortable around, not someone they think “oh jeez, I have to be sure not to give any indication he might read as flirting.”
Yeah. I would totally rather not be treated as a creep. Sure wish I had a button I could press to change that.
It’s common sense not to flirt at your job. You say something like “I’m going to the Flaming Donkey for a few drinks around 8 PM. Drop by if you want.” If he or she doesn’t show, then that’s it.
I wasn’t making a judgment on the concept, only offering that it does happen. You are correct of course, it’s not good to date co-workers.
I too suck at it.
If I am picking up on a vibe I don’t go all in. I point at the elephant and say: look, I think I see an elephant. Is it really there? My eyes play tricks in me sometimes, but I could swear you brought this elephant with you into the room.
Then they will say: yes, I did, or no, no elephant.
And then you carry on, with or without the elephant.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
How am I supposed to tell that you’re actually hinting and this isn’t just you? I’ve literally had that happen where a girl seemed super into me. Constantly talking to me and coming up with every reason to be close to me or touch me. I asked her out and she had a boyfriend and I’m just like “alright I’m never asking a girl out again this shits infuriating”
So now I just don’t even think about it much. Occasionally I’ll see a pretty girl and want to interact with her but then remember my experiences and go back to not caring.
Tbh, it sounded like she was into you
It’s happened multiple times with multiple women and I’ve resigned myself to believing it’s clearly something about me that no one is willing to tell me is a problem so I’ve just given up entirely ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I honestly cannot tell if anyone is flirting with me or not. I also cannot imagine that anyone would flirt with me in the first place, but if anyone did, I still wouldn’t know. The only flirting I knew was when my wife called me up and lectured me for not asking her out. Apparently, she had been flirting with me and I didn’t know. I am not bright.
Doesn’t mean you’re not bright! You might just have difficulty recognizing emotion / subtext like with ASD.
