Exactly.
But at least it lead to a fun running joke between us. She’d say “I’m alone tonight…” out of the blue just to make me smile and it always worked.
Teen suicide rates for boys are at least 4X that of girls every year. Girls use pills while boys use guns, so it’s debatable if boys simply use more the effective albeit messier method, or girls are more likely to perform a suicide gesture.
Also debatable is the underlying reason: boys need to achieve in order to transition to men, and getting shot down in love is a big failure. Girls are under pressure to be (beautiful, popular, “ladylike”, etc.) which sucks but doesn’t have the same milestones to either pass of fall upon ones sword.
Or maybe women are just conditioned to ask more for help, and go to their friends, and talk about it, whereas men are conditioned to be TUFF.
Even sven is so right when it comes to dating. I hate when men are like “Oh, well, you women can get sex anytime.”
Sure I can. I could probably hit the bar today and get some desperate slob to come home with me, sure.
Can I get the man whom I want to go home with me? I have the same problems as men do. And don’t think that attractive women have it magically easy, either. Getting hit on by everyone is probably no more fun than not getting hit on at all.
So you agree that social convention yields a higher body count for boys.
I think you are blending two disinct problems into one here; first being the ability to get someone at all… and second the ability to specify the one you want at any given time. Yes, I agree you and other women share the latter problem with men. However most women do not share the former problem which a lot of men have. So I’d say while you share some problems, you don’t have all the same ones.
Over time it may become annoying, but it would defientely be more fun than not getting hit on at all. It’s a matter of excessive interest vs insufficient interest; both can be un-fun, but one hurts a lot more than the other.
I’d maybe make an analogy of the whole thing like a long line at a buffet with mostly women at the front of the line and mostly men at the end. When the doors open the front of the line (most women) get guarenteed food/action… they may not like the choices in front of them but they do get something to eat. Those at the end of the line (mainly men) also have a limited selection when they finally get in, but by then some of the trays are empty, and then the doors get closed leaving a lot of men outside who never got the chance to eat at all. It’s far more preferrable to be at the front of that line than the back.
In my opinion women simply make it much more obvious if they are interested in you.
Men typically hide it well and try to “play it cool.”
But it’s not “fun”-- it’s tedious and annoying. When you say “over time”, it depends on the person, but I’ve seen where it can be an insanely short period of time. With women (or at least most everyone I’ve known), it starts at very young ages, too. Getting constant attention when you don’t want it, especially when out doing the most normal and mundane tasks, is equally as bad as receiving little attention.
I’ll add, it’s also not just a matter of getting that attention, but reciprocating. If someone approaches you with a line (that they’ll think is super clever and the first you’ve ever heard), they’ll many times expect a favorable response or some discussion. If they don’t get the response they expect, they can quickly turn passive-aggressive or hostile, and it makes for a very awkward situation (or even violent). I have an especially attractive friend who deals with this all the time, and it’s obnoxious.
Extremes in either direction, are never good. I think it’s really a case of the grass being greener.
Really? Ask men how frequently women ask them out on a first date. I think you will find the answer to the question is mostly “once in a blue moon” or “never”.
I’m a man who usually has about 5-10 crushes going on at once. It would be insane to make my crushes known.
My wife was the only woman who ever asked me out, and that didn’t happen until I was 30. My graduate program was mostly female, and I worked in a mostly female profession. I was at least average looking, so maybe I just didn’t give off any “I’m available” vibes.
I would think the social convention would be the opposite – that men would feel forced to put themselves out there before women.
That said, in the handful of relationships I’ve had I (a woman) was always the assertive one. Starting with third grade where I asked my “boyfriend”: “Why u no kiss me, fool?” and dragged him behind the bleachers.
Sr. Weasel in particular was clueless. We were corresponding via e-mail over summer break between freshman and sophomore year of college. We were the best of friends and becoming ever closer. I wrote something like, “You need to know you can’t just say all these wonderful things to a girl and not expect her to fall in love with you.” (speaking of gender expectations, I should probably add that my Aunt upon hearing this said, “Agghgh! Never tell a man you love him first!!! He’ll think you’re desperate.”)
Clear enough? Nope.
He responded with an enthusiastic e-mail that made zero mention of my confession (“I’m really excited to see you Monday!” but no reference to love.)
So I straight-up called him on it again in a chat conversation, “Okay, so what I meant by that is that I am in love with you.” And he was like, “Ohhhhh. A gym.”
And then he said, “I thought that’s what you meant but I wasn’t sure. Yeah, I’m totally in love with you too.”
I’ve always assumed it was unusual for a woman to put herself forward like this, and that it is perhaps a function of the fact I tend to like shy and socially awkward men. I kind of think this argument about who has it worse in the dating game is ridiculous. There are so many factors other than gender that play into what your experience as an individual will be.
P-woman had to basically do the same thing, although it moved faster. She straight out told me she was interested, so I didn’t get too nervous until we got to the point in time where my last girlfriend had dumped me. She started a sentence with “if we get married”, and before the night was over we’d decided to do just that. I’m sure my off the charts social awkwardness didn’t make it easy, and thing moved to fast for my usual paralyzing fear of rejection to take hold.
Thing is, though, a guy *can *say a lot of wonderful things to a girl and totally not expect her to fall in love with him. Most of the time, he should rather be expecting a restraining order.
So, yeah, when a girl says that, a guy is likely to shrug it off with “I must have misheard that, and I’m most definitely awaiting further confirmation before acting on it.”
Yes, you have to be very obvious and clear about these things. Not because men are stupid (even though, well, some of us are), but because it’s just not safe for us to act on information that hasn’t been confirmed unambiguously and in triplicate. Your first message was juuust about vague enough for it to have possibly been misunderstood, or for you to be able to retract it and claim misunderstanding. And that is more than enough for us guys to simply ignore it as the safe course of action.
Yeah, I gave a woman flowers on Valentine’s Day and invited her to a play.
Too subtle.
Well, this would be one of the nicer things guys at rowdy fraternity parties say to women.
I could only imagine having this said if a woman did the female equivalent of the guy copping a feel on the subway. I’ve never heard it. If someone mentioned a woman being aggressive like this (not a bad thing) in the crowd I’d hang out with, his friends would either say why weren’t you interested or “do you think she’d be interested in me?” At worst they’d say, good for you.
Maybe this would happen in a group of guys really, really unsure of themselves. A clique of Al Bundys, say.
I understand your point, but in the context of the existing relationship it was a ridiculous thing to misunderstand. This was after hours and hours of in-depth conversations filled with flowery language of mutual admiration, missing each other after a single day with no contact, that sort of thing. (Including the most romantic thing ever.)
But we’d been falling in love for months at that point, I was just the first one to figure it out (long after everyone else around us had already figured it out.) Apparently I’m rather clueless myself. Which is probably why I was always so assertive – I knew I was stupid about such things so better to just get it all out in the open.
See, this is why we can never have a woman President. Imagine if Hillary became President and had a crush on Putin—things could get awkward.
Whereas if a male President had a crush on a female head of state, he could just quietly and perfectly appropriately give her a backrub—no harm done.
I laughed.