Boilerplate advice, as always, applies to the general, not necessarily the specific.
breaks dignified silence
And yet it’s only just the other day on these boards that someone was saying that yes, she knew she was gorgeous and she really hated it when guys hit on her just because of that, because they were obviously only interested in the superficial her and couldn’t care less whether she was deep or shallow. So calling a woman REALLY beautiful and asking her out on the strength of that doesn’t necessarily do the trick, either.
Sorry, I know I annoy the shit out of people with my negativity. Don’t mind me.
If you’re A, B and C, then you’re probably also D: taken. :rolleyes: 
Women (and people in general) aren’t stupid. We can quite clearly see through your intentions. If a man walks up to me, eyes firmly on my tits the entire time, and then says, “Wow, you’re REALLY beautiful. Can we go out sometime?” well then, I can clearly see he isn’t sincere or is only thinking with his dick. If a guy walks up to you, looking into your eyes, well that’s different. We are very social creatures (humans) and there are so many non verbal cues we pick up on- his posture, his tone of voice, eyecontact, if he’s sweating, etc. All of those tiny things together help us gauge whether or not the guy is being sincere. It’s the same way we can all usually tell if someone is blatantly lying to us.
And honestly, I’m not hot shit by any stretch of the imagination, but I know I’ve whined on the board before about how not a day goes by without some skeez hitting on me. But the difference is that I do mean skeez- starring at my tits the whole time, rubbing his upper thigh while looking at my chest, etc. and so forth. That type of getting hit on gets old real fast. A sincere, nice guy issuing you a compliment is always nice though.
I wonder. If someone says rejection “isn’t that bad”, then I question if they’ve ever really experienced it.
Well who doesn’t move on? Of course we do. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful to be rejected. But you didn’t actually answer the question: Have you actually really put yourself on the line, asked someone out on a date, and had them say no? And if so, didn’t it hurt emotionally for that to happen?
Yes, I have put my ass on the line, asked someone on a date, and had them flat out say no. On more than one occasion.
It stung, but I wouldn’t say it hurt emotionally. Hurt emotionally to me is like what happens when a long loved family pet dies, a horrible loss in your life occurs, etc. It only just stung a bit because I knew, obviously, that person wasn’t the one for me because if they were, we’d be dating. Obviously they don’t see in me what I know I am- pretty fuckin’ cool. 
I know - hard to believe, but I think it may be true.
That’s something I would not have thought of: the need for selfconfidence to be able to break something off cleanly. But it makes sense: finding that inner place where you have your own power instead of only reacting to things and ‘giving away’ your power to others.
Amen to that! That last date I went on, where there was no connection? She emailed me that night and said that she was not interested in further relationship… as I was preparing to do the same. Yes I was disappointed… but I was also hugely relieved. I knew where I stood!. I didn’t have to wonder.
At the end of the day, I felt cheerful.
Hmmm… o.k. I would say it doesn’t have to be as bad as your dog dying to call it “hurt”.
Well, I mean, it’s all semantics. But really for me, it’s nothing more than a very, very transitory sting to my pride (more than anything)- my heart doesn’t hurt like it does when my boyfriend of three years and I break it off.
Well, I wouldn’t put it that way. I wouldn’t call it “rejection” either, she just didn’t realize that she’d been asked on a date. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse, or just different; very, very different.
There is a follow-up to the story. The Flower Incident was 11 years ago, and she and I are still friends. I haven’t seen her in 10 years, but we still IM once every couple weeks or so. Not into me, I suppose, but not repulsed or indifferent, either. She even married another guy she met at the company where we worked.
I said everyone’s experiences were their own, and that’s one of mine. Whatever I’m doing wrong (or just very, very different), and how to change, I don’t know if anyone else can answer; no matter how well-meaning.
I’m not sure how you can think it’s any different. A different approach maybe, but the reason is exactly the same. If all a guy has to go on is your looks when he asks you out, how can it be anything but “thinking with his dick”?
If he’s actually looking at your face, there’s a tiny chance he may actually be able to differentiate you from other women. Faces vary more than tits do.
I think it’s the difference between “I like your looks, and I’d like to get to know you and find out if I like your personality too,” and “I like your looks, and I don’t care about the rest.” The former is appealing, the latter less so.
Well, no, I wouldn’t say it has to be as bad as getting dumped after a 3-year relationship to qualify as “hurt” either.
But honestly, I suspect that attractive people have a rather warped perception of what rejection really feels like. Yeah, you asked a couple guys out and they said no, but the week before you probably had ten guys telling you how beautiful you are, right? I think more average-looking people don’t have that constant ego-boost.
Oh that’s so silly though. Of those 10 guys telling me I was beautiful, 9.75 were skeezy mother fuckers that screamed that same line at the last 25 girls that walked by. It means nothing when you receive an empty compliment, I assure you.
I might get hit on a lot, but I’ve had very few relationships. The last time I was sincerely hit on** would be last March and we dated for a few months before it ended for logistical reasons. The time before that was at least 8 months before that and that relationship ended up sucking obviously. And before that relationship? Well I went about 2 years without really actively dating anyone, because no one came by that was both sincere and struck my fancy, as it were. So, no, I’m not some lovin’ machine of sexy or anything. The fact is, most dates pan out to nothing. Hell, some dates are more than just washes, they are downright awful.
Now, during those down times I did have a few casual dates (usually we’d go on one date, it’d be awful, done) and I certainly had my heart set on certain guys but ended up getting let down. It stung. It really hurt my pride and made me ask, “Well why DOESN’T he want me? Aren’t I smart enough? Pretty enough? Interesting enough?” But then I got over it not that long after, because clearly that guy was not the one for me.
**That I noticed. I’m utterly oblivious and I’ve had a few times that after the fact, the guy has said, “I was so in love with you! But you rejected me!” Hey buddy, you never asked me out, so how the hell was I supposed to know you liked me? So yeah, maybe this is why I’m so insistent that if you like someone, you need to actually ask them out.
I have actually had this happen to me.
I was at a gas station, talking to a friend on my cell phone, laughing over something, and when I hung up, the man at the car next to me came over and literally said, “I just want to tell you that you’re a beautiful woman. I’d love to take you out. Can I get your phone number?”
I was so astonished, that I almost fell over. That stuff just doesn’t happen to me. If men notice me, it’s as a genderless conversation piece. Or that I’m really smart. Or that I have a nice voice. Or, apparently, that I’m a vagina with limbs. If I get treated like a human being, the fact that I’m female is lost. If I’m treated as a desirable female, the respect due to a human being is out the window.
I managed to gather my wits and smile (grin) and thank him, and then I managed to say “thank you for asking, but I’m not dating right now.”
Why? Because I didn’t know this guy from Adam. He was, literally, a complete stranger. I wasn’t even tempted to give him my number, because I’ve heard too many horror stories, from friends and on this board. I’d had no chance at all to get a read off him, I’m crap at reading men when I’m all het up over whether there might be a chance at romance, and I don’t have anyone with me to give an objective read of the situation.
He asked me if he could give me his number, and I said yes. When he did, I thanked him again, told him he’d just made my day with his sweet compliment, and I went my way. I smiled the whole rest of the day, and I smile every time I think of that. Yet, I never considered calling him, because I didn’t feel safe.
I have no doubt that if I decided to go on a date with him and mentioned it to my friends, I’d have been shot with a tranquilizer dart, fitted with a radio tag collar and gps, and then followed at a discreet distance by a nondescript sedan to make sure Nothing Bad happened to me.
This, people, is my non-dating life. If a guy I’d known and been friendly with on a casual basis had said that to me, I’d have been beyond delighted, and the answer would have been yes.
I suspect that, in an arranged-marriage situation, I’d be the creepy older guy that posters such as anaamika and anu-la1979 have complained about on the boards. What’s the point of a marriage if the other person doesn’t want you there?
I applaud you for giving a polite but direct answer.
You know what else is interesting? A lot of women – many on this board – said that a bit of shyness is a turn-on. So either different women think differently about it (a possibility I’m willing to entertain), or there is some subtle difference between shyness and nervousness. Much like looking a stranger in the face vs the tits.
I have to mention how much I appreciate the responses in this thread. Very civil! Normally these types of threads don’t get more than half a page before accusations of misogyny start flying like so many hijacked planes. This thread has sort of put me in a bad mood all day, but I really appreciate it. There’s a lot to learn here.