Help me navigate the labirynth of a woman's mind.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So here’s my quandry, it’s like solving a logic puzzle:

There’s this girl I’ve been working with for about 5 months now. Well, I liked her soon as I saw her. To make a long story short, recently, she tells me she no longer has a boyfriend. Not just casualy,but really makes sure I understand she does’nt have a boyfriend anymore. She also tells me her guy friends have been asking her out, but she’s been saying no to all of them. My friends tell me I should take this as an invitation, so to speak, so I make my move. Well, I got her alone this past monday (we both have tuesday and wenesday off), and asked her out. Nothing special, I just kinda said “Hey, would you ever want to go out with me, you know, on a date?” (I know, it’s no shakespeare, but it got the point across). Well, she says “Yeah” and proceeds to write her number on a peice of paper for me, but says “This is my home number, but I’m not home often”. So I tell her i’ll just give her my number and she can call me. Great, the deed is done, and we exchange numbers. I thought it was alittle wierd she gave me a number she almost never uses, but c’est la vie. I had to work the desk that day, so I go back to my desk.

Well, about an hour later, she comes down to visit me and says "Here's my cell phone number, if I'm not home, call me here, I'll answer".  Then she starts a small conversation with me and seems to be real happy.  I got a pretty good vibe from her.  Well, I told her, once again, to call me so we could set something up.  She does'nt call me the whole weekend.  So I give her the benefit of the doubt and figgure there's a good reason she does'nt call me. So when I came back to work this thursday, I go to her office to see if she's free next tuesday.  She's kinda busy and when she sees me she just kinda gives me a small smile and says "Hey" and goes back to work.  Undaunted, I press forward and ask her if she's free this tuesday.  After a short but awkward pause she says "no,I'm doing volunteer work, remember".  I remember, but it still feels like she blew me off so I'm kinda speechless.  Then she says "I'll call you about setting up a date".  Ok, but here's the wierd thing;  It's been two days and she still has'nt called.  I saw her today and kinda just avoided eye contact with her cause I felt like a jackass.

So I get the feeling she pulled an audible on me. I’m pretty sure I just got the blow off from her. What do you guys think here? If I did get the “not interested” sign from her I’m confused. I did’nt pester her for a date or anything. Did my best to let feel comfortable with saying “no” to the date, if she so choosed. You’d think if she was interested, she would’ve called. So why the hell is she blowing me off now? Why did’nt she just say no when I asked her out in the first place?

The rejection really does’nt feel bad, it’s just that I’m so confused. If i did something wrong here, I’d like to know, that way I don’t do it again.

2

She says: CALL ME.

You say: No, no no! I don’t wanna do that! NO! You should call me. That’s the way society dictates men and women court. It really is. Woman call me, the man. So call me.

She says (to herself): Screw it. This chump has no initiative. Buh bye.

3

Yeah, I think you blew it. She wanted you to call her; that’s why she gave you the cell phone number after you told her to call you.

Still, try giving her a call on the cell when you know she’s not doing charity work or washing her hair or something. The interest was there–maybe you can salvage some of it.

4

Furthermore, never, ever, ever, ask someone if they want tp go on a date with you sometime. Asking the question in the abstract has some major problems:

  1. It’s a great deal of pressure to put on someone. “Accept me or reject me for all time! Now!” No one reacts well to that kind of pressure.

  2. Even when it works, it creates exactly what you have here–an awkward period where the two people have agreed to a date, but making the arrangements is up in the air.

In the future, this is what you need to say when you ask a girl out: "Hey, would you like to go to [specific event/place] with me [specific time]?

If she says yes, then right then and there finalize the plans–“Great! I’ll get [tickets/reservations/etc]. Would you like me to pick you up or do you want to meet there?” Then set a time.

If she says no to that specific event but has any sort of resonable excuse, wait a week, then ask again to another event. If she says no again, then the ball is in her court–if she dosen’t suggest an alternative (No! I’m busy Friday. Are they showing the play on Saturday?") then you have to let it drop, lest you look like you are harrassing her.

If she says “maybe” and says she dosen’t know if she can (i.e., that she may be busy) say something like “Cool. I’ll check back with oyu the day after tomorrow and see, ok?” By making it clear when you are going to ask her again, and having her agree then that she willl know, you don’t have to spend days and days wondering about whether or not you should ask her again or is that nagging or is she waiting to be asked or . . . . .

All of this is stil relevant in this situation–call her and ask her out agin to a psecific event–not just “Are you busy Tuesday?” See what happens.

5

What I have done on a couple of occasions, because the first phone call is the toughest one, is call when you are pretty sure they are not in. Hopefully they will have an anwering machine or voice mail, and leave a brief message such as: “sorry I missed you, I will try again later or you can call me back at…”. For some reason, when she calls back or we see each other and she mentions she got the message, it seems to take some of the pressure off.

6

Forgot to add, if she happens to answer, it is too late to back and and you have to talk. Either way, this seems to work very well.

7

Well, I feel like a royal jackass now. I did’nt real think too much of the “why don’t you call me instead” thing. Most of the relationships Ive been in, the girl was the one who usually initiated it, I was just sort of standing around slack-jawed.

Oh well, c’est la guerre. I liked her alot but I’ll get over it, life has delivered a swift punch to my crotch plenty of times before.

8

Not so fast there slick! It may well be that the situation is salvageable. Sure, you may have gotten off on the wrong foot but I don’t think that it is out of the question that you call her and try.

If I may wax philosophical for a moment here, I am going to lay some Wisdom with a capitol W on you. I recently had the chance to spend a lot of time with my grandmother as she was on her deathbed. She told me something that blew me away. What she said was that when you get to the end of the road, what you regret is not the things that you tried to do and failed as, but those things that you wish that you had tried.

Take a risk! If you really like this person, chase her a little!

9

I agree. She threw out the hints that she was available. You casually asked her out, then said “call me.” That put the burden of pursuit on her, after she made a point of saying she was available. If she overanalyzes things like a lot of us girls do, she may think it was a pity date because she mentioned her breakup or something. She wants to be pursued a little bit. I say call, and either leave a message or talk to her (no hang ups!) and say that you’re disappointed that the date never happened, but there’s such and such event you’d really like to take her to.

Just don’t wait too long to do it, or you’ll lose your window of opportunity.

10

i agree that you probably should have just phoned her and arranged a date, and unless by now its too late i think you should just go for one last attempt at a specfic thing, cinema etc and if she gives some lame excuse shes outta there, if she says yes you’ve saved it, in my experience not knowing is certainly a lot worse than knowing, even if the knowing means a NO.

In my case i liked this girl, and we met up one day and chatted, got on well, etc said we would meet again later that week, so i said i would phone after we had both finished work, so i did. but after about 3 hours of no-one answering (mobile) i gave up, very bemused, eventually about 2 days later she sent a short message sayin ‘sorry had to work late’ fine i thought just see her again some other time soon, however 3 months later hadn;t seen her given up really,

But friend of mine, and hers has a house party, we both go and get together - great i think - she says she wanted to see me in the summer but was too busy etc, i didn;t buy it but wasn;t going 2 say anything. she then says we were going out. even better thinks me, however, and i kind you not, 5 minutes later she says she is breaking up with me, as you can imagine i went a bit angry (i was drunk 2) and had a go at her for being weird. anyway a friend of hers comes up and tells me shes having a hard time at home - divorce etc, and i feel really guilty so go and apoligese and she says she just doesn;t need a boyfriend to complicate things., and although i thought she was being melodramatic i understood and said nothing, she then went home saying she felt really mean. -

right so far so good, as you can imagine i am not happy, but i feel guilty but also pleased that we got together -

however, two hours later a friend turns up at the party and says they had just seen her in the local club, so much for going home, and then about 3 days later while im at school, a friend mentions totally casual that she had a boyfriend, so by now im really pissed off, but here comes the final straw - she doesn;t have any family problems or anything, she just made it up, and it worked., i felt guilty for having a go at her, i mean how many things can wrong with just one insignificant girl who i didn;t really have many strong feelings for, just so many lies and excuses, and the worst part is, its such a typical story for me.
Right thanks for bearing with me, what do you think? is she insane? am i too nice? or is this a familiar sounding story? am i the only one(along with one thomas sterns) to have such odd relationships - well 5 minutes doesn;t really count does it but whatever.

one last thing, sorry if my spellings, abbreviations and short hand is totally illiterate, is their any rules against that kind of thing?

11

I wouldn’t say there is a rule, but there is a signifigant social stigma–people around here tend to assume that if you can’t find the shift key, then you must not have much of interest to say, and only skim your posts (if they read them at all.)

As far as the girl goes: just count yourself lucky that you didn’t get even more entagled. She would have made you ten times as miserable if she had wanted you more.

12

To the OP - I’ll second the advice to always ask for a specific day and thing to do when asking someone out on a date. And you definitely should have called her, but it’s not too late to try once more.

HomerJ, I would not pursue this woman any further.

And since you asked, no, there are no rules about short hand, etc., but your post will be much more readable to people here if you don’t type in all lower case and type out the word instead of using things like “2” for “to” or “too.” Welcome to the boards.

13

OK, cool, sorry just had to find out, some places dont allow it. I only used it on that post so much as it was so damn long. Dont worry i dont intend to go after her anymore, it was more to show that almost everyone will meet some girl like that, or 2, or possible even 3. Oh and also women are the route of all evil, i think. Well Eve did tempt Adam…

14

You know, in college, I once negotiated a simulated NATO expansion treaty with russia at an event that encompassed over 100 people(ok, not that impressive, but you get the point), I’ve talked wives into leaving abusive relationships that’ve lasted for years, and I’ve actually convinced a homicidal psychopath, with nothing to lose, to drop his weapon and get in the police car with me, yet at 23 years old, I still have’nt been able to fully grasp this whole dating thing. As much as I try to play it cool, I still stutter and get nervous when I’m around a girl I like.

Anyways, I called her tonight after she got off her shift and got her voicemail. As soon as the tone beeped, I forgot everything I was going to say and just said “I was just calling to see what you were up to, guess I’ll talk to you later”. Doh.

Well thanks for the replies. I can’t really dump my problems like this on my friends because I’d never hear the end of it. Anyways, it’s always good to get acouple of different perspectives on this sort of thing.

15

Eve was framed, and I hardly doubt women are the root of all evil.

However, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion on that. Have you thought about switching to the other team?

16

hmm possibly, but im definatly on the side that believes Eve did it. However was it a fig or an apple, i always believed it was an apple, but recently i keep hearing it was a fig? Anyone care to enlighten me - but dont let it turn this into a relgious thread, i like it were it is.

17

Posted by Homer J: “Oh and also women are the route of all evil, i think. Well Eve did tempt Adam…”

Keep on thinkin’ all them happy thoughts, Homer. That leaves more members of the fair sex for me. :wink:

Also, I’ve traveled along some beautiful routes with women, but I believe the term you were grasping for is “root”.

18

although of your point are valid, i think you should relax slighlty, it was merely intended as a joke, and then a mis-spelt word, i doubt me making this joke really makes your sex life that much better, but if i am wrong, and it does then im pleased i am bringing joy to people

19

Well, if anyone is intersted, she just called me, we talked for a bit and found out she’s not looking to getting into anything serious right now. At least, I assume, not with me. This, of course is a huge turn off for me. Once again, I feel like someone’s punched me straight in the crotch. It also leaves me pretty confused. Hey, my Tai Chi instructor always told me, “If life keeps on beating you, pretty soon it’ll get tired”. Either that, or I figgure I wind up going nuts and build some type of weather-controlling device to rule the world.

20

Just make sure that weather control device is used for good! GOOD!