Overly tolerant of obnoxious social behavior when romantic interest is involved?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This thread is inspired by this one, which is soliciting advice for how to go about rejecting a work acquaintance who has recently shown some very clear signals of romantic interest. Such signs include making a 2-hour trip to surprise the OP at a market in which she was a vendor (it seems that the event was mentioned casually in conversation, with no invitation implied), parking himself at her booth for his entire stay so that he could talk to her (or “bother her as long as he could” to paraphrase his words), and then finally asking her out to dinner as a pretense for paying for one of her crafts, instead of just giving her cash (stealth date, as it was aptly termed in the other thread).

Now by my reading, this behavior strikes me as rude and intrusive. He may very well be a genuinely nice fellow, but that doesn’t preclude him from being rude, right? This clearly seems to be one of those times, and yet the general opinion seemed to be that although the guy may have been guilty of making some tactical mistakes, he did not do anything disrespectful. But a tactical error, in my book, is complimenting a woman for carrying a lovely glow of pregnancy, only to find out that she’s not pregnant. The guy’s behavior isn’t anything like this to me.

Imagine if you have a work acquaintance (male or female) that you get along with well, maybe exchange pop culture small talk with in the break room, but that’s it. You’re “work friends” and no more. One day, he/she asks what you’re doing for the weekend and you say you’re going to Hampton Beach to watch a volleyball tornament. Saturday comes, you go to the beach, and lo and behold, Work Friend shows up too and immediately parks her/himself next to you on your blanket and declares themself your company. They won’t go away, even when you pointedly suggest they check out some sights in the area. It’s almost as if they assume their company is welcomed by default; in the absence of you explicitly telling them to go away, they assume they have your permission to hang around as long they want. Their presence bugs you because you’d rather have the day by yourself, but you don’t want to cause any ill feelings by telling him/her to piss off. After all, Work Friend drove 2 hours just to see you! They came to surprise you!

To me this scenario is exactly what the OP described in the other thread. If this was any other scenario except clueless-guy-chasing-after-the-object-of-his-affection , I think most people would be able to recognize the obnoxiousness of the offending behavior. But because the OP in the other thread is your classic clueless guy scenario, people seem more apt to excuse his presumptuousness.

If this was a guy imposing himself on another guy like this, what would be your reaction? Is it the same reaction you have when its a guy doing this to a woman? Why or why not?

2

I tend to have some tolerance for social stupidity from everyone, male or female. I will tend to feel a little sorrier for people who are under the throes of a crush or the like when they act like a fool. It’s pity tolerance, I guess.

3

I agree that imposing oneself, uninvited, on another person’s time for a stretch of several hours goes beyond being a naive miscalculation or tactical error and becomes overbearing. Even if the self-invited party has no ill intent and is simply that romantically inept, it’s still uncomfortable and not exactly a signifyer that the person is a fully functional adult.

I also think the intruded upon party has to be clear and upfront about not being impressed or happy with that kind of approach, though.

4

I’m guessing the term “stalker” may have come up once or twice in the other thread.

5

I definitely give a little bit more leniency when romance may be involved. The line between creepy and romantic really depends on the couples feelings for each other. In the OP you linked to for example, if the female OP was into the guy I could see her posting about how awesome it was that this guy from work she is into drove two hours out of the blue just to spend the day with her and they really hit it off. Instead she is not into him and it definitely comes off as creepy (although she could of ended it any time with a simple dismissal).

Either way you are correct the move is presumptuous, but guess what? Most females dig males who are confident and that means as a male you have to act presumptuous (probably overboard in this case but I hope you get my point).

6

I hate that kind of surprises. Compared with some of the women in my family, I’m a total non-planner… but that’s by comparison. As in, if I’m going to be with Them, I know any plan of mine will be a no-go, therefore I don’t bother make plans, but if I already have plans I hate having them disturbed. Plus, in that specific example he was bothering her at work… he was treating her work as a hobby. No, it’s work! It’s not her “day job” but it’s still - work. That detail would drive me ballistic.

But then, that’s probably part of the reason I’m not married: a lot of the things people find or are supposed to find dreamy-romantic are straight irritants for me. Then again, both of the aforementioned Them did get married, so this “quirk” is clearly not the only reason I didn’t.

Re. “find or are supposed to find”: several incidents in JrHS and HS made me realize that the guys, stories and actions which my classmates claimed to like weren’t the ones they would have claimed to like in an informational void. Things like getting to class with a new folder on a Friday, covered in pics cut from magazines as we’d do, and one from a foreign magazine got declared “yech - ugly!” - A-ha was on TV over that weekend and, by Monday, Morten Harket had moved from “ugly!” to “oh my gawd, he’s so gorgeous!” U-hu, and you keep your notions of hotness in your TV’s cathodic tube.

7

The reason it’s acceptable is that it’s part of the dating game that both sexes play, even the ones that say “No games.” Both sides too often don’t express their intentions out loud, and leave the other person with the task of interpreting them. Furthermore, there seems to be an element of attraction in not knowing exactly what the other person is thinking. It’s very easy for a direct mention of your intentions to “ruin the mood” so to speak.

With all this built-in lack of communication, why shouldn’t both parties be given a break if they mess up?

8

He has a crush on her. It’s normal behavior for males and female who are crushing to try an be near, or involved with, the object of interest if possible. It’s hardly a reason to pull out the big book of psychological pathologies looking for his behavior.

Re his hanging out there are people who won’t take a subtle hint to scram. You need to be direct with these folks.

9

Why should this only apply to romantic situations, when it could just as easily apply to other kinds of relationships? For instance, some people see nothing wrong with showing up unannounced at their neighbor’s house and inviting themselves over for dinner. Even though there are some people who may not mind this behavior at all, I feel pretty confident that most of us would call this behavior rude and a lack of poor home-training. So why does the analysis change when it’s not platonic feelings at stake, but rather romantic ones?

When determining whether a behavior crosses the line, I don’t think it makes sense to act based only on what would happen if the best case scenario occured. Sure, some women might be flattered that a work acquaintance drove 2 hours to surprise them at a non-work related event and commandeered their attention for the rest of the day. But also consider that some women might not mind having a work acquaintance squeeze their boob in the coat closet. Some might also not mind a work acquaintance telling her that he fantasizes about her at night.

But the existence of this unknown percentage of women doesn’t mean it’s cool for a work acquaintance to do any of these things. Part of the offense of these actions is their presumptuousness. Not seeing why leniency is called for.

I could also see her posting about how the guy is a creepy stalker.

I’d only agree with you if being confident and presumptuous were anything alike. Also, there are a myriad ways this guy could have expressed interest besides doing what he did.

10

What it comes down to is some people are pushy. OK fine, but you have to learn how to handle such people in real life.

And this means being assertive, not aggressive and being able to handle yourself.

Not everyone that imposes themselves on you is a bad person. They may not know, or they may know and be so desperately lonely that they find it better to take a chance, and have someone tolerate them, than be alone.

Part of social skills involves learning, not only how NOT to act like a jerk but how to handle people that act like a jerk towards you, as well.

11

After thinking about this, I think I’m more tolerant of things when I can understand the impulse or motivation behind it (and if the motivation is acceptable). Someone acting like a lovesick puppy for a little while is within my range of short-term acceptable behaviors. Acting like a lovesick puppy for years isn’t.

That isn’t to say that I’m claiming anything done in the cause of “love” is acceptable, or that others couldn’t and shouldn’t have their lines set in a way different place.

12

Subjective and individual, truly.

As you can see people are all over the board. Because everyone has a different sense of such things. Some see it as ineptly pursuing, others as stalkerish. If you were warm for the guy’s attention, you’d be over the moon. If you’d once had a stalkerish ex, you’d be freaked and pull back.

Yes, it is rude to impose on someone, glom onto their recreation, etc. I would certainly find it rude. This behaviour would cause me to pull back from this person in a big way. Nothing but terse conversations of no import. No references to my plans, locations etc. Direct inquiries would be roundly met with, “Oh, I’m waiting to hear from a friend and make plans together!” or other evasive responses. No way would this person ever hear again about my plans or location. Period.

13

The OP’s story reminded me of something that happened to me several years ago.

I was a sales rep for a small technology company. Some people from the company I worked for and one of our dealers set up a business dinner with a rep from another company-- I’ll call him clueless idiot Steve. The idea was that our two companies had a lot of potential common clients and the 2 of us could share leads and events, etc. There were like 6 people present at the dinner.

It was a fairly uneventful dinner, lots of BS and buzzwords…I do remember the food being good. At the end of the dinner Steve turns to me and says “that was fun, lets do it again sometime”…I’m like OK, whatever.

The e-mails started the next day…Steve was all full of enthusiam for our mutual business venture and wanted to get started right away…could we meet for dinner next week? Please note MY sales managers were copied on this correspondence which made it hard to ignore.

I already had a bad feeling about this, so I sent him a carefully crafted response to the effect that I had a very full personal life and preferred to conduct business during the day so I could keep my evenings free for my very full personal life. Since this was business correspondence and it was being copied to several people I couldn’t find a way to drop the “I have a boyfriend” line into the e-mail, even though it was absolutely true.

We ended up setting up a lunch meeting. It was a nightmare. I bought all my business materials, lead sheets and a write-up of my ideas. Steve brought nothing work related, reeked of cologne and tried to deflect every attempt I made to talk business and to steer the conversation to personal matters. I steered it back to business each time. I had my guard up during the entire meeting and took special care to show no personal interest or anything that could be interpreted as personal interest during the entire lunch.

At the end of the meeting clueless Steve turns to me at starts telling me that this was his first date since his divorce and he’s so glad he met me, etc, etc. I responded to the effect that I’m sorry he misunderstood but I was happy with my boyfirend and life and had no interest in him outside of business.

He called me a bitch and stormed off, the only good point was he refused to speak to me ever again…really, at one point 4 freaking years later I saw him at the airport talking to some work friends of mine, I went up and joined the conversation and said hello to him and he glared at me and stormed away from the group.

And I told my manager and the people that set up the initial dinner the whole story, I wanted to make sure they knew I had no interest in fix-ups. They were genuinely suprised and apologetic.

I guess my point is that if a sufficiently delusional idiot gets it into his head that you’re the girl for him, your choices are to break his heart or to spend your whole life with a pathetic creature you despise.

There’s no way out and you shouldn’t feel bad about hurting him.

My only other similar experience was during my first and last Dopefest when a regular on this board latched onto me despite me sending my best get away from me you creep signals and tried to follow me home, he actually claimed to need the same train I did and took it even though I was fairly sure it was taking him nowhere near where he lived, thank god I dropped the “boyfriend” line ( a lie at that time ) in time to keep him from actually getting off at my stop.

I must admit I that I now get extra special amusement from reading threads where this poster whines about mean girls rejecting him.

14

Take my approach: Learn to tell people the truth sans apology… consistently.

Even if you were to cut him short when he visited your booth, it would work best without an apology or apologetic behavior. Just drop the big ol’ ball in his lap and let him deal with it. Hold your line if he presses, inquires, pleads or apologizes. Actually, cut him off if he apologizes.

I could go on and on as to the long-term benefits of such behavior, but since we are such an apologetic culture, I’m not so sure if it’d go over well here (See, that’s apologetic behavior. Accomplishes zero).

15

What’s the over/under on how many PMs Ann Hedonia is going to receive in the next, say, 48 hours?