"I have a boyfriend" - do men and women perceive this line differently?

[Acsenray]

To me it means nothing more than “I’m not married.”

<ducks>

[Dunderman]

@Kayeby

I noticed that most women believed that the line “I have a boyfriend” meant “I’m not interested”, while a few men in the thread thought it meant “try harder”.

I was in that thread, and I’ll say now what I said then: those men are idiots.

To men: if you ask a woman out and she says that she has a boyfriend but is still friendly, do you take it as a sign to back off or do you see it as the woman playing games?

The first, but it doesn’t matter. If she’s “playing games” by saying she has a boyfriend, I’m not interested anyway.

[Mtgman]

@Chronos

Yet more proof that I will never understand romantic or hopefully-romantic interpersonal interactions. If a woman tells me “I’m not interested”, I presume that means she’s not interested, and stop pursuing her (but might keep an eye out for a change in her interest in me).

I think you may need to review the literature a bit more.

According to one study, up to 20 percent of long-term relationships begin when one or both partners are involved with others. Evolutionary psychologists call this “mate poaching.” This figure holds steady across age groups and among couples who are married, living together or dating, according to psychologists who polled some 16,000 individuals in 53 countries as part of the International Sexuality Description Project. Most surprising to researchers: Sweetheart-stealing is prevalent across continents and cultures, although it is notably less common in East Asia.

In North America, 62 percent of men and 40 percent of women say they’ve attempted to entice another’s mate for a short-term fling. Some 47 percent of men and 32 percent of women say they’ve succumbed to such attempts. The more sexual equality in a culture, the closer women come to matching men in the number of poaching attempts.

Or for more in-depth information, there’s these linked studies from 2001 which studied human mate poaching in two sample groups, undergraduate college students, and mature adults. Typographical errors in the below quotes are mine, I’m transcribing it becuase it’s a PDF which won’t allow copy-paste.

Around 85% of men and women reported that someone else had tried to attract them away from a past mating partner for a long-term relationship defection or for a short-term sexual desertion.
…
The reported successes of poaching attraction experiences appeared to match what has been found in previous studies on romantic infidelity. For example, over 40% of men and 30% of women in our undergraduate sample reported that they have been successfully attracted away from a partner at some point in their lives, for either a quick, short-term desertion or a more permanent, long-term defection.

So, various flavors of “I have a SO” don’t seem to be too serious a barrier. Even if you approached nothing but attached women you could still end up batting 300, and that ain’t bad. If you approached nothing but attached men, you could end up batting 400, and that’s some serious on-base time.

Enjoy,
Steven

[nevermore]

Interesting, Mtgman, but I’d be willing to bet that a not-insignificant number of those able to be enticed away from a long-term partner would not answer the enticer with “I have a boyfriend.”

[alice_in_wonderland]

Every time I’ve said “I have a boyfriend.” it’s because I had a boyfriend. It’s never actually worked as a deterrent for particularly determined men. I always assumed that was because they were jerks. I didn’t realize they thought I was speaking in code.

When I’ve not had a boyfriend and haven’t been interested I’ve said “I’m not interested.” which seems to be a little bit more successful.

[you_with_the_face]

I use the “IHAB” line all the time, even when I don’t have a boyfriend. Why? Because it rolls off the tongue easily, is ego-sparing, and doesn’t make the rejection personal.

“Sorry, not interested” almost always leads to further probing and prying and begging. This is the last thing that I want to deal with when I’m walking down the street or sitting on the train.

“I have a boyfriend” is another way of saying “I’m not available so quit asking”. It needs no further clarification or explanation; it gets the point across without sounding like a flatout rejection.

Any guy who is too socially dense to understand what is communicated by the IHAB excuse and chooses to persist is the same type of guy who would not be detered when told “sorry, not interested”. So I shed no tears for the poor schelp who just doesn’t get it and wishes everyone could be perfectly honest. Dating is a hard sport, yes, but recognizing a rejection for what it is is not rocket science.

[Intravenus_De_Milo]

@Kayeby

To women: if you have used the boyfriend excuse, was it a kind way of letting him down or was it part of your flirting ritual?

I used this excuse once, as a last resort to a guy that I just wasn’t interested in at all. The weird thing is that, while I am generally easy-going and friendly around both males and females, I don’t consider myself to be a flirty type. So when this guy came up to me and immediately started in on his “what do you like to do in your free time?” spiel, approximately five seconds after first introducing himself to me (this was in a drug store, FWIW, not in a place with a storied tradition of hosting random hook-ups like a bar or club), for some reason or another I was completely turned-off and tried to evade his questions about my personal life as best I could, hoping that I would send the "I’m not interested, can’t you tell?"signals well enough so that he would leave me alone.

But oh no, not this guy. He eventually found out where I worked (in a store in the same mall where he worked), came there, and started in with the same questions. Still not interested in him, I told him about my imaginary boyfriend (I was indeed single at the time), complete with a fake name and where I had “met” him. Instead of giving up then, the guy asked how long I had been going out with my sweetheart. When I said, “a few months”, he responded with, “Oh, so I still have a chance!”

Uhhh…NO YOU DON’T, ASSHOLE. Verbally expressing your hope that I will break up with my boyfriend, who as far as you know is real, does not make YOU more attractive to me.

So, in that moment, was I a lying bitch? Hell yes. To the more upstanding members of the male population, I apologize for this. However, I frankly don’t care what a guy who comes right out and tells me that he hopes for the dissolution of my current relationship thinks of me in that respect. I never expressed interest in you in the first place, what was I supposed to make you leave me alone?

On second thought…“Uggghhh…You’ll have to excuse me, my herpes is really flarin’ up today” would probably do as a good substitute for the fake boyfriend in the future

[CanvasShoes]

@Rigamarole

I’m a man. Call me crazy but I really do prefer honesty. If a girl tells me she has a boyfriend, yes I get it and will leave her alone, but if I found out she was really single and lying because she just doesn’t have the heart to tell me she’s not interested, I’d be kind of annoyed at that. (no, I wouldn’t still persist, I would just think she was a spineless liar)

No, we’re not spineless liars, it’s just that more often than not, a straight “I’m not interested” is aggressively translated by too many men (and Yes, Yes, of course exceptions like you exist), as “convince me” (as someone has already stated).

So if a woman doesn’t feel like arguing with an idiot who refuses to take no for an answer “IHAB” works. It doesn’t mean she’s spineless, it means she doesn’t have all night to argue the point.

[Walloon]

Given that it appears just as many men take “I have a boyfriend” to mean “convince me,” maybe honesty is still the best policy.

[Malacandra]

@CanvasShoes

No, we’re not spineless liars, it’s just that more often than not, a straight “I’m not interested” is aggressively translated by too many men (and Yes, Yes, of course exceptions like you exist), as “convince me” (as someone has already stated).

So if a woman doesn’t feel like arguing with an idiot who refuses to take no for an answer “IHAB” works. It doesn’t mean she’s spineless, it means she doesn’t have all night to argue the point.

That seems fair. For the sake of the occasional asshole, you reserve the right to treat all men as potential assholes. It’s hard to understand how any reasonable man could find this demeaning.

[zamboniracer]

@Walloon

Given that it appears just as many men take “I have a boyfriend” to mean “convince me,” maybe honesty is still the best policy.

Some men take IHAB to mean “Maybe you want to trade up”.

[Unintentionally_Blank]

Not having played the field, it seems like IHAB is really only necessary for folks that are otherwise too stupid to read the situation. I’ve seen folks of ALL marital situations behave ALL over the map. Luckily, I’m not that attractive to folks, so it’s pretty easy to make these statements without having to back them up. Of the half dozen or so women I was involved with when I was playing the field, several were involved with other people at the time.

The other thing to keep in mind is: The really attractive folks, it seems, will ALWAYS have a SO. That’s not an excuse to keep trying, it’s just a statement that it’s much easier to be involved when you have a larger pool to fish from.