For a while, in my marriage, I was open to fooling around. Nobody was interested. Then I decided in favor of fidelity, and suddenly, women were all over me! I thought, “Where were you last month?” How did they know? Go figger.
LOL this is the best “how we met” story I’ve ever heard.
Both my husband and I get hit on, usually while we are sitting right next to one another. We’re somewhat social people, and we usually head to a bar or pub once every other weekend or so. Neither of us has a problem striking up a conversation with a neighbor, or, as is usually the case, our bar stool neighbors don’t have a problem striking up a conversation with either one or the both of us.
Most times it’s just conversation, but every now and then someone flat out starts saying things like “you’re very attractive… I’d love to go out to dinner or something with you…etc.” or they start leaning in closer, eyeing me up, things like that. At that point I simply say thank you but no thank you, I’m happily married and very committed to my husband. Hubby does the same. Usually that puts whoever in check and we continue chatting. Only on a few very rare occasions has someone been crass or rude or just sort of creeped me out to the point of my abruptly ending conversation and clinging a little tighter or scooting a little closer to my hubby.
Just this past Friday we were in a bar in the Castro in SF and a man my husband had been chatting with leaned up into him and went for a kiss. My husband politely reminded him that he was happily married and committed to me and the guy backed up and apologized to both of us. No harm no foul.
Yes he wears a wedding ring, as do I, but we know that not everyone out there has the same values or ideas about marriage and committment as we do. We can’t control that, we can only control our own actions. Then again, my husband is something of a flirt, especially online (mostly on Livejournal.) I don’t have a problem with that at all. It’s innocent and makes him happy. I find it amusing and fun. He’s cute when he’s flirty. 
I’m one of those generally oblivious guys who can never tell if a woman actually is showing interest or not. Even my (now) wife had to be pretty direct and obvious in her interest before we started dating. I can think of fewer than half a dozen times when I’m fairly certain I was beinh hit on, both before and after I married. Mostly after. I don’t wear a wedding ring, but being married has done a lot for my mental and physical health, which I’d imagine would make me more appealing.
Lots, and more so when I’m wearing my ring. I always wear it when I go out, but if for example, I’m at the gym, or doing labor-type work and run out to Home Depot, I won’t.
Sometimes it’s harmless flirtatiousness, sometimes it’s a serious case of being hit on.
Same response every time: “Thanks. No, I really mean thanks. But no thanks.”
That’s why I added “that I am aware of”. And a couple of those occassions, I only became “aware” of it hours after it happened. :smack: 
My wife got hit on every single time she went to the laundromat, before House of Slant acquired a washing machine. Every. Time. And she always wears the ring to those places…
Me, uh, probably only ONCE since I’ve married. And I’m not sure if it was “hit on” or whether I was just misreading… but the lady was an easy 15-20 years older than me, so it was mostly just surreal.
My days of hunkness are long over, but apparently there are still some lingering aftereffects.
I had a mild pass made at me over the Christmas holidays. SWMBO and I went to a get-together and while we were socializing, we wound up seperating. Needless to say, I gravitated toward the chow line. I put together a nosh plate and moved in SWMBO’s general direction. As I approached, a group of folks called to me. I knew most of them, but there was one quite pretty young lady, in the 25-30 range, that I didn’t know. They introduced me and mentioned that I teach Taekwondo.
She expressed interest, so being a starving entrepenuer, I VIPed her and gave her a month’s free instruction. We started talking about martial arts philosophy and it turned out that she had done some training when she was a teenager. One topic led to another and she started doing the “dance”, where you slowly and subtly invade another’s space, but you do it in a way that is non-threatening. I realized that she was flirting with me and I enjoyed it, so I flirted back a little. This continued on to the point where she asked me if I was doing anything over New Year’s and would I like to come celebrate it with her, all night long. This made my little heart go pitty-pat. 
SWMBO, in the meantime, had wandered back and was standing about 6 feet away talking with someone else. She overheard this and turned around with a grin on her face just in time to hear me tell my new friend that I had plans. She asked if they could be broken and I smiled and told her they couldn’t, unless I wanted my arm broken. She looked a little confused, so I dug out my wallet and showed her the picture that I carry of SWMBO and me where she has me face down on the ground with an armbar; the look of pain wasn’t faked much. At that point, I called SWMBO over and introduced them to each other.
My new friend shortly thereafter became my former new friend. But oh, for a minute, I did indulge my fantasies. Yes, I am old enough to be her daddy. Yes, I am a dirty old man. I loved every second of it. And she hasn’t shown up in class yet. 
I have never, to my knowledge, been hit on, either before or after getting married. (with the possble exception of my wife)
I’ve been told that I am oblivious to come-ons, which is probably true. But I can certainly say that I haven’t noticed any increase in interest in me since I got married.
I am fortunate, for my marriage vows are never tested: I get hit on only via the Internet, and only across at least five time zones and one major ocean.
And I’m quietly confident that it’s not down to being oblivious.
I tend to be a lot more relaxed with men I know are committed elsewhere, because I know it means they aren’t interested in me and I can just be myself. This usually means joking around and behaving very friendlily. It’s perverse, really, that I am almost flirtatious in that context, but I know it’s because it’s fun to flirt but I am not at all interested in actual intimacy with someone available.
It’s happened to me and I find it upsetting. I’m not sure why, but I think that I’m really offended that someone would think me capable of infidelity! The two most ridiculous examples happened in the last five years.
One was a guy at church, if you can believe that. I used to sit near his family and talk to him, his wife and children after Mass. Then he started showing up without his wife, and kept insisting that I bring my children for an Icee at the convenience store where he had a parttime job. They were standing right there, and begged me, so I finally did. I got a big chat-up about how he likes to go to a certain restaurant for lunch during the week–and THEN started telling me about all these mental problems his wife has. I was somewhat oblivious until this point. It started sounding like a set-up for something at that point. I began avoiding him like the plague. A few months later I ran into him at the grocery and he asked me to lunch again–all the while with the invading of personal space, etc. I was really incensed. I am friendly, and I was doing my best to be particuarly friendly to this family! They were natives of Jordan, and were getting a lot of ugly comments made to them, around the time of 9/11. I felt so bad for them–in the Middle East they got crap for being Christian, they said, and here in America they got crap for being Arab. So–I was highly annoyed my friendship got turned into a come-on.
The second was a man I’d worked with for YEARS and really respected professionally. Then I lost a bunch of weight when my now-exhusband and I separated. He kept making these quasi-inappropriate remarks. I recommended a book, and he asked me to lunch (there’s lunch again) to discuss it. All was fine (I thought) and then he sent me this email that upset me to no end. He said I “gave great conversation.” Now how would you take that? It sounded like he was playing off the term “gave great head” – he is a writer; he knows the power words. That was the last straw!
For the record, I have not thought of myself as a flirt in YEARS. My now-husband, who has worked at the same place as I for 13 years, says I always gave off a huge MARRIED vibe and he never remotely considered me “on the market.” (And he laughed when I asked if any married women ever gave him that vibe. Sadly, all the time.) People depress me sometimes.
That should have been “he knows the power of words,” above.
So, where’s this grocery store again?
Add me to the list of guys who found themselves getting flirted with a lot more after marriage than before. As for the reason why, I suspect it’s a combination of the factors already mentioned: I became more confident (and therefore more attractive) after getting hitched, plus some women gravitate toward a “proven” commodity, plus some other women are just catty, competitive destructo-beasts.
And to add to the confusion, now that I’m getting divorced (:(), I’m being flirted with just as heavily, but by completely different types* of women. Apparently the “proven commodity” factor comes into play a lot more strongly under these circumstances.
*Presuming of course that there are indeed “types,” given that every one is an individual. You’re all beautiful snowflakes, yes you are.
Yeah, that comment might be out of place at work, but subtly suggestive remarks and double entendre are part of flirting - which while not always welcome, isn’t harmful. I don’t think it was something worth getting incensed over. You stop people from flirting by just not being receptive to it. I never understand why some people are offended by the attention.
Same here, but in my case I’m oblivious, too, and almost certainly wouldn’t notice if someone were hitting on me IRL. I don’t even get hit on on the Internet very often.
That assumption caused me a painful experience.
Mrs. Vet works late 2 nights a week and at least one of those nights I take my 2 yr old daughter out for dinner to the local diner. She has a blast and it makes for a more relaxing evening for me if I don’t have an argument about what’s for dinner. So after a few weeks of eating in the diner, I noticed that we very often had the same waitress - not such a strange thing since our visits were pretty regular. I figured that our schedule just coincided with her afternoon shifts. She would make a big deal over how cute and well behaved my little girl was and made it a point to bring crayons and such while we were waiting for our food. Since it was before the dinner rush, the place was usually pretty empty and we would chat a bit. Chatting moved into flirting, and I assumed that it was exactly as Q.N. Jones described - not personal. I figured she saw me as a regular customer and was being extra nice to make sure that the good tips kept coming. She was, as she said, a single mom, working 2 jobs while her mother watched her 5 yr old. This should have been another warning sign, but I innocently assumed that it was a play on my heartstrings to make sure I kept the tips coming. I was horribly, and embarassingly wrong.
She had made the assumption that since she saw me regularly with my little girl and it was on the same 2 nights each week, that I was divorced and that those were my visitation nights. She thought I was a single dad and she was looking for a relationship. I had assumed that her flirtations were just a ploy for tips, and I suppose I could have been perceived as flirting back. I’ll never forget the hurt and embarassment on her face when she asked me for a date and I explained to her that I was happily married. I tipped her double what I usually did that night. When we came back the following week, we had a different waitress. I don’t know if she quit or just changed shifts, but I never saw her again. Eventually, we stopped going there altogether and now my girl and I just have peanut butter sandwiches in our pajamas and watch the cartoon network on Thursday nights.
So in response to the OP, I offer the following observations:
1 - I don’t think you did anything to encourage it necessarily, but you did notice her and described her quite flatteringly. Perhaps your body language in response to her appearance gave her all the encouragement she needed. I didn’t think I encouraged the waitress either, and I certainly didn’t do anything to indicate I was interested other than just trying to be a nice customer. But she sure saw it differently than I did.
2 - My experience left me with a lot of feelings. It was a huge boost to my ego to know that a woman could still find me attractive. She was quite attractive too and I certainly had the “what if” feelings. I had the almost same thought you did - “boy, if I were single I’d be on her like stink on poo.”
That led me to realize that if I had a different set of values, I probably would have cheated on my wife at some point. This was shocking and quite scary to me. It has since made me realize that I probably need to start pitching some woo at my wife a little more often, because I’d really like it if my wife made me feel as attractive as that waitress did. Lastly, I still feel some guilt over the embarassment that the poor woman felt over the misunderstanding. It was obviously embarassing enough that she changed her shift (and possibly even her job entirely) because she was embarassed to see me. I really hope she’s gotten over it, and even more I hope she’s found someone to be with, because she really is a great lady. And it’s still a bit thrilling to think about :o
I don’t think anyone’s offended by the attention as long as it remains harmless flirting. It’s when someone possibly crosses the line over into implying, as Ellen said, that they think you’re a person capable of infildelity that one might feel a tad slighted.
A lot of the hinges on how well you know the person. I knew the woman not at all so I was merely befuddled, not insulted. Ellen though was known better by the forward individual and yep, I can understand her being offended by his improper behavior.
Cervaise, sorry to hear of your situation but knowing a little of you, I’ve every confidence you’ll be in a good place again very soon.
What a bunch of interesting stories and comments.
GWVet, I’m glad that despite our simulpost I didn’t miss your reflection at the end because you pretty much nailed some of the same feelings I experienced.