I do have advice (to answer your question directly). It may or may not apply, but I’ll give it below, then follow up with my “answer-adjacent” observations that inform my suggestions.
My option 1 advice: don’t leave her wiggle room. Ask questions with a direct yes/no answer. Like, don’t ask her if she is hungry. Say, “Do you want to come with me to dinner right now?”
If she responds “I’m not sure I’m hungry,” keep on with the direct approach, “okay, I was wondering if you wanted to join me. I’ll take that as a no. Bye!”
Option 2 is: try to pinpoint where your cultural differences lie, adapt to the extent you want to, and possibly ask her to adapt as well. My comments below will make clearer what I mean.
My observations fall into two categories, cultural and individual. Read them or not, as you like, and derive what you like from them, or not.
CULTURAL: there are definitely cultures that feel that directness is rude, and/or that displeasing people with an answer they don’t want to hear is rude. Here’s a specific example: in a lot of Micronesian cultures, answering any question with “no” is rude. Even if “no” is the answer. So people will give answers that are far less blunt. As long as everyone is on the same page culturally, it works.
But you have to be in tune with the way things work. A non-Micronesian friend of mine, helping me adjust to life in Micronesia, gave me this advice: "don’t walk into a store and ask,“do you have eggs?” Because the answer will always be “yes,” even if they don’t have eggs, since “no” would be rude. Instead, ask, “where are your eggs?” Then they must either lead you to the eggs, or their giggle/vagueness will clue you in to what you needed to know which is: no, there are no eggs in this store today.
I liken it to local cultural rules regarding driving. In Boston drivers are (or were - I haven’t lived there in decades so maybe it is different now) quite aggressive. But as long as EVERYONE understands that, it’s fine. Trouble only arises if a driver from somewhere else cowers, thus confusing what is otherwise a well understood conversation among drivers,
On the other hand, most drivers where I live now (Hawai’i) are pretty polite. If I were to engage in Boston-driving, aggressive behavior, I’d likely cause accidents because there are unwritten, shared rules, about how people behave.
For me, anything works: Boston aggressiveness, Hawai’i mellowness, or anything else: as long as you all agree.
Seems like you and this person don’t share values regarding interactions. If you want, you can explore that, try to figure out what’s going on, and take it from there.
INDIVIDUAL: I am in no way qualified to comment, so ignore this if you like. But it sounds like she may be “overconnecting” thoughts and ideas. It’s something schizophrenics do all the time, and as a non-schizophrenic who shares that trait along with others who are also sane enough to function, I think certain personality types are prone to it.
For example: if you were to ask me if I wanted to go to dinner tomorrow, I might think, “tomorrow is my friend’s birthday! I was hoping to bake her a cake, but dammit, I haven’t left enough time in my schedule. Well, maybe if I keep my schedule to a minimum tomorrow, I’ll find time. But I do really need to meet with that group that plans to protest our plans to build a parking lot next to our office.”
You can just imagine the seemingly unrelated response that someone might give after that thought process. They might say, “I have a meeting with someone to discuss blah-blah-blah” which is not an answer but which makes sense to the person who internally connected all the dots.
Since I’m keenly aware that this is my tendency, I do my best to control it - but I’m almost 62 and have been working on insight and behavior modification for decades. At 20 or 30, with less insight than I have now, yet more intellectual energy, I’m sure many answers I gave to seemingly simple questions were…exhausting.
