To echo others, guys are not good at subtle. Things that are obvious to women go right over our heads.
For us, obvious sign of interest = grabbing our junk. Anything less than that is ambiguous.
Too many false alarms, in my experience. In the past, I had several experiences where a woman was sending all the textbook signals that she was interested in me. However, when I pursued it, I got the usual “I just want to be friends” or “I think of you as like a brother” response. Because of that, for a long time in my life, a woman had to pretty much make the first physical move for me to know that she was interested.
I am just checking in to urge and encourage all the ladies out there to adopt HazelNutCoffee’s method of “signaling.” I think even tdn would catch that signal. 
There once was a girl, let’s call her Kay. I met her a party, we hit it off. So I asked her if she wanted to go jogging some time(cause it made sense in the context of our conversation to do so), she turned me down.
A year later I meet her again, at another party sometime in January. We hit it off again, but I don’t make a move because I figure acting interested is probably just her way of being pleasant. Then while I’m trying to lure another girl into coming on a beer run, Kay volunteers to come with me. She asks some questions about my dating history. Often stands a little too close. I don’t take the hint.
A week later I see her in the library, she tells me about the sexy leather pants she has just bought and says I really should see her in them. Says we should hangout sometime and gives me her number.
Unsure if she’s into me that way, I ask a lady friend about it. A lady friend who’s dating Kay’s brother(I do not mention Kay’s name). She laughs because Kay had also spoken to her about this. She won’t tell me exactly what Kay said.
Still unsure when I call Kay, I ask her to hangout at a friend’s house. While there she poses in her sexy leather pants, sits on my lap often, and gets pissy and says she’s going to go home when I call a stripper(not anything weird, there were several people there), so I hangout in my friends room with her while my buddies watch the stripper I hired. Because I still couldn’t tell how she felt towards me, we watched the animated Return of the King. Wasn’t that just as much fun?
Then Kay and I go downtown to see my another friend of mine play at CBGB’s. Afterwards, on the walk home from the subway, still unsure if she’s into me, I suggest we take a shortcut over the frozen lake… thinking girls like stuff like that.
She declines, but when we get to her door she asks if I’d like to come in for awhile. By this point I’m feeling pretty sure she isn’t into me. After all, she did decline a walk across the lake.
So I decline her offer, and witha smile she says “no really, you can come up” And I still don’t get it, and decline, and go home.
Fortunately that wasn’t the end of it. A few days later she invited me over to watch movies, and that night I was pleasantly disillusioned.
The moral of this story is; yes, guys can really be that dense. I wasn’t even a shy, or akward, or inexperienced lad. Yet, while the above is all true and accurately told, things were still somehow unclear.
There’s anothe rstory I could tell, much funnier, but I’m not sure it’s appropriate for a family friendly board.
I’m not sure I would. I think she’d have to try multiple times before I get it. Like, lots and lots of times.
Thanks to all who have responded.
Ahh…so nice that you realize that.
Family friendly board? Where’d you get that idea?
No, seriously. It’s not a family friendly board at all.
Unless your family discusses who amongst you has given analingus to a golden retreiver over Christmas dinner.
Hey! It was a one time thing, and I was drunk.
But the bitch loved it.
I don’t think you were being terribly dense here. It seemed like she was giving you mixed signals.
My mistake, I guess that’s just further proof newbies are freakin’ tards. All them, everywhere, even me.
That’s what I thought! You’re the first person ever to agree.
This is quite right. A female friend of mine told me that women tend to tell each other that they need to go to the bathroom by asking “do you need to go to the bathroom?” Evidently, the question is so commonly understood to mean “I have to go to the bathroom” that it would be considered rude for the other woman to say “no”, even if she did not, in fact, need to go to the bathroom.
If I had to make a case that women are crazy, this would be my chief piece of evidence. I don’t understand how people can communicate like this.
Just yesterday I was purchasing some chips at a convenience store. The attractive woman at one of the registers (that she opened for me) started chatting me up.
It was a busy afternoon. Customers were lining up. She made prolonged eye contact & was exceptionally friendly. We spoke for about a minute about the weather and eggs of all things. Was she just in a good mood and felt like yammering with the nice man? Was she flirting? Maybe. I don’t know. If I were to ask her to coffee or something and it turned out that I had gotten the wrong idea it would make an awkward situation. I would probably avoid going to that gas station, which would suck because it’s the one closest to my work.
I think the idea is saying “do you need to go to the bathroom?” is more polite to the gentlemen present than saying “could you come with me over there so we can talk about these guys behidn their backs?”
Edit: Being the rude bastard I am, whenever I hear a girl ask another that I say soemthing like “take your time gossiping about us, we’ll be grunting and arm wrestling”
I’ve heard that they say this on their own, though, even when there are no guys to plot against.
I wouldn’t call it crazy, just communicating on a different wavelength. It’s funny how all women know exactly what it means, but very few men do.
I used to date a woman, who, whenever we passed by Dairy Queen, would ask me if I wanted ice cream. When I said “no, not really”, she’d get pissed. She had to explain the secret woman language to me a few times before I got it.
Don’t try to steal Oldie’s thunder, man!
And besides, I thought it was a male golden retriever.
Naw. Noobs are cute. Welcome to the boards. Here’s a history lesson for ya.
Anaamika’s story just reminded me of what I liked about college: the ability to get to know people one might be ‘interested in’ without assuming automatically that everyone’s going to jump into bed with one another.
IE, the chance to be FRIENDS.
As an adult, it seems those opportunities dwindle; people always assume a sexual motive. As a women who really LIKES men <as well as liking loving them> it really sucks to know my friendship options are limited by those assumptions. =/
I’ve never heard of the bathroom thing, but I’m dense that way (female here).
In my experience (as a guy), I can say that every woman who has communicated their interest by stating it outright has been desperate, damaged, and/or barking mad. I’m sorry we as a society haven’t progressed past this state of affairs but unfortunately it seems to be where we’re stuck, and everyone knows it.
This is not to say that I became fluent in secret woman-signals before I got married… in fact I’m still sort of hazy about how that whole happy arrangement came about.
About the bathroom thing - I HATE that. I never understood why other women seemingly can’t go to the bathroom by themselves because they need to gossip. I really hate gossip, it’s very low-class and I try not to engage in it. So I have been party to conversations where the other woman gets insistent for me to go with her, “Well, come with me anyway, I don’t want to go alone.”
Excuse me! I am enjoying my meal here. Please go by yourself.
First, Read this. Would you consider that tactic identical or non-identical to “pulling a Hazelnut”?
Onwards to Scenario B. Cute person seems to me to be acting quite friendly and without having asked me out has said straight-out how much she enjoys hanging out with me. I hope am being similarly friendly and obviously interested and I say that her company is the high point of my days. So far I’ve only reciprocated, I have not done anything to up the ante and move things along, right? How MUCH of an additional gesture would you expect from me before considering the proverbial tennis ball to be back in your court?
Scenario B could actually be Scenario C, in which cute person is just a generically friendly person and does enjoy my company but does not have the hots for me, but if I think maybe she is, I’m going to try to advance it along a bit. Sometimes that does not seem to be sufficient and is interpreted as lack of interest on my part. Is it my imagination that you’re interested in me? Is it your imagination that I’m interested in you? Suspense is all part of the fun!