dude, the bambi thread is in Great Debates.
OK, I have a story; although in my defence, the man in question was so outrageously handsome and well put together that once I and every other female in the room with a pulse had spotted him as a fine bit of stuff, he slid off into the realms of:
“Get a grip, curly chick, you’d have no chance with the likes of that”.
And also, he was Spanish and Mediterranean types are far more kissy and tactile than us repressed UK/Irelanders.
Aaaaaaaaaaanyway, not to embarrass myself too much, all I can say is that I spent about three weeks in the company of this man and one morning, while we were sitting on his balcony, watching the sunrise (sunrise on the Mediterranean sea - not to be sniffed at) and he told me that if that sun came up one more time without him having had the balls to tell me something, he might very well have to go and shoot himself.
(Melodramatic? Yup, I thought so)
Me - What’s that, then J?
Him - I love you
Me - Har de har har, that’s a good one! Where shall we go for brekkie, you daft sod?
Him - Pass me my gun - I might just have to shoot you, too.
He went absolutely mental and told me that he couldn’t believe anyone as intelligent as me could possibly be so obtuse.
That’s when the penny dropped.
I can still hear the echo of the clang.
The moral of the story is, chaps, threaten to shoot yourself and her, jump up and down, shouting at the object of your desire and tell her she is obtuse.
She’ll be putty in your hands.
Actually, the real moral of the story is that like most people on here, I had dismissed any notion of his being interested in me as so preposterous to be clinically delusional, and it never entered my head to change that viewpoint.
**
**
Women are basically insecure. See, if a woman asked the above question and was turned down, she would immediately start thinking, “Oh, no he rejected me! All guys want sex, right? What kind of guy rejects an offer like? I must be the ugliest woman alive, or maybe he noticed those 5 pounds I gained–I knew I shouldn’t have had that piece of cake for dessert! He must think I’m a total slut! WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME???”
And on and on and on. Our capacity for self-criticism is limitless.
I’m relatively sure I don’t get flirted with often - I know the whole point of this thread is that, as a man, I wouldn’t be aware of it if I did, but I think it’s a safe assumption when women avoid eye contact with you that they’re not flirting, right?
Well, actually there were a few women who behaved flirtatiously around me, but I think it’s usually been due to the “safety” factor. I’m “safe” to act flirty around, because she knows I won’t try anything.
And everyone knows what happens when you make a move when she doesn’t want you to, right? Things get very, very uncomfortable, you apologize, she apologizes, you feel like the most undesirable human ever to walk the planet, she feels guilty for “leading you on”. It’s a scene best avoided altogether.
[hijack]
Recent conversation between myself and nice man I’ve just met:
He: Are you going to laugh at all my jokes, or what?
Me: No, I only laugh if it’s funny.
:smack: Be nice to nice man you just met.
Nice man gave me his number anyways.
[/hijack]
Actually, the eye contact depends on her level of shyness. I can barely speak to men I’m attracted to, but I’ll talk everyone else’s ear off!
Some women don’t ask men out because we feel extremely unattractive. The last thing we want is that “oh god, get me away from this desperate ugly chick” look. So we send “subtle” signals. You see, if they’re subtle, you can safely ignore them and avoid an uncomfortable scene because neither party actually acknowledged the interest. Or, if you choose, you can pick up on them and act accordingly.
Anyway, if we have to throw ourselves at you, you must not be very interested, so why should we waste our time? If you were interested you would have initiated the flirting, right?..right?
Aw, crap!
~one very unattractive woman (I think) who refuses to ever ask a man out again (never had good luck with it -ever.)
I might have Miller beat. In first grade Scotty Ferguson sat next to me in the auditorium no matter how many times I changed my seat. He followed me around the playground trying to hold my hand and gave me his dessert every day. It wasn’t until college that I finally figured out he liked me.
So I’ve been an idiot about such things for a long time. In our high school it was customary for the football players’ girlfriends to wear their jerseys on game day. It was a very big deal to be asked to wear a guy’s number and every girl was sensitive to even the slightest indication a guy might ask her the big question. My junior year one guy asked me if I was going to be wearing number 45, his number you see. I obliviously chattered that I was probably going to wear my new purple sweater. It took him actually putting the jersey on me the next day before the light went on in my head.
One guy sat next to me and had his leg over mine, blowing in my ear, before I caught on to him. I’m clueless unless you plain out say that you like me and we should go out. Otherwise you’re just being polite, smiling, buying me a drink, complimenting my blouse, whatever. Nothing if not humble and unassuming, that’s me.
I’m late for the thread, but I’m here to take my crown as the King of Cluelessness! 
Summer two years ago I was helping out a friend. Her grandparents had recently moved into a retirement village, so she called on her mates to help clean up their old house. Lots of cleaning, gardening, shifting furniture. I knew the girl – let’s call her Beth – through another friend. Basically, our only contact to date was in a group situation. Having said that, we’d shared a holiday house together, been out on countless pub trips, eaten out, gotten drunk together – all that good friendship stuff. Beth’s great. She’s the kinda girl who will quietly fart in your presence, laugh madly and run away. We get on well. I’m the type of guy who can tell her (jokingly), “geez, your arse looks huge in those pants!”, without causing offence. We were (and still are) great mates.
So after the cleaning and gardening are done, Beth’s parents reckon we’ve done a great job. Since we’ve such an upstanding bunch of hardworking kids, they decide to reward with what every bunch of hardworking 20-something kids want: booze. To be precise, beer and wine. To be preciserer, two blocks of beer (in Australia, a “block” is 30 cans of beer) and three bottles of chardonnay. It’s summer and we’ve been working and we’re sweating and hot so everyone dives in. (Well, not literally; even 60 beers wouldn’t make a divable pool of beer.)
Fast forward a few hours and we’re well sloshed. A couple guys have stayed outside in the pool. Two girls are inside, studiously constructing a pyramid on the coffee table out of empty beer cans (I believe they called it our “beeramid”). Beth and I are lounging on her big queen-sized bed. Nothing unusual about that; earlier in the day all six of us were sitting on her bed, giggling, bouncing and drinking beer.
Beth and I are good mates. I mean, really good mates. No subject is taboo between us; we know each other far too well to have any hang-ups or secrets. In my mind, there’s no sexual undercurrent between us. Since we started off as “just friends”, that’s the only thing we’ll ever be: really good mates, but purely platonic.
You know the scene from Pulp Fiction when Uma Thurman tells John Travolta, “You know you’ve found someone special when you can shut up for a minute and comfortably share silence.” Well that’s us. Beth’s Uma and I’m John. (OTOH, while she’s certainly hot enough to play Uma, my chin doesn’t resemble an ass cleft so I’m not a great likeness for John.) 'Course, since we’ve drunk more beer than the Australian cricket team, we’re far from sharing comfortable silence. Matter of fact, we’re babbling all kinds of rubbish to each other.
Beth is giggling madly because she reckons I’ve got an erection. (Well, she actually uses the word “boner” – pronounced “booooner!”) She’s not serious; it’s just the fabric crease in my shorts as I sit cross-legged on the bed that gives the illusion of readiness. (Plus, given all the beer I’ve consumed, a booooner! is a distant aspiration.)
Nonetheless, she begins poking the crease in my shorts with her forefinger. “Crease in my shorts” being my penis and “her forefinger” being her manicured, painted, pointy finger.
“Ouch, quittit!”, I say, and I squirm away from her on the bed. “You’re hurting him!”
Beth’s not to be deterred however, and cackling madly she pursues me across the bed. She’s like a mother hen, pecking away at the dirt for tasty worms. Except my tasty worm (how’s that for an unflattering comparison?) is sensitive and not at all interested in being pecked, so I’m squirming and rolling away from her.
After a few minutes, I gather my girlie screams for mercy are having no effect, so I roll over in a defensive ball (some would call it a cowardly, snivelling huddle). Beth’s still laughing her arse off and she drapes herself over my huddled form.
I eventually relax and lie on the bed normally. Beth’s still lying over me. She’s also still touching me in the shorts, but this time more gently. I’m not minding so much, in fact I’m laughing my head off because she’s trying to give me an erection. With the studious concentration of our friends constructing the beeramid outside the room, she’s working on arousing me.
“It’s not working!”, she says.
“That’s because you’re still poking me!”, I say.
–
Let the record show that it didn’t cross my mind ONCE that there was a sexual element to our game. Fercrissake, a girl had her hand down my pants, touching my penis and I still had NO idea it wasn’t just for laughs. I just thought she was playing a stupid game. At best, I figured she was probably curious about my anatomy; at worst, I thought she just enjoyed watching me squirm. After all, we were just great mates, right?
:smack:
Ah, it wouldn’t have worked anyway.
Narrad
Yeah, I didn’t open it until late yesterday, because I’d thought it was something about Iraq.
I was deeply in love with someone for about three years during college. Picture a brunette Drew Barrymore with a tiny overbite. Of course I never said anything about it, we were just friends, and very few people knew how I felt.
We spent the weekend at the house of another friend one time and there was only the pullout couch to sleep on. We lie in bed and talked for a while, and eventually fell asleep, hand in hand. That’s right, we were in bed together, holding hands. I was happy that she trusted me enough to hold my hand as she fell asleep, but my heart also ached at being so close, yet so far away. Whatever holding my hand in bed meant, it certainly wasn’t a “clue”. I know this because later I wrote her a long letter telling her how I felt, and we never spoke again. That’s probably why I mostly keep my deepest feelings to myself these days.
Wintermute,
This is a completely genuine question, not snarky at all, how old are you? I ask because I’m 25 and I’ve never heard of a girl who asked a guy out being thought of as a slut. They’re more thought of as “ballsy”
I also agree with Morigoon on the shyness thing. I can be pretty shy if I’m attracted to someone and no matter how much I tell myself keep eye contact…keep…EYE…CONTACT!!, I’ll invariably look away, causing him to think I’m not interested. sigh
I can’t get behind the knocking a guy over the head with obviousness either, for fear of rejection. I’m WAY subtle with my flirting, as friends have told me, because like Morrigoon said, it’s easier to pretend there was no flirting going on anyway if it’s not returned.
Turn it around guys, would you be so obvious as to basically bash a girl over the head with your desire for her if you weren’t sure she felt the same way??
Didn’t think so.
Thank-you, everyone who posted about how clueless boys can be when it comes to picking up hints.
Long story ending in me finding out if a dense boy likes me:
I’m going away to college in about 2 weeks. All summer, I’ve been talking to other kids going to the same school via IRC. There’s this one boy I took a fancy to. I was dropping hints and he was being bleep dense about it. Then a week ago, I thought one of the other kids had clued him in because he was dropping hints back, but then those hints dried up.
Then yesterday, he was lamenting about how he couldn’t tell if someone was flirting with him to save his life. I told him that I’d heard this was a common problem, and Private Messaged him a link to this thread.
A while later, he comes back on PM and announces that he’s putting away his meatcleaver and chopping block. I tell him I liked cowgirl’s post. A longer while later, he says he’ll just have to make a sign saying “I’m really clueless and I need to get hit over the head with a shovel before I realize someone fancies me.” I ask him if he actually thinks someone’ll fall for that. He doesn’t reply.
Later, in the public chat, I hit him over the head with a shovel. He squeaks “You like me?” and we start talking again in PM. I ask him is the feeling is mutual? Long pause. “The feeling is mutual.”
Now, I know, people are different IRL and over the internet. We’re not “dating” or anything. We’ll just see how it works out. He really seems to be a good kid, just the right amount of geekiness to him.
When I was a clueless teenager, a charming, smart girl came out on a few dates with me.
I had no idea how interested she was (because I’m a typical male).
Then she asked if we could meet one Saturday. No, sorry, I’m doing a chess simultaneous display for charity. It lasts 3-4 hours.
"Oh, " she replies. "I’ll come and watch you."
And she turned up (with a book) and stayed for the full 4 hours.
But I still couldn’t decide if she was serious about me…
If it helps any, you just described my boyfriend. He only dated 2 women (well girls really back in highschool) before we started dating when I was 37 and he was 26. We’ve been together for about 5 of the last 7 and a half years and he’s dated lots of other women during our “off” times.
His mother told me how clueless he was when girls would show interest in him. Don’t worry, you can catch up. And as has been my experience with so-called “geeks” they’re MUCH hotter in bed than so-called “hotties”.
I wouldn’t worry if I were you. I know it sounds cliche’, but someone will come along when the time is right.
Miller, thanks for a great thread, and thanks for DarkMika for reviving it so I could find it!.This is the reason they invented the :smack: smilie. Waverly, I don’t know if you win the most clueless award, but I thought your post was the most heartbreaking. 
Well, what can I contribute? There was a cheerleader in my high school biology class who talked to me a lot. And during demonstrations, she would stand next to me and put her hand up on my shoulder. So she could see better. Yeah. I bet that helped her vision a whole lot. Of course, at that stage in my life she probably could have looked me straight in the eye, said “I think you’re really cool and want to go on a date with you”, and I would have given the best deer in the headlights impression I could manage.
Now, thinking back to the party I was at last night, I am going to have to find someone who knows the phone number of the cute brunette who laughed at my jokes, touched me, and made lots of eye contact. 
There are a LOT of guys who’ve humiliated those of us brave enough to try asking a guy out (hard enough in the first place thanks to the old double standard), once that’s happened, we aren’t likely to risk getting burned again.
I’m afraid Wintermute is at least partly right. There are enough guys who’ve “punished” girls for being “too forward” that a lot of us, well especially those from my generation (I’m 40something), just don’t like to be the ones to ask. Hence the “hints” and “signals”.
[ducky]
yup, Yup YUP!!!
[/ducky]
And laughs at your jokes, and hangs around you, asks your advice about mundane stuff that you KNOW she must also know about…
Heh. I could have used that in bright, red letters, tattooed across my chest in highschool. My turn!
Hottest girl in school (no, literally), who also happens to be the smartest, funniest, blah blah blah, so on. We’ve been really good friends since grade 8, talking in person, over ICQ/MSN or the occasional (read: I think maybe 3-4 times) phone call virtually every day. Of course, I’ve had a huge crush on her since day 1, but hell, I was too shy to do anything about it.
On to specific examples:
Grade 10ish, art class. This was always sort of “our class”, since we were in the same class with the same teacher from 8 through 12, so it was a very friendly, relaxed and fun. We’re working with clay, and during the latter part of the class, we’re mucking around with it and she playfully slaps me on the cheek (hand covered in clay of course; very amusing). What do I do? I smile dumbly and don’t think anything of it. Durrr.
That same year, later on, the class is basically over, so everyone is just kind of milling around, waiting for the bell to ring. I’m near the door, with my back against the wall. She moves beside me and leans against me ever so slightly. I take a shuffle-step away from her, thinking it would be the gentlemanly thing to do. DURRRRRR.
Another thing I share with this girl is a fascination with dreams. We always share our dreams with each other, and try to break them down and interpret them. I have this dream with her in it, and she’s whispering something in my ear, a question of some sort, and I can’t quite make it out, so I keep saying “What? What? What?” and so on. This girl happens to be Greek, so when I’m talking with her, trying to piece together what she might have been saying, I ask her the Greek words for common question starters, like “How”, “What”, “Who”, etc. No luck. Then she throws out a brilliant insight: “Maybe, in the dream, I wasn’t saying anything in particular, but it’s like I’m telling you something in general and you’re not picking it up”. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what THAT might be. DURRRRRRRRRRRRR.
I did sorta-kinda end up asking this girl out a year+ later. Not in the “wanna see a movie?” kind of way, but in the “if I asked you out, sometime in the future, what would you say?”. She said, “Sure, why not”. This was late, late at night, on ICQ, and I was running a fever and fighting a flu, which is the only reason I was insane/clear-minded enough to ask that in the first place. Of course, I never DID ask her out. Nope. For some reason, even though she basically said, “If you ask me out, I’ll say yes”, I never had the confidence to do it (and in my defense, the circumstances surrounding the situation never really gave me a HUGE opportunity to, and if I were to ask her out, I’d want to do it RIGHT). Still, :smack: :smack: :smack:
She’s now had a boyfriend for over a year, someone she started seeing about eight months after the situation in the above paragraph took place. We’re still really good friends, and in fact I’m going to go catch a movie with her this Monday. And yes, I still have a crush on her. Shoot me, please. :rolleyes:
Gosh, you mean that some women have actually experienced what guys feel when they get shot down and/or humiliated? What a tragedy!
I kid… sort of.
It all makes me glad I’m off the market, really. I’d still be as clueless and insecure as ever, I’m sure.
I think I take the cake
2 weeks ago, I’m at a strip club, having a great convo with a striper. Please note, this wasn’t I want your money so I’ll talk with you kind of deal (I got her number, but was to drunk to remember it). Anyway, as club closes, her friend (also a striper and also drunk) starts flirting with me. Me being the grand great genius I am, after both of them told me “yeah we live in brooklyn too and take a cab home after work” I say “Ok, I’ll see you around”
Yes, I passed on a cab ride with two drunk horny stripers.
:smack::mad: :smack: :mad: :smack:
Ha! Welcome to our world!
Seriously: that’s why guys like forward girls. It’s every bit as intimidating for a guy to get up the courage to ask, and every bit as humiliating for a guy to be refused. We don’t like to be the ones to ask either, but we don’t get to kid ourselves that “women don’t like forward guys.”