All the more reason for people to reject it. If it were uncommon and minor it could be overlooked. Instead, we’ve had to have major anti-rape campaigns because people can’t grasp no meaning no.
If one partner gets to feel better at the expense of the other partner, there’s a good reason why not.
We’re getting into self-fulfilling prophecies in a lot of this thread. People put up with the bullshit because they think they have to, and because they do put up with it, it continues.
This just seems really pathetic, though. How is the other person supposed to figure that out? And I just think it’s so transparent. If the other person is pretending to eat the ice cream just so you won’t feel like a fat loser, then what’s the point? I’d feel like more of a lardass if I knew the other person was only going along with it because they knew that I had serious food issues.
I don’t want to be friends with anyone who is that difficult to deal with… I don’t care if their problem is their “shyness” and “insecurity” or if they are just playing mind games, the end result is the same. If you act like an immature child, don’t be surprised when people insist that you grow up. I truly don’t have time for people who are that high-maintenance in my life. As I once memorably said of a difficult acquaintance, “I don’t put up with this much crazy from people I am fucking, let alone my girlfriends.”
Heh. This is really funny. A nice try, but pretty much every man who has had a one-night stand has heard this. And the rest have heard it related to them by other men. Do women really not know how common this is?
I don’t really see it as so much of a game as a difference in communication styles. Women can’t really help it because they are just wired differently. And it’s not anything that needs to be “helped”, any more than someone who only speaks French needs to be helped. It would be foolish to think that someone speaking French is playing a passive-agressive game, right? (OK, maybe that’s a bad example.)
Long before the Dairy Queen incident, I heard a story about a woman asking her husband, while on a road trip, if he wanted a cup of coffee. I’ve told it to a lot of friends. Most men wondered why the woman didn’t simply say that she wanted coffee. Every single woman, without exception, knew instantly that she was doing exactly that.
The thing is, language is not terribly accurate. Context, cultural and gender differences, body language, and inflection often communicate far more than words do.
As far as saying no in the bedroom goes, I believe that almost every woman I have been with has said it at least once or twice before jigginess ensued. I just consider it part of the mating ritual and don’t take it personally, nor do I take it terrible seriously. (Unless said in a certain tone of voice, of course. If that’s the case, I back right off.) Having said that, I believe that the most powerful weapon in a horny guy’s arsenal is the phrase “You’re right, babe, this is moving way too fast, can we just cuddle?” Penis WILL ensue. 
Well, I know you’re saying that you don’t necessarily approve of this, and that this is just the world we live in…but that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to accept it. I mean, I’m female, and when I have sex with a man, I’ve often initiated it or said yes right away, and I haven’t really noticed him thinking I’m less of an intimidating grizzly and more of a roadkill deer just because I didn’t spend twenty minutes cock blocking him. I mean, I can understand wanting more foreplay, but most guys are often happy, if not relieved, to know that they can just have sex.
Dan Savage talks about the sexual script, and no meaning no. In this article, he says:
So when it comes to trying new things, and you know the person well, pressure doesn’t necessarily mean coercion. But at the same time, you do have to take no for an answer at some point.
I think that when both partners aren’t on the same page is when you get into dangerous areas, like date rape. If the girl is saying “no” and meaning no and the guy is thinking, “No means no until she says yes,” then some bad things are going to happen. Not that everyone has to deromanticize sex and have a BDSM esque contract about what they will and will not do prior to turning off the lights, but if you’re having sex with someone you know well (i.e., a real relationship), it’s probably a good idea at some point to talk about boundaries or issues of consent or whatever issues they may have had about it in the past. I think a lot of people (myself included) balk at the idea of the whole “let’s make a contract and ask a million times before we can even consider that consent is given” but the sexual script where the girl is unwilling and needs to be “persuaded” and the guy is a randy dog really needs to be re-evaluated, IMHO.
Or some of us have simply different communication styles and different ways of interacting with the world. Not all of us are as literal as you, and not all of us want to be. Like I said, I tend to be literalist in my communication, but others may or may not be literalist with me. I find it both fun and aggravating figuring out who has what style of communication, but, as I said, I would hate for everyone to communicate in a yes/no, black/white manner. I don’t want my social interactions reduced to a flowchart.
When the ambiguity of communication descends into passive-aggressiveness, that’s when I start having a problem. But, mostly, it’s just a social convention and one that has been settled upon after thousands of years of language.
Mine and Brainiac4’s:
Me: “Honey, would you like to do the dishes?”
He: “No.”
He is answering the question I asked. It took us months to determine that I am saying “Honey, would you do the dishes?” And that when he said no, he was literally answering the question I asked. Who wants to do dishes anyway?
(By the way, the open ended “yes” to doing the dishes meant he’ll do them ‘sometime’ - maybe in six months for all I know. Usually long after I’ve lost my temper.)
Have I changed? - sometimes - sometimes I slip - usually now though, understanding his literal nature, I say “Honey, I need you to get the dishes done by 1:00 this afternoon” (or now). And he follows through - or he says “I won’t be able to get to that, I’m doing this other thing.” But when I slip, he now answers “no, but I’ll do them anyway” with a smile - because he understands I will never TELL him to do the dishes.
This is way better than when I thought he refused to help out, and he was mad at me because I was mad at him for no good reason.
Neither one of us is being manipulative. I don’t like to nag - so I phrase things fairly passively. He is very literal.
Can you clarify something here? Are you talking about the first time with a guy, or once the relationship is established? There’s a huge difference. Unless you’re in the habit of sleeping with men on the first date (and I doubt it, but YMMV), then I’d bet you’ve put up some token resistance at least a few times.
Oh come on.
Exactly.
Much in the same way that women use the telephone to share feelings while men use it to share data. (Not always, of course.)
I didn’t mean that in a patronizing way. And of course, men and women are more like than unlike. But there are very tangible differences in communication styles. This thread is chock full of them.
While I might not phrase it exactly that way, there are certainly studies out there that point to biology as a reason for different communication styles between the sexes. Now, whether it plays more of a role than social/environmental factors, I don’t know, but it’s not a ridiculous idea that some of the differences might have roots in one’s biology.
How is that at the expense of the other? I just don’t see how, out of all the things people put up with from each other, this sort of thing is somehow that big of a deal. I’ll put up with this sort of thing not because I ‘think I have to’, but because in its mildest forms it just not a big fucking deal to have to ask twice. I understand that I am not always perfect or easy to deal with, so why should I demand that other people make things transparent and easy for me?
And I really don’t like the implication that it’s a bad habit that you should try to break people of. Adults don’t fix other adults. It’s no one’s job to manipulate me into being a better person. Take me or leave me.
Which is fine, we all have our dealbreakers–I have some pretty weird ones, myself–but I don’t like the scathing, condecending attittude towards people that are indirect. It’s a personality flaw, sure, but aren’t a hundred other things as well?
They figure it out by paying attention. It’s why people get along better after 10 or 25 or 50 years of bumping along together than they do in the first few months. And just because you aren’t like this doesn’t mean it’s an unforgivable flaw in someone else. It’s just the way some people are.
Another thing, in general: I think part of the reason I am defending this particular quirk is that I think it is one of those bad traits that often comes bundled with good traits --like the way the person who understands you totally and sympathizes with your point of view will often also understand and sympathize with the opposite point of view as well, or the person who takes total responsbility for themself and their actions, which is awesome, but also tends to feel responsible for things they can’t control, which is frustrating: there are many times when you can’t have the one side of someone’s personality without the other. Oftentimes, people that are considerate and generous and selfless are also irritatingly indirect communicators, and if you appreciate the one you kinda have to adapt to the other.
Well, I’ve only been in one long term sexual relationship (all my other seven or eight sexual partners have been pretty casual).
I pretty much either initiated it or didn’t put up any resistance at all in the more casual ones. Interestingly enough, I put up a lot more resistance with the one I was in the long term relationship with. I don’t think I was all that attracted to him, plus he had a habit of being manipulative about sex, so I guess I try to avoid the whole game thing there. (Unless it’s BDSM and we’ve agreed to it.) And I put up resistance if I really don’t want to.
I was talking about in relationships. Kind of more along the lines of what if one person wants to do something that the other might be uncomfortable with (like in the Dan Savage column I linked to). Although it’s probably a good idea to have some idea of what’s appropriate with a stranger, too–just probably isn’t going to happen.
My SO plays these little word games, but I’ve started calling him on it. Trying to convince him that it really is ok to just come out and say what he wants has been maddening.
Such as, we’ll be watching TV. He’ll ask me “Do you want to see what else is on?” Since I’m enjoying the current show I answer “No.” He follows up with, “Oh ok, I just thought maybe you’d want to.” We both know HE wants to channel surf but that game can go on forever.
Curious. So where do we learn these communication patterns? Our parents? Our friends? Are these unspoken rules in a game that we grew up with and expect everyone else to know?
I wonder how many differences fall along generational lines. I’m 45 and if I think about it, there was a fair amount of this at home but it was never remarked upon and nobody seemed to mind it. Maybe because it was an accepted form of behavior for my parents, who grew up in the 40’s and 50’s in the same small town and they learned the same communication patterns.
But there are so many ways to communicate “I’m not easy, you’re going to have to work for this, and we both seem to enjoy making you work for it.”
I don’t get it. You had sex with a man, woke up in his bed and say “I’ve never done this before!” there’s no one else around to think anything. Is the guy going to tell his friends? Quite possibly. But he’s not going to caveat the story to his buddies by saying “oh, but she’s not a slut, because she said she’d never done that before.” Who knows though, maybe she is trying to make herself feel better or maybe make the guy feel better he’s not the sixth guy she’s done this week and it’s only Tuesday.
Saying “no thanks” would make men good communicators. A woman going home with every guy in the office would make her the woman who goes home with every guy in the office and the guys in the office have every right to decide if they want to go home with the woman who goes home with every guy in the office. You think a guy who’s gone home with every woman in the office isn’t known as the guy who’s gone home with every woman in the office and the new women in the office aren’t getting the 411 before going home with him?
Wow, hostile much? Since the gloves are apparently comin’ off:
IME, people who don’t get the nuances of social exchanges are frustrated by what they don’t understand, which is itself understandable. But that doesn’t place any onus on me to start replying to “does this make me look fat?” with “hell yes!” just to make sure that people who only grok the unvarnished truth are able to keep up.
There is a world of difference in “NO” when it is a response to “Do you want to have sex?” or “Are you mad at me?” or “Does this make me look fat?” or “Are you free to go to the polka concert?” Sometimes that world of difference is only conveyed by tone or context or a long-established relationship between people. Some people can effectively communicate that way and some people can’t. But those who can commuinicate that way are no more automatically dishonest than those can’t communicate that way are automatically stupid. So throwing around loaded terms like “weasel” and “pathetic” seems like quite a bit of overkill to me.