Stranger, I’d venture to guess that the girls you are talking about are simply not that interested in you.
It’s like that books “He’s just not that in to you.” Women wonder why men don’t call and blow them off- it’s because they are not that interested. Same thing for women and men. If a woman is being wishy-washy or evasive, it’s because she isn’t that interested in you. A woman who is attracted to you is not going to leave the restaurant in a huff, even if you do something genuinely creepy.
Here is an example of how the female mind works.
A few weeks ago, a guy came and visited me and we had a good time, in that way, but there were no sparks. I saw him a couple of weeks later at a party and was simply friendly to him. Why? Not because my mysterious female brain was up to some kind of mercurial voodoo. It was because I wasn’t all that interested in him, and there were other people at the party that I was interested in.
As the party went on, I flirted with him a bit. Not because of any mysterious female thought process, but because I wasn’t getting any play from the people I was interested in, and I wanted to keep the option open to go home with someone if I was feeling up for some action at the end of the night. In the end I went home alone because I was tired and not drunk enough to enjoy sex with someone I didn’t find that physically attractive. If I’d been drunker, hornier, more bored or had a nicer bed to share, I might have asked him to come home with me.
A little cold-blooded, but that’s how it goes. I’ve been on the receiving end of the same game plenty of times.
He could interpret that as a bunch of mixed signals from a completely inscrutable female. But he’d be wrong. I’d venture most men have been in a situation where they have done the same thing. WE ARE NOT THE DIFFERENT. If you can’t figure out why someone is acting that way, look at what would make you act that way. That’s probably what they are feeling.
No, he’d be right. Your rationale is irrelevant. All that matters it that you communicated both liking him and disliking him. The fact that men have done the same thing has absolutely no bearing on whether you were sending mixed signals.
What you communicate, and what you were actually thinking have no bearing on one another, because you weren’t trying to communicate what you were thinking.
I’ve actually been with a few women who make no bones about telling you that they aren’t really interested. It’s actually kinda fun. But when it’s up in the air, it’s really, really annoying.
This is not to say you don’t have a point. The fact that I’ve done the whole indirect dumping thing before means I know exactly why it is done. It’s not done to spare anyone’s feelings. It’s done purely and solely for selfish reasons.
And I feel bad about it. If I bring it up to either men or women, I’m always chastised for it. And yet some people talk about it like it’s perfectly reasonable. And, unfortunately, the majority of them are women.
A “structured system of dating” is an oxymoron, kind of like a “well-governmed anarchy” or an “organized state of chaos”. Western society once had a structured system for making marriages, at least in the upper classes. Two upper-class families would reach an agreement on a fvorable match and the process in which the man courted the woman would begin in a series of planned, predictable steps. The details varied slightly from one place to another.
Around 100 years ago that system broke down and no knew system has been created to replace it. Instead we have dating, which is simply the condition where each individual is on his or her own as far as seeking and selecting partners. There is no “system of dating”. There are conventions, sure, but each individual decides whether to obey the conventions or not.
In any case, wouldn’t boxing dating into a predictable system take all the fun out of it?
The only conclusion I draw from the numerous threads such as these is that being unable to flirt effectively is a worse drawback for men than for women.
I dunno about you, but I find there to be other fun things about being with women than the thrill of wondering if she thinks I’m a twit or not. In fact, that part isn’t fun at all.
Speaking as a guy who’s terrible at this whole dating thing, I say it’s about time. Fuck this mind-reading bullshit! I’ve wasted so much of my life trying to decide whether or not one girl or another is “the one” that it’s ridiculous. It’s made me a bitter and untrustful person. There should be less ambiguity in things. I don’t condone rape or harassment, but sometimes it’s damn hard to determine where you are with a girl who just wants to play games.
I wish more women initiated, not only dating but all aspects of a relationship (a recently married female friend told me she would never ever be the one to ask her bf to marry her first because she considers it the guy’s job, it would break her fantasy of how things should work, and make her feel like a slut, among other things. I’ve never wanted to slap her more than at that point in time)
Woah woah - determining whether some woman is or is not “the one” is a much later stage of the relationship than dating. Dating is all about finding some person who is into you at all.
Different people have different reasons for dating. I know a number of (conservative) people who had no intention of dating anybody they were unwilling to marry, and determining whether they thought the person was a canidate for ‘the one’ was among the first things on the list to do.
I suppose so - but conservative-religious types like that also have the advantage of church groups and even semi-arranged marriages. My brother-in-law’s marriage was sorta like that.
My point is that, generally speaking in the normal dating market, it is a bad idea to go in with the express intent to find “the one” right off - sure, have that in the back of your mind as a goal if you like, but nothing is more off-putting or likely to kill casual flirtation faster than that sort of pressure. One must crawl before one can run …
The thing is, there is no ambiguity. If she is jerking you around, she is not “the one.” It’s that simple.
The problem is not that women with clearly defined desires are taunting men with mixed signals. The problem is that women with mixed desires are giving mixed signals.
Just like men, women can have ambiguous feelings about guys, which may range from “He’s not that attractive, but maybe with the lights out it’d be fun” to “He’s hot and I’d like to take him home, but kind of a moron so I don’t want to actually spend time with him.” When you are getting those mixed signals, you can hang on because you think you might get lucky. But yeah, you are probably not looking at the love of your life.
Anyway, I’m certainly not about to tell my friend straight up “Look, I had a good time with you, but not that good of a time. I’d think about doing it again one day if we’ve both got nothing better to do, but not tonight because I’m chasing that hottie over there. If you do want to get with me, try talking to me after I’ve got beer goggles.”
Not necessarily - she might the the one in the future, after she’s gotten to know the man better and can properly overlook his terrible halitosis.
Also, she might not have mixed feelings, but might be instead “playing the game”. Ever heard of “playing hard to get”? It’s dumb. I know it’s dumb. You know it’s dumb. But people get told it all the time and it might have took. Or they might be worried about scaring the man off, or saving face, or looking like a slut, or any number of other things, besides internal waffling or ambivalence.
Actually, I think the problem is that they are having a hard time finding an interested woman. Because if they had an easier time at that, devining when a woman is disinterested would go far down in importance.
See this right here is where all the trouble is happening. It’s not either of ya’lls faults, but just the natural result of wanting different things.
You have people like Even Sven looking for something fun, and people like Stranger are probably looking for deeper connections. However both of you and many like both of you are in the dating pool.
Dating is a cooperative project by definition, otherwise it’s masturbation. If you have a cooperative project where the members have very different goals for the result; then it’s pretty much always going to end in disaster for atleast some of them.
The hilariously ironic thing is this is the exact opposite of gender stereotypes, yet I’d bet good money it plays out like this for so many many people. It’d explain the confusing behavior.
Even Sven, you said you weren’t sending mixed signals, and then you explained in fairly precise detail exactly which mixed signals you were sending, and why. Do you not see this?
In fact, it would be fair to say that no women–or at least, none that I find both available and appealing–are interested in me, or rather, the few that have expressed interest have either done so in a very inconsistent, lukewarm, and and retreating fashion, or have done so with ulterior motives like making another man jealous. I don’t attribute this to a conspiracy among women or a fundamental flaw in human interactions, but a failing in my own person for simply not being that attractive or interesting in a romantic sense, and one that I’ve been unable to correct for or adjust. Rather than expend the futile effort to try to suss out the reason for a failure to sustain any initial or apparent interest, I just leave it be. It hasn’t made me more successful in dating, but it has made me at least marginally more content with my failure in this regard.
I would never act in the manipulative and utterly self-serving way you describe, and although some men might go through a similar process, I doubt that very many would attempt to rationalize it as being just part of a mutual game; indeed, most would hold it up as an example of being a superior player and at least take ownership of their jerkdom. The anecdote you provide serves, ironically, as an example of why it is not worth the bother to attempt to follow the thought processes of someone who is behaving in an inconsistent and irrational fashion. If you pulled that kind of nonsense on me, I’d just ignore you in all future encounters. I have about as much desire to “play” that kind of game as I do to insert my tongue into a light socket.
Except she’s not just straightforwardly “looking for something fun,” she’s intentionally playing mind games and manipulating people in a very self-serving and inconsiderate fashion. That may not be quite what she intends (although the manner in which she describes the incident indicates that she’s either terminally-clueless about the difficulty of following her line or reasoning, or that she’s actually getting some kicks by just watching the lad in question squirm at her on-again, off-again interest) but that is certainly the result.
Note that in the particular case above thanks to our particular circumstances it was abundantly clear to all parties that anything happened would be a casual thing with no real possibility of anything long term.
I guess what I should say is I was not sending mixed signals for some mysterious female-specific reason that only a mind reader could understand, but rather for pretty mundane reasons that any man could easily understand and identify with if he got off his “women are an irrational alien species” trip.
This is not a female only thing. How many women have had cases of “he sleeps with me but then doesn’t return my calls” or “we were having a great time, and then he got all moody and withdrawn?”
Same story. No need for “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” mystification or more than a bit misogynist “I deserve this from women and they are terrible creatures for not giving that to me” rants. Sometimes people are not interested in having a relationship with you. Honestly that’s what I think all the hurt here is about- not the women do not make their feelings clear to you, but rather that they are not having the feelings towards you that you’d like them to have.