Guys. You know how to tell when a woman is interested in you? She shows ANY sign of interest in you.
Any halfway attractive woman gets approached by men all the time. For that reason they tend to not throw out indicators that they are interested unless they are actually interested on some level. Now you can easily shut that interest down by opening your mouth, but for the most part, if you think she is interested, she is interested.
Some specific examples (and granted, I too missed some of these the first time):
-Laughs at your joke that even you know is stupid
-Seems interested in your conversation even though even you find it boring
-Plays with her hair
-Plays with YOUR hair
-Touches your arm / chest
-Licks her lips
-Licks YOUR lips
-Punches you in the arm
-Buys you a drink
-Grabs your ass
-Gives you her phone number and it is actually her number
-Actually goes with you when you say “do you want to go somewhere else?”
-Stares at your face for just a bit too long as if she wants you to make out with her
-Tells you she wants you to make out with her
-Sits on your lap and makes out with you
-Asks you if you know where the bathroom is and if you can help her find it
-Mentions anything about her underwear
-Offers/asks for a ride home
I’m hard to read, and I can’t be the only female who actually likes men and hey, maybe I just LIKE you when I show interest? Sure, liking can turn into more, and usually does, but geez. Not everyone ‘clicks’ right off the bat. What’s wrong with having a gal pal in the meantime? :smack:
Absolutely nothing is wrong with having a gal pal, most of my friends are female (various reasons, one of the biggest being that I’ve been in the flute section since 5th grade). There’s still the issue of if/when they come to have a crush on you, how do you know? If anything, it’s more ambiguous since they could just be more comfortable around you and the “flirtiness” is just their “comfortable” attitude.
(If I misinterpreted your post, sorry, the ridiculous spectrum the word “like” covers can make posts in these threads confusing)
You think that’s bad prickteasing? Wait 'till you hear what happened this evening.
I just said goodnight to this other chick, who was behaving similarly towards me last year, to whom I actually said pretty much what you suggested for chick #1: “just how serious are you about this guy of yours? because I’d like to ask you out,” and she turned me down, so I haven’t seen her for six months. Well now she’s single again she invited herself round this evening. We watched a movie, and while we were watching it she leaned up against me and pushed a boob onto my arm (in the familiar manner) then about 20 minutes in, finagled herself into a position on the couch where she was lying back on me with my arm round her, and my hand slap bang on her right tit.
I moved my fingers around a bit just to check that she was aware, hey, know what, my hand is on your boob, this isn’t an accident - and she didn’t do anything about it one way or the other. So I stroked her arm, changed grip on the boobage pointedly, moved my hand onto the other boob just to be sure she knew it wasn’t a fluke, nestled my head onto hers and she nestled hers back into my neck, and used my other hand to stroke her hair. Put my arm round her after the movie. Kissed her on the cheek. No ambiguity as to my intentions. The result? She said “I’ve got to go home now. Are you free Sunday to go for a walk?”
If this sort of thing carries on, I’m gonna have to start carrying my balls around in a wheelbarrow.
I have had the same thing happen to me a number of times. That hints at another point. I got a few very serious and painful cases Blue Balls from things like that when I was a teenager like lots of guys did. Yes, yea of little faith, they are real and can be extremely painful and it lasts for hours if something isn’t done. It is similar to a migraine headache but the epicenter is in your nuts and there is a physiological basis for it.
If they had something like Youtube back then, I couldn’t post some pretty impressive videos for that phenomenon that isn’t really well documented on the internet to this day which is pretty impressive in its own right. Imagine going from being romantic and enthusiastic with nothing in particular in mind to being kicked in the crotch as hard as possible and have someone throw out a flip mind-game comment and then walk out. It is the same thing. Knockout physical and psychological punch in one move. Impressive but not admirable.
I am old enough now that I don’t think I can get the Blue Balls anymore but those types of mind-games from years ago did leave a permanent psychological impression and makes me permanently skeptical. Some females just like to play the first part of the game for fun because they have little to lose.
Tell me about it. I walked into an IHOP (mostly empty at the time) and the hostess (not the waitress, but the one who seats you) immediately warmed up to me and got all flirty and such, and even said {quote} “I’ll sit you here, so that you’ll be close to me!” Since she was otherwise my type, I eventually asked her out, but of course she shot me down (politely, but she seemed a bit surprised that I did so).
Oh God, you’re usually dead-on accurate, but don’t tell the boys this! Far too many of us have guys in our lives that we thought were okay to talk to now and then, who then decided we wanted them because we didn’t tell them to fuck off when they spoke to us. “Any interest” is setting the bar way too low, especially if you’re going to put laughs at your stupid jokes on the list.
I think the responses to this thread are conflating signals that a woman is attracted to you, that she enjoys your company, and that she’s actually interested in pursuing something more. Learning to tell among those three is pretty damn important if you want to pursue anything.
You hit on a big one. Guys are lousy at telling the difference between interested as a friend and interested in maybe more. There was that whole study I can’t seem to find now about how that, if a woman smiled and made eye contact with a man, he was more likely to assume she was interested, while she would say she was only being polite.
mssmith comes across as a guy who is really good at telling the difference, perhaps due to a lot of study and/or practice. But, even if not, I remember a study in Psychology Today (or some other psych magazine at the library) that said that the men who were most successful were the ones who overestimated how many women were attracted to them, rather than the ones who were more accurate. They also indicated that a woman was more likely to rate as attractive someone who had an overinflated view of their attractiveness than an more accurate or underinflated one.
As for my own contribution: one book I read about the subject back in my teen years mentioned a type of girl called the “sunshine girl.” She constantly puts out signals of interest, is a huge flirt, but means nothing by it. They estimated that this type of girl was upwards of 10% of the population. If so, this indicates why it is so hard to get actual hard data on the subject for the more scientifically minded. And with what I offered above, maybe that’s a good thing.
ETA: And ultrafilter says what I wanted to say much, much better.
Actually you’re right. I should say “interested” doesn’t necessarily mean “interested in imediately blowing you in the back seat of a car”. Too many clueless guys overreact to the slightest bit of interest and then wonder why they scare a girl off.
Showing interest means you may reciprocate with an escalating level of intimacy. As I said, if you start to bore her or come on too strong, that interest can be turned off.
So, approach, but only when you’re interested, which will be indicated by a complex sequence of lash-batting, touching, alternating eye contact and avoidance, and other signs of apparent interest, which changes daily like the keys on an Enigma decoder. Otherwise, men should keep their expression of interest to themselves, lest they be branded monumental creeps and excluded socially by the circle of common friends after news of their social ineptitude is conveyed to all and sundry. Is that approximately correct?
I’m a socially clueless male who wishes signs of interest were clearer. I can understand the exasperation with the fuzziness of romantic relations and the way some people react like assholes to polite shows of interest.
But this is a very ungenerous way to represent what Elfkin said. S/he had responded to what Smith was saying and what Smith had said was that the bar was “She shows ANY sign of interest in you”. That does seem too low a bar. I have female friends with long term boyfriends who’ve shown signs of interest in me, including laughing at my (semi) stupid jokes.
Elfkin didn’t say that when men express interest after having misunderstood singals from a woman, they should be thought of as creeps. Perhaps some women have done that to you, that sucks.
“Wanna go get drunk and people watch the gross couples making out in public? It’ll be hilarious!” Dude, a chick working in a porn store is awesome! It means she’s not squeamish and can handle creepy dudes no problem.
That said, this thread and the other thread are all well and good for how to see the signs, but how do you get to the point where you’re actually in public around potential suitors? I am extremely introverted and mildly agoraphobic. I don’t like going out just for something to do, and I don’t like being in large groups of people. If there’s going to be a gathering or party I’m going to there must be booze, otherwise my tension builds and I have to leave. I don’t get many opportunities for that either.
So… now what? All of my hobbies involve solitude, or are male oriented which doesn’t help with my socialization skills.
That would have been awesome! She was working at the moment, but who knows if she had a lunch break coming up? Even if she didn’t, that would still be awesome.
Another idea I had was to ask her to show me around the store. She was pretty obviously enthusiastic about the merchandise, I could have asked her all sorts of questions about which products she liked. “Hmm, The G-spot Tickler Turbo 2000. Have you tried this one? Did you like it?”
You know, now that I think about it, I threw away a great opportunity. The subtext of what she said was “I could offer my assistance to anyone in this store, and out of all these people, I chose you. I tested you to see if you’re single, then I told you I’m single and not happy about it. Now I’m enthusiastic to show you a whole bunch of sex toys.”
And my response was “No thanks, I’m just looking.”
Yea, verily, be it known that wait staff are obligated to talk to you and are encouraged to be friendly in order to garner higher wages and created a friendly ambience that develops repeat business.
If she flirts with you when she’s not working THEN ask her out.
Oh, hey! I could bring you back to the shop, bitch slap you hard, make it clear that I’m taken and we are just doper-friends and then wander off to check out the fur-covered paddles (I’m looking for a new one) then you can test the waters with porn-store girl.
And if it’s not going well, I’ll be your wing-woman and ease you out the door leaving her begging for more.
