In my opinion, the solution to “some members of the opposite sex send intentionally conflicting signals and get mad when I don’t know what to do!” is to take them at their word and get them in the habit of expressing themselves clearly, not to assume that every member of the opposite sex is sending you coded information. I believe clear, unambiguous communication is the best way to deal with something as fraught and nebulous as romantic interest. No one is doing anyone any favors by pandering to the people who don’t know how to communicate clearly.
I don’t believe it. At that stage (if it’s even a stage), a woman is looking for a generic sort of bland confidence. If you can’t show that, and keep it up for a while, don’t bother.
The problem with that is that the kind of guy who doesn’t get the subtle “go away” signals is also more than likely to be the kind of guy who will be be deeply insulted and angry if you do actually come out and say “get lost, you’re not my type”. It’s a lose-lose proposition.
So, the both of them move on and don’t waste one another’s time, until such time in the future as either each finds someone who matches their respective position, or (better yet) until he gets over it and gets his stuff together. But if he DOES engage succesfully on the basis of getting a direct go/nogo decision early on, more power to him.
That would be great and all, but I’m just not sure the world works, or can be made to work, that way. The comment in the other thread was sexist, predictable, and mostly irrelevant. And it worked. It got your attention. It’s possible to be polite, decent, and never leap to any unwarranted conclusions, and to never, ever be noticed. People see signals that sometimes aren’t there, and act on them, because the alternative is worse.
No, it might easily be #3 – he is totally oblivious, and doesn’t realize signals are even being sent. I’ve been told this is the case with me, at least. I’ve been told this by many people, one of them being my wife.
I don’t think it’s just that I’m completely clueless. I also think most women aren’t being as overtly obvious as they think they are. Having been an actor (despite my cluelessness), I do know how often people think they’re being obvious when they aren’t Actors are used to making big, obvious signals. Most normal people feel too self conscious about it.
And this is the polite social fiction that greases the world.
A friend of mine - in her 40s - was just saying she had to pull out her “oblivious” skills that she hasn’t used for a long time when she was getting hit on by a guy she didn’t want to offend by saying “what the fuck?!” or even “sorry, no.”
So we send signals. And if they are not caught we save face in that the signals weren’t caught. No one is outright rejected when flirting isn’t returned. And when the signal is “go away” you are free to just back out without the embarrassment of being told you aren’t wanted. “We never managed to get together because she always had to wash her hair” is so much nicer than “she told me not even if I was the last man on Earth - she finds my weight disgusting.” Even if the first is a easily seen through social lie, the whole truth is not really what is needed.
It isn’t romantic, but my girlfriends are having the issue right now that one of our friends is sort of slow on the uptake with other people’s signals. It means someone is going to have to speak up and talk to her - which will be embarrassing for her and for whomever gets the short straw and has to do it - we’d rather she just picked up on the signals (she monopolizes conversations). Then again, maybe she is picking up on the signals and is just being rude instead of oblivious - but we don’t want to put ourselves in the position of discovering THAT either.
I honestly don’t think the alternative is worse! I don’t agree that it worked, at least not in the way that I think Koxinga intended: I requested that he not make that sort of comment again and tried to create an intelligent(ish ;)) dialogue about sexism and communication, and voila! Here we are having an intelligentish conversation about sexism and communication. I wasn’t flustered or upset or angered or anything by the comment; it really made me feel more committed to eradicating that kind of casual, offhanded sexism in our society.
I do believe that if you set a tone that works and stick to it, and refuse to communicate in ways that don’t work, you will have better communication and better relationships.
That’s been my experience, at least. I used to be one of the passive-aggressive “how dare you not pick up on my very obvious blinking?!” people. In high school. When I got to university and started dating confident men, I realized that I had to start acting and expressing myself like a confident woman in relationships, or any communication failure we had would be entirely on me. When I was nineteen I remember being upset that my young man hadn’t wanted to come to a movie with me and my friends that afternoon. I did some very petulant sheet-rustling for about ten minutes before he said, “Are you going to do that all night, or should I sleep on the couch?” My instinct was to go “WELL IF YOU DON’T KNOW I’M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU”, but then I realized that (a) he hadn’t asked me what was wrong in the first place, because (b) I hadn’t actually told him anything was wrong. So I said, “It bothered me that you didn’t want to come to the movie with me, because that means you don’t want to spend time with me.” He said, “I thought you’d have more fun with your girl friends and I didn’t want to wreck your afternoon!” Problem solved in about fifteen seconds. Problems ever solved via strategic sheet-rustling: I’m guessing close to nil.
edit: On preview, I see I also agree with Dangerosa. That might be entirely contradictory to the point of my anecdote. I can’t tell. But I agree anyway.
Maybe it’s a male/female thing. You have the luxury, and the option, of waiting for someone to notice you. We have to make ourselves noticed. And trust me, the alternative is a hundred times worse.
It started an interaction. For the purposes of this thread, that’s the very definition of “it worked”.
The thing is that there is a time and place for signals, and a time and place for saying exactly what you mean. With my friend, we’ve reached the time where we need to SAY something, because signals are not working and the behavior is causing enough social friction that the temporary embarrassment of saying something outright is smaller than the potential for it tearing apart friendships. It would be less embarrassing and easier for everyone if the signals did work.
In the flirting pre-relationship stage, there is a lot of room for temporary embarrassment and hurt feelings in every direction - so there is a lot of signal sending. However, at some time in a relationship you have to actually communicate that “yes, you are going on a date Friday night” or that “yes, I’m on the birth control pill, but you are going to use a condom anyway” or that “I’m looking for marriage and if this isn’t going there its time for me to get out and look for someone with similar life goals.” Its hard to make a date for 7:30 Friday night in semaphore. Its even harder to mutually decide to have children (yet, somehow, I suspect the sending signals method of deciding to start a family isn’t uncommon)…
Whoa whoa whoa I beg your pardon. Objectification and the male gaze are not compliments. Being forced into a passive role is not ‘luxury’. When I want to be noticed by someone, I go up and talk to them. I make myself noticed. I have been the one to ask out all but one of the boyfriends I’ve had.
Being the active partner is great, it means that you only get the attention that you want. I honestly don’t think most men realize just how much male attention most women get every day. It’s very tiresome. It is so much better to have the choice of when and where someone pays attention to you. Attention = judgment, and if someone is paying attention to you and you don’t give them the response they want, that judgment is usually going to be “tease” or “bitch”. So, no, thanks. It is not a luxury and it is certainly not an option – we have your attention all the time whether we want it or not.
And, even if we don’t have your positive attention, say we’re fat or dress butch or any other “flaw” that makes us unworthy of romantic interest, we still get insults about our appearance and, since, in your words, we have to wait for someone to notice us, no boyfriend. Ever. Unless we, I don’t know, get active and start communicating clearly and paying attention to men ourselves.
But you don’t think the world can be made to work that way, so I guess I’ll have to resign myself to sitting on a park bench and smiling (but not too much! that’s for sluts!) at the men who come up to pay attention to me.
Uh, well, yeah, it’s a message board. That’s kind of the point of having a message board on the internet. I was the OP; I was the initiator of interaction. So, hah! You’re right! It did work! Suck on that !
I said exactly the opposite. You have the option of initiating something with the guys you notice, or picking and choosing from the guys who notice you. I had no idea it was such a burden. And I never said a gaze was a compliment.
The rest of your post indirectly confirms what I’m getting at. You say you have our attention whether you want it or not; that we’ll judge you as a tease or a bitch, fat or butch. I believe you that there are guys who do that, but there are millions who don’t. Why no mention of them? Your opinion is shaped by the guys you notice, not by the guys you don’t.
I’ve heard phrases like “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”, or “I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you spell my name right.” I used to really dislike that point of view. I still dislike it, but I can’t deny that there’s some truth in it. A guy can assume there are no signals, and wind up a middle-aged virgin; or he can assume that everything’s a signal, and get slapped 90% of the time. Which would you rather be?
I’m crying with laughter! That was about it, right down to the sporadic kicks, the passive-aggressive “are you watching?” looks back over to the [strike]camera[/strike] partner, and the growling and snapping.
Is that a joke about reading signals that aren’t there?