Yes, but there is a big damn difference between “I like you and am attracted to you but we can’t get together because you’re too young/live to far away/aren’t a vegetarian” or even “I like you as a friend and enjoy hanging out with you but don’t have romantic feelings for you” and “leave me alone and never talk to me again you insane fucking stalker.”
This has been talked about on this board previously but I think a lot of people go out of their way to see a rejection as a non-rejection, so they have an excuse to pursue someone relentlessly.
“Thanks but I can’t” is a rejection if this is always the response you get when you ask someone out and you’ve asked them dozens of times. Just because the occasional jerk and idiot refuses to grasp this doesn’t mean it’s a poorly executed rejection; it just means that the guy is a jerk and/or idiot.
Most men are grown ups and should therefore be capable of connecting some dots together.
And I think the problem is that guys like the one in the OP hear stories like Alice’s, and very conveniently forget the part where she did like the guy, but said no for a good reason.
They only hear the “but he pestered me and finally we went out, and now we’re married” part.
To a point you’re right, but if a girl says that, instead of “No, I’m not interested”, then she doesn’t have room to complain because, by itself, it’s ambiguous. Yes, after getting it a few times, a guy will get the picture, and he’s certainly beyond dense if it takes him a dozen times.
Imagine a scenario like this. Let’s say Aaron asks out Alice, she isn’t interested, but doesn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she says “Thanks, but I can’t”. Now say Brian asks out Beth, she is genuinely interested, but darn it, she’s a bridesmaid in her friend’s wedding that day, so she says “Thanks, but I can’t”. Both guys got exactly the same information, but Alice and Beth each intended completely different messages. How are we as guys supposed to interpret that? If Aaron misinterprets the message and asks out Alice again, he now looks like a creep. If Brian misinterprets the message and doesn’t ask out Beth again, they both miss out on an opporunity.
Yes, some guys will make an excuse no matter what the rejection is, but when guys are constantly getting these kinds of mixed messages, it’s simply not fair to be upset at him.
Thank you for this. Bookmarked the post.
If I asked out Beth and got that response, it would be the last she would hear from me. Beth needs to say, “I’m busy that day, how about next week instead.” Of course, Alice should say, “Thanks, but I’m not interested.”
That’s my point. If more women would simply do that, I suspect a good chunk of this sort of behavior would vanish. We’d still have creeps like the one from the OP, but I don’t think there’s anything we can do about those guys.
Rarely is this all the guys have to go by, and it is a sign of massive clueless if all you’re paying attention to are the words coming out of someone’s mouth. You have body language, you have the ease of communication flow between you and other person, abd you have other insightful details that come with "Thanks, but I cant’.
If someone asks me out and I can’t make it but I’m interested, I would never just say, “Thanks but I can’t.” Trust me when I say no woman would. We’d say somethng like “thanks, but I can’t make it then. How about Saturday? I know a cool jazz place we could go to that serves awesome mojitos. Blah, blah, blah…”
If I’m not interested, I’d say "thanks for asking, but I can’t. " I’d leave it at that and then start walking away to avoid the awkwardness. You get one, maybe two more chances to ask me again before I start thinking there is something wrong with your synapses or upbringing. I’m turning you down, and I’m communicating that verbally and behaviorially.
People prefer to hear the, “Yeah, well, I was persistent–I asked this girl at work out every day for a month and she kept saying no. We’ve been married 19 years, thanks for asking” story instead of the, “This guy kept asking me out and calling me and visiting me at work and now he’s in prison but he’s going to get out in a month and I’m scared” story.
In the case of the guys who harassed their future wives, I always have to refrain from asking, “So have you stopped beating your wife?” 
Exactly. The same as a man would if a friend asked him to do something and he wanted to but had a prior commitment. We’re not THAT hard to figure out.
Okay, I was kind of joking when I posted that stuff before the edit, but wow. There are women who moved provinces to get away from guys stalking them and then married them?! It really does make me wonder if those relationships are abusive in some way.
Speaking from personal experience, I have actually gotten that sort of response only to find out she wasn’t interest. For a recent example, the first date I went on with this girl went well and we had a second one, after the second one she said she had a great time and that we should get together again. I proposed a day and time and she said something to the effect of “I’m sorry, I can’t, I’m behind on my school work and I need to study. You should call me so we can work out another time.” I call her, she doesn’t pick up… okay, she’s busy or didn’t hear it, so I text her and get a text back late that night saying she had just finished and was going to bed but she didn’t want to leave me hanging. So the next day I call her, and THEN she finally tells me she’s not interested.
I don’t think my interpretation of what happened was unreasonable, but apparently, I missed something. Was I somehow creepy for not being able to tell that the “I can’t” really meant “I’m not interested”? If she’d just said “I’m not interested”, I would have gotten the idea a lot sooner. It’s not fair that I was expected to read her mind. I was more upset about it than I otherwise would have been because, well, I’d had almost two days of having my hopes up than had she just been straight with me.
Why can’t you just be straight and say “Thanks for asking, but I’m not interested.”? Saying “I can’t” implies a conditional, just like in my situation above, where I think it was perfectly reasonable to interpret that as “I can’t because I’m studying, but I would if I wasn’t” and it was actually less reasonable to interpret as “I’m saying I can’t and blaming it on me needing to study so I don’t have to reject you to your face.” There’s no reasonable way to interpret “I’m not interested” in a way that makes it look like you are. Why is that so hard to do?
According to how you’ve relayed this, it does sound as though she was to blame in this miscommunication. She resorted to using the “we should do this again” cliche as a way of saying goodbye instead of simply saying bye, turning on her heels, and then turning down any later offers to see her again. So there would no cause for her to be annoyed by your persistence. And I doubt she was annoyed.
Of course not. It’s only creepy when someone is not showing you signs of interest–and in fact, are showing the complete opposite–and you plow on anyway.
There’s no reason anyone “can’t” be straight. It’s just that it’s 1) not necessary most of the time because most people are attuned well enough to social nicetities that bluntness is a rarely practiced in routine interactions and 2) as I’ve said in previous threads on this subject, often “I’m not interested” and variations thereof can lead to badgering and harrassment and looks insensitive if done in public. Whether it should be or not, it is awkward rejecting someone in an upfront manner. Feelings get involved and it can get personal. Consider yourself lucky if you don’t understand how this could possibly be.
The girl in your example should have told you she wasn’t interested in you no later than after your phone first conversation post-second date. But another thing to consider is that she initially thought a 3rd date sounded like a good idea, but later changed her mind.
As others pointed out, this is a fairly common theme in fiction, and many men (and probably some women, too) have taken this as a way of winning over one’s true love, or proving one’s love is pure, or some such bullshit. We used to have a poster on this board who was seriously mental. In fact, he’s a big reason why we made the rule against having more than one active screen name at a time in the first place. He thought that by pursuing a woman, no matter what obstacles she put up, he was proving that he was a Manly Man, with Extra Masculinity, and that he DESERVED to have sex with her. According to him, this was how men were supposed to act. He and I emailed on a regular basis (I was another one of his targets, though I’m not sure if he lusted after me or if I was just part of the SDMB experience that he couldn’t live without), and he could not get it through his head that a woman might not appreciate this sort of attention from a Manly Man. After all, didn’t all women want that attention? He’d respect another Manly Man’s claim on a woman, of course…but a woman wouldn’t really know who or what she wanted until a man told her. He also didn’t believe that I had the authority to ban him, being that I’m a mere woman.
I was very, very glad that he lived half a continent away. I’m sure that if he ever found out where I live, that I’d have to incapacitate or kill him in order to show him that I am truly not at all interested in him.
One of the major reasons I was initially attracted to my now-fiancee was that she always is straight with people. She will say: “I’m going to have to say ‘no’. Thank you, but no.” or what have you. You can be gracious without being rudely blunt.
Insensitive? Only when you try to come up with a “why”. Excuses will always sound mealy-mouthed, and saying “I’m not interested” can be taken personally because it says you’re uninteresting. “No, thank you.” Tells anyone all they need to know without implying they look like a ferret.
“I can’t” implies an external factor preventing you from doing something you may otherwise be amenable to. Eg/ “I can’t, I have a work function/other plans/wold domination.” The danger with trying to use “I can’t” as shorthand is that that the clueless will thinking “you can’t but still want to” or it can be interpreted as “you can’t now but may be able to at some other time.” There can still be an implied interest.
If my buddy calls me to go jogging, but I’m on my way to my in-laws, I say “Oh sorry, I can’t.” which still implies I’d like to go for run, but later.
Because some people (girls too) tend to hear things in the way they want to hear them, “I can’t” is not definitive enough. It means “unable” rather than “unwilling”.
Is “I don’t want to” sensitive enough? I remember Phoebe on Friends at one point saying something like, “Oh, I wish I could…but I don’t want to.”
Lynn,
That reminds me of the guys that when you say “no” respond with “why, do you have a boyfriend.” And if, in response to this query, you say “no” you then get “well, then, why won’t you go out with me?” (If you say yes, you get “do you really like him” - if you say yes to that you get some version of “but I’ll treat you better.”)
My favoritest pickup line, that I’ve have told several times here in the past, was when I was walking with a girlfriend and her husband. Her husband ran into a friend of his he hadn’t seen since the wedding and introduced his wife. His friend looked me up and down (broadly) and said “Well, is she taken?” I thank the stars that at that moment I was so my friend’s husband could say “married” rather than having him say no - because with that sort of opening line, only inserting his testicles into his own mouth would have convinced him I wasn’t a land claim.
“thanks but I can’t” isnt the misleading part, the “maybe some other time” is the misleading part. Yes, if you say “thanks but I can’t, maybe some other time” enough times I’ll get the hint and move on. Women are grown ups too and people should be honest about their intentions and interest. It’s not about being emotionally led on. I’m a busy guy, I have shit to do and other women to pursue. Just be honest so I can move on and stop wasting each other’s time.
Of course this is true. But some situations call for more straightness than others.
You go to a dinner party and the hostess serves you her favorite dish, the one that supposedly everyone raves about. You think it’s dreadful. She asks how did you like it. You could be honest and say “I don’t like it; you put too much cilantro in it” or you could say “it was okay, but I actually think that your souffle gets the blue ribbon. It was fan-freaking-tastic.”
Your best friend is getting married in 15 min. She just got her hair done. You think it looks like she’s got a Daniel Boon cap on her head. She asks “How do I look?” Are you really going to be straight with her, with minutes to go before she goes down the altar?
You’re walking down the hall at work. The guy from the mailroom who always has a lame joke to tell you asks you if you want to hang out with him tomorrow night. You don’t want to go, but you also don’t want to burst the guy’s balloon.
Which one of the following responses is consistent with the conventions of social diplomacy as established by my previous examples?
“Sorry, I can’t make it but thanks for asking, JoJo.”
or
“Sorry, JoJo, I’m going to have to say no. Thank you but no.”
“No thank you” is just as clear as “No, can’t make it”. Someone who is hellbent on looking for hope where there is none could easily decide that “no thank you” means “I don’t want to go out with you today but I may decide to say yes tomorrow, so keep on asking me.”
These people tend to be called idiots and creeps.
Well, I haven’t been advocating “some other time”. It’s the absence of that very clause that is a major clue of rejection.
I think most men probably hate rejection less than you suspect. It’s like being a salesman. Not a vacuum cleaner door to door salesman but a professional salesman in a b2b setting. Yes, someone who is good at their job will realize when a prospect is completely a waste of time and will stop pursuing it. And yes, there are sales people who can’t do that and are totally annoying. But if you’re going to work in sales you can’t let rejection bother you and luckily most people you deal with, just like most women, aren’t cruel or humiliating about it. So if there’s pretty minimal downside for you and for whatever reason you think you still have a chance, why not try again?
That’s why it’s easy to give men the wrong impression. Minimal downside to trying again and the upside is we get our date. It’s easy to say we should get the hint, but in most cases we don’t have our goals well aligned. I wish more people were motivated to not waste my time, but in reality it’s like a) Man wants a date and b) Woman wants, what exactly? It seems to involve avoiding guilt or awkwardness or something because if women didn’t care at all there’d be no hint to pick up on, you could be quite clear.
I’m not saying it’s unreasonable either, whatever your motivation is. I’m just saying, no we’re not trying to minimize rejection we’re trying to maximize our women time.
And obviously there’s outliers… your example was a psycho no matter what.