Women feeling the need to reference their boyfriends (to reassure themselves?)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Questions for you Dopers:

  1. Guys, have you ever experienced this?
  2. Gals, do you do this, and what do you feel is the psychology behind it (insider’s take)? Also, have you ever found that guys do this?

OK, here’s the phenomenon: I am in Lululemon, seeking to use a gift card. A sales gal, probably around 30, comes up to me and is selling in a very friendly, bubbly way. I am just normal. I don’t come onto her, and I don’t think I was staring at her boobs or anything. But I do think there was a spark of attraction between us. You know, sometimes you just feel “it” in the air.

So she’s taking me and the prospective garment back to the fitting rooms, and she says (gratuitously in my view), “Yeah my dad and my boyfriend really like to wear these.” Now, since you weren’t there, you can speculate that she said it because she had a reason to talk about her boyfriend, and you may be correct, but to me it had that certain feeling of how a woman mentions her boyfriend IF you are coming onto her (which can include chatting her up, etc.–not necessarily asking her out). Now I think that’s a fair strategy to use to gently deflect unwanted attention. It tells the guy to back down without being insulting or unfriendly.

But I have experienced that from time to time when I wasn’t doing anything, as was the case here. And to me it seems like something the woman does to reassure herself when she feels attracted to the guy. IOW, she feels attraction, she feels a bit guilty about it, and mentions the boyfriend to the guy to reassure herself of her own loyalty. And perhaps there is a measure of pretending that she had to protect herself from the man’s advances, even when such advances weren’t present. IOW, projection.

I have a couple other examples. Once I was at the same mall (though this was years ago), and I walked by a shoe place that had some wares outside on a rack or something, and an older woman was there, and I asked her a question about something. And, same thing: She mentioned her husband just out of the blue. It was rather funny, as this wasn’t someone I was going to hit on, but who knows, maybe I was giving off an Alpha vibe or something, lol.

Another time, I was in a bar and was asking the bartender a question about the, I forget, beer or something. Now this might have been perceived as chatting up, but I was there with my then-wife and daughter.

By the way, here is a funny Snuff Box video on this theme. I think you will laugh hard:

So, thanks for your thoughts on the above phenomenon!

2

Eh, I’m a guy and sometimes do the same thing. I think its just to head off any romantic misconceptions upfront rather than have to wait until something more obvert happens and you have to rush to blatently shoehorn in a girlfriend story.

Especially in your case, as you say “but I do think there was a spark of attraction between us.” Presumably she thought you might act on it, and decieded it’d be less awkward make you aware she’s taken early rather than have to wait and have to do it later, when it would be more blatent that she was shooting you down.

Bartenders get hit on by so many patrons that they’re basically on auto-pilot with that kind of stuff. She probably mentions her boyfriend, who may or may not exist, with almost the exact same anecdote to every guy who comes up to the bar and makes small talk.

3

“Obvert” = overt + obvious? :slight_smile:

As a guy, I’ve never had to do this as I’ve never been hit on by someone while I was with someone else.

Mayyybe, but that wouldn’t have been on me. She was very friendly, which it’s OK for salespeople to be, but I almost felt like she was hitting on me or giving me extra-special attention. Then I look at her, and I think she looks cute, and then there was that mutual electric charge (or so I perceived). Now if a chick is so sensitive to male attention that she would throw out “my boyfriend” at the very weak signals I would have been putting out at that point, then perhaps same chick should adjust her friendliness level quantitatively or qualitatively. Not that it’s a major crime, but I was slightly irked that she was so friendly, I did nothing but act rather neutrally, and then I got “my boyfriend.”

Re bartenders, yes, I can imagine. I’ve never actually hit on a bartender, however, so I’m not familiar with their strategies (and I’m not a big bar guy, anyway).

4

Here’s a clue that you are detecting a behavior that isn’t actually there: A Scientific American article a couple years back described experiments in which male/female pairs of friends were interviewed separately about their relationship. A much higher percentage of the men suspected there was a spark of interest coming from the woman, than the other way around. Note that this is not random men talking about random women and vice versa; in all cases the man and the woman were discussing the exact same friendship. Apparently men are wired or trained to overestimate interest, and women to underestimate it (the item was entitled something like “Can men and women be friends?” and I’ll dig up a cite if anybody asks).

And here’s a clue that there was something significant going on, but not what you thought: A recent study found that women are more emotionally invested in the generic fact of having a romantic partner than men were, whereas men were more emotionally invested in having a romantic relationship with that particular person than women were. In other words the trend was for women to want to have a lover and men to want to be lovers with a particular person. By feeling a spark, you would be indulging a little wish for romance with the women you described, while their words indulged their happiness about having a boyfriend or husband.

Now for a third try: in the first example she’s there to sell you a particular product, a product specific to men. She’s not going to tell you she really likes hers, because she doesn’t have one, she’ll tell you about people she knows who like theirs – and the people are the men she knows the best. The first example was about men’s shoes, right? And if the third example was about beer, that might even fit the same pattern (I think of beer as a little more liked by men, though I’m getting pretty speculative now).

But I certainly don’t know for sure, about any of these. And people have told me I completely miss when women are showing interest in me…

5

I think you’re taking it overly personally. I don’t think there’s any reason to be irked by someone mention a SO to head off romantic efforts. Its just a quick social signal, basically the same as a wedding ring. If it turns out not to have been necessary, there isn’t any harm done. It isn’t meant as an insult or anything.

(plus if you’ve been dating someone for a while, a non-trivial number of your anecdotes and conversation will involve them anyways, so its pretty easy to name drop them)

ETA: also just to WAG, the sales-girl forced the mention of her bf in there because she started to just say her father, was afraid that would make you think the product was just for old foggys and so quickly shoe-horned “…and my boyfriend” at the end.

6

People who are in relationships can’t go five minutes without referencing those relationships in a conversation.

Just scan through any thread here, and you’ll see it. Once folks find the One, their personal pronouns are no longer “I” and “me” but “we” and “us”.

Some people do this a lot more than others. Perhaps that salesperson was one of them.

7

Yeah, totally. I exude so much overwhelming masculinity that the chicks are constantly having to hold on to their underwear with both hands, or else it would just fly off of its own accord. I can’t walk down the street in public without hearing a constant litany of “I have a boyfriend, I have a boyfriend” being yelled at me from anyone with two X chromosomes. It’s a burden I have to bear.

8

I think that’s true. Or at least, I have observed in myself a tendency to perceive interest that is perhaps exaggerated. And I think men are wired to over-perceive, so to speak, so that they will act those false perceptions and nevertheless end up being with women that they otherwise had not had the courage to approach. IOW, thinking that women are interesting in you encourages you to make the first move, and eventually that will pay off.

That’s interesting too. I have often felt that my girlfriends weren’t so much interested in me as a person than in just plugging some dude into their lives.

The shoe lady was a very blatant example of the phenomenon, as she didn’t mention her husband in the context of the product. It was very clearly, “OMG, what if this [much younger] guy is interested in me?! Better mention my husband oh Jeeezus!”

But yeah, she may have mentioned her dad and boyfriend as part of the sales pitch. No way to know for sure.

9

Although, this is Lululemon, perceptions of which don’t need to be adjusted, since the whole store is just one distinctive brand.

I didn’t take the thing personally per se. But I am frustratedly single now and sensitive to such stuff. And as a guy, I’ve put up with a lot of women’s BS over the years with respect to dating and am kinda over it all. (I know men are just as bad–no doubt worse. But I of course experience it from the straight dude’s side…)

10

FIFY. :slight_smile: A couple months or years from now, she will be saying, “Uhh, my boyfriend,” in a disgusted tone. Yeah, I’m cynical for sure.

Then again, the frequency of mentioning will probably be the same, so you’re still right!

11

I can’t manage to think of a reason other than severe insecurity or excessive sensitivity that anyone would be upset about a person mentioning their significant other. You very quickly know they’re either genuinely unavailable or just not interested.

If you are interested, as in Aeschines’s first example, they just saved you from wasting your time. Basically a huge favor.

If you weren’t even interested, why would you even assume they were trying to scare you off?

In short, I agree - extremely useful social signal with no real negatives.

12

As a gal, I feel you don’t understand female behavior or motivations nearly as well as you think you do. Sometimes our fathers and boyfriends just wear these too.

13

Lol. It actually hasn’t happened to me all that much. Those are the examples I can remember.

You know what’s worse, though? This happened to me recently too. You might even say it’s ongoing. A woman working at a local store I frequent who doesn’t wear a ring, doesn’t have pictures of her and her man together on Facebook (among many photos–oh but she has another FB page, apparently abandoned, with her wedding pictures and whatnot), who had at one point not listed herself as married on Facebook, and who was complaining (apparently) about that relationship on Facebook, but who now lists herself as married on Facebook. I intuit good chemistry with her, too (based on multiple times talking to her). But if I had asked her out, I suppose I would have felt like a fool when she told me she was married. Or who knows, maybe she would have gone out with me. (No, not going to try now that I know about her apparently conflicted situation.)

So the opposite thing happens too: People are in relationships but purposely say nothing, even though they know you are interested (the above case is not an example [she might very well not know] but I have others). And some people are in relationships but basically hiding that fact or at least not doing what is usually done to indicate it (married but not wearing a ring, etc.).

14

I wasn’t “upset.” I thought it more of a funny thing.

15

But you don’t even know what the garment was!

16

This paragraph confuses me. You seem to feel that letting you know she had a boyfriend was a minor insult, a rebuke, an attack on you for being presumptive enough to find her attractive. Something you didn’t deserve because you were acting “neutrally” and therefore she was being overly “sensitive to male attention”. I don’t think that’s the case. There’s no reason to think she thought less of you because you might have felt a spark of interest–just as likely, she thought of your very mild interest as a compliment, and simply didn’t want to give a false impression.

Also, on some other message board somewhere, some dude is probably posting

.

ETA: Hell, it turns out it was on this message board, by the same poster, even.

17

You say that, but it’s not at all the impression you’re creating. It’s also not at all funny.

18

No, it’s actually what I said in the OP: I think she found me attractive, that was apparent from some very subtle cues in her facial expression or whatever, and I tuned into that and may have also given subtle cues, resulting in the feeling of a “spark of attraction between us.” Then, she felt, probably on an unconscious level, a measure of guilt or something from that, and thus felt the need to reassure herself that she was a good, loyal girlfriend by mentioning her man.

It’s one theory. It’s also plausible that she brought up her dad and boyfriend because she really wanted to give pass along their endorsement of the particular T-shirt.

And it’s also plausible that my eyes went really wide unbeknownst to myself, and she was preemptively nuking getting hit on.

Quite likely!

19

I posted something like that?!

20

Well, this whole thread is about mismanaged and misperceived impressions, so I’m cool with that.