I was reading this reddit comment, in response to the question, "Men, if a woman was to ask you on a date, how would you prefer she do so?", and he linked this video where Nicole Kidman talks about how she was interested in Jimmy Fallon, but she went to hang out with him and he seemed completely uninterested in her. I thought it was really adorable (he tells his side on the Ellen Show).
The author of the comment wrote about how as a general rule:
- What's subtle to you is invisible to him.
- What's obvious to you is subtle to him.
- What's obvious to the point of embarrassing to you, is starting to be visible to him.
At first I was going to write about how women are conditioned not to show interest lest they come off as being "slutty" or "easy", but I don't necessarily think it's true. I think it's just really hard in general (regardless of gender) to open yourself up to rejection. If you make an overt statement that you have feelings for someone, and they don't feel the same way, then it becomes really awkward. Plus, if you did enjoy the other person's company as a friend, now the friendship has this giant elephant in the room that is happy snacking on popcorn.
Instead, what's left is dancing around each other and escalating these subtle signals until it becomes clear to both of you that you have feelings for each other. And sometimes, you end up dancing alone, with the other person none the wiser. At least if you realise the person isn't interested, despite your signalling, you can pull back without ruining the friendship, and if it ever does come up in a negative way, e.g. a mutual friend teasing you about it, you can plausibly deny that you were interested.
(And then if you're me, the next step is to spend months dwelling on why they aren't interested in you, instead of moving on - but this is a bad step. And you definitely shouldn't ask them why. Another thing I've learned is that sometimes some people just aren't attracted to other people, for completely unknown reasons.)
This reminded me of a friend of mine, who went on what he thought was a date, but unfortunately, the person he was with didn't realise. I don't think I've ever been asked out on a date before, as in, I've never heard the specific word "date" in reference to a joint activity. When I was already with someone, a lot of things just became dates without having to say the word. Again, this seems to fall into the realm of plausible deniability, if you don't say the D-word, and it doesn't go as planned, then there's no pressure. You were just hanging out as friends, after all.
I hope you weren't here for actual advice, because I don't know what the answer is! :(
I brought it up because I found a post I wrote over 10 years ago, where I tried to learn how to flirt through the Internet (sorry for the poor formatting, this was imported from Windows Live Spaces when Microsoft decided to move their blog hosting to Wordpress). Reading through the list now, I feel like a lot of the things just seem like basic conversation skills, e.g. don't invade their personal space, take turns talking, listen attentively. I honestly don't know how I managed to get married to someone without knowing how to properly flirt. I guess whatever it is that I was doing seemed to work.
On that note, I feel like good conversation is more important in the courting process anyway. Flirting probably signals your interest, but good conversation is the thing that makes them more likely to be interested in return. All of the people I've been attracted to are people who I've spent time getting to know first.
Which brings me to another topic: pick-up artists. There was a reddit post a while ago asking whether some pick-up seminar was in Melbourne or something like that, as there were men approaching women in Melbourne Central using the same cheesy pick-up tactics. This was mentioned in our Discord channel, and the channel seemed a bit divided on the topic of whether it was creepy or not (if you ignore the fact that they were actually touching people). In the end, everyone agreed that it was creepy if the person who started conversation "trapped" the other person in the conversation and wouldn't take no for an answer, but cold approaching someone you think you may be attracted to isn't necessarily bad.
I guess that's the key takeaway in this whole post - if you're going to overly ask someone out, at least be open to the possibility of rejection, and don't make it awkward by asking things like why they're rejecting you, or trapping them in the conversation until they agree to go out with you.
Wow, this is all completely unrelated to today's picture, although you can follow the train of thought. I'm doing really well at going on tangents!
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