My god, for the same reason I like 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I still don’t want to get murdered by a computer.
Part of a feedback loop. 30 years ago, when I was starting to date, social messaging was that males had to pursue females, who had to act as gatekeepers. It lead to all kinds problems for both side. Much better for everyone to be honest and accepting of others honesty.
Funny thing. I read recently a report about a study that showed that the less someone enjoyed living up to male stereotypes, the more likely they were to react violently when their masculinity was threatened. I have known people who love the pursuit. The type that would ask over and over again and brush off every rejection with confidence that at some point it would pay off. On the other end, there were those that hated the pursuit, felt totally uncomfortable doing it, and would take any rejection as a personal attack.
I hear people complain about how fraught and scary asking someone out is with today’s cancel culture. I see it as going in the right direction. There are going to be bumps as people handle changing expectation, but empowering both sides to state their interest clearly and expecting both sides to respond with respect and understanding is clearly an improvement over a dance of interpreting unstated expectations and assumptions that may or may not match up.
Not necessarily. Maybe Mary’s been acculturated with the idea that she needs to refuse several times, so that the guy can pursue her. Maybe she’s absent-minded and thinking about her thesis mostly and not paying attention to the dreamy guy asking her out. Maybe she’s got crappy social skills and is clamming up and later on is gonna kick herself over it.
There are a lot of maybes. It’s not the case that all women are making optimal decisions about possible dating conversations at all times.
And still Bob is better off leaving the ball in her court. He can make his interest plain, and then walk away: “Okay, cool, well, I’d love to hang out with you sometime, let me know if you’re up for it.” And if Mary’s got some weird hangup that makes her unable to make the next move, well, the world is an imperfect place. Better an unnecessarily missed date than a creeper.
Haven’t had to deal with any of this since 1988, but that was pretty much my rule of thumb back then. One ‘busy that night’ might well be genuine. If she was busy again the next time I called and proposed a date, I didn’t call a third time unless she said something like “look, I’m really sorry, but I really am busy that night, but I’d really like to get together with you some other time.”
That happened exactly once during my single years, but that one time, things did progress from there.
…say what she actually means? (“I’m just not interested in going out with you.”)
It’s great if Mary can communicate indirectly and Bob understands what she means. But what if Bob isn’t good at understanding indirect communication or unwritten rules about how when someone says X they really mean Y? If everyone should be willing to take NO for an answer, does that also mean that everyone should be willing to give NO for an answer?
Yes, that’s why I said:
Are you quibbling over whether “chances are” is accurate? I in no way said it was necessarily so, and I covered the contingency that you seem to be bringing up.
IMHO, it should mean there’s an “obligation” to give NO but that’s not how it works. There’s an obligation to hear a direct YES. It’s way older than “men are from mars, women are from Venus”. Like another posted stated, I would take a hemming and hawing “no” as an incentive to “try again later” but if I got the same response again, then I moved on.
Only once in my three times single life did I ever “try again” after a hard NO…and it was still a hard NO. Irony was it was after what seemed to be a very successful first date.
ETA: started this 3 hours ago and got interrupted. When I started my post @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness 's post quoted below was the last one.
Not having dated for coming up on 40 years my POV is pretty rusty. But …
Sadly the first two paragraphs are equally true of guys, and a lot of couples that might have been very happy never happen, having tripped over 1 dumb sentence stumbled at the beginning just by luck.
That’s the issue that makes me frustrated by the “One strike plus one more try means you’re a creep” idea. That seems … harsh.
It assumes the romantic notion that if he is dating material it’ll be accompanied by blinking rainbows and exploding unicorns and she’ll of course say “yes” the first time because it’s blindingly obvious to her. Or from the negative POV the romantic assumption is that if it isn’t blinking rainbows and exploding unicorns at first glance, it simply isn’t meant to be and it’d be a waste of time to even try. That whole hyper-romanticism seems … shortsighted.
The last paragraph I quoted raises a different issue. Maybe this is just my weird life, but the clear assumption in most of these scenarios is that the two people know each other, bump into each other socially or at work regularly and therefore have a way for her to make that all important second contact. This is all about the transition from "acquaintance" to "date".
In my world every woman I encounter I encounter pretty much just once. We might be together for 20 minutes or an hour or 3, but I will never see this person again unless I establish contact right then. So my goal would have to be transitioning from “small-talk stranger” to “acquaintance” to " low-threat date" in my one meeting. How does that work versus this “Man’s first ask will be rebuffed with vague ‘busy at your suggested time’ response”?
Color me glad I’m out of this minefield. Here’s hoping I can stay out of it.
Be so blunt that she risks hurting his feelings. Or hurting his feelings to the point that he retaliates.
Believe it or not, women are always juggling (no pun). Women would love to be direct, and not have to give coy answers, especially when you can’t depend on men to do something like understand two refusals in a row as the final word on the matter.
I once made the mistake of answering the door in the afternoon-- it was still light out, mind you, and some drunk guy was there wanting to come in to use my phone, claiming his car had broken down. This was long before cell phones. I happened not to have a cordless phone at the time. I told him he couldn’t come in, but if he gave me a number, I’d make a call for him, and get someone to come help him, or pick him up.
He persisted in trying to get me to let him in to use the phone himself.
I finally said no, he wasn’t coming in, and I was closing the door now.
He called me a “Fucking bitch” [apologize for the language, but it’s a direct quote], said “I ain’t no rapist,” kicked the side of the house really hard, and I could tell he had steel-toed boots, and cut through my yard heading to the house next door.
I called the police, mainly to report an impaired person operating a vehicle, or at least attempting to do so. I have no idea what the outcome was.
But that’s the kind of behavior women worry about from men any time we are bluntly honest with them.
Are you sure a man wouldnt have gotten the same reaction?
I’m sure that men do not worry about it every time a strange women approaches them.
Are you being serious?
Are you literally unaware of…our entire culture?
No, but we do worry about a loud angry drunk male.
You think a man would have been called a bitch, and the threat of rape expressly raised?
Or, just this:
A culture that teaches women who were just threatened and called names, etc at their door to kick themselves, for having answered the door.
Yes, that is very bad, we can agree on that.
Huh?
A date’s just a date. It’s not a guarantee of life long love and partnership, with or without rainbows. Some people don’t want to go on a date unless there’s a chance of that happening; but anybody who won’t go on a first date without a flat out guarantee of it is also somebody you’re better off not taking up with.
IME, women have a tendency to be coy and avoid direct statements (or even ask direct questions) even in situations having nothing to do with dating, and this includes interactions with other women.
Anybody can get mad, and some people don’t like getting madded at. Even if the madding is less likely to be dangerous than random man madding.
Yes, this.
I actually think the side arguing for multiple tries is – perhaps influenced by rom-coms, among other vehicles for the trope – treating it like, “what if taking ‘no’ for an answer means I miss out on that date, and she was the one?”
That right there is some toxic BS. I don’t expect unicorns and rainbows. My spouse and I actually had a fairly disastrous first date. Either of us might easily have said no to a subsequent date. And then we’d have moved on and probably would be with other people now. Or not. We get along great, have similar values in most areas, are attracted to each other, and we love each other very much. But, no, she’s not the one singular person I was “meant” to be with.
If she’d said no to a second date, I don’t think I’d have been right to keep asking. And my life would be different – not ruined – if that had happened.
Well, the old stereotype, however much truth there is to it, is that women tend to be more intuitive than men. So that women expect men to know what they want without them having to come right out and say it directly; and men get upset because they’re expected to read women’s minds.