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If you don't try you won't get, I'm pretty direct but I have friends who are way way worse than I am.
I generally don't try unless I get at least a smile and/or eye contact held in my direction but I do think most women like to know if they looking attractive even if they aren't interested.
Anyone who takes offense over expressing an interest would have been horrible to date anyway in my opinion.
It's okay to approach and have normal conversations with women that you don't have business or school commonalities with. Even if you think you may have interest to eventually escalate it into dating. Just be genuine and don't try to be someone you're not. But once you make that attempt to date, if they say no, accept that no and don't try again unless it's blatantly obvious they've changed their mind.
Being a person is always great advice.
In this situation. Great person respect their boundaries and wish to be single.
Her then telling me about CNC and free use love is giving me mixed signals lmfao
there's real trauma, but can feel the connection. Eventually.
school
I thought people said college was the right time to date and have relationships?
I mean as long as its student-student and not professor-student, its fine, right? Or did people teach me wrong?
You might be out of touch, but it depends on what you mean about approaching people. For example, it's perfectly reasonable to talk to anyone at all for a wide variety of reasons, including things related to your hobbies or your jobs or simply because you're waiting for the bus. Conversation is generally a safe thing to do with other human beings. If you are specifically avoiding conversations with people because they are women, then I think you should rethink your position.
Maybe your parents are asking you to start flirting with people, which is totally different from simply talking to them. If that's the topic, then it makes sense to be somewhat more careful about the time and place.
Women don't want to be approached in public.
Your instincts are probably well placed. Obviously different people will have different preferences and reactions in this regard, but you're better off getting to know people in a friendly manner than just for the sake of finding a partner. Learning how to strike up conversations with strangers and leave them wanting for more is useful, but that's about all I'd say your parents are right about.
If you wouldn't strike up a conversation with a guy, don't strike up a conversation with a woman. Be comfortable with conversations with strangers of whatever gender with no ulterior motive, and you'll meet more people.
If you meet more people, your likelihood of finding dates will increase as a side effect.
If you are only approaching women, particularly women you find attractive, in places that are not generally for that purpose (bars, parties, swingers clubs), then you're being a creep.
But regardless, it's better to have interests, pursue those interests, and meet people with similar interests. Because when you have interests, you might become interesting, and someone might become interested.
I agree with everything else but the starting bit about only starting conversations when you'd also do it with a guy: if you're not into guys... like on a dating site you'd not equally talk to the men, why at a sports club if you're wanting a relationship with a woman? If you think someone's fun and attractive in a way you'd simply not have with a bloke, hecking yes talk to them where appropriate and be friends (if they also want to be) and see if they really match and are also into you etc.
I'm like a dozen years older than you, and still have this conversation with my parents about jobs. They want me to cold call people and stalk them and stuff. Really wild stuff.
Your parents are wrong in basically every way. Except, yeah, you should be capable of cold approaching anybody. Not to sexually harass them, but for normal things like, "excuse me have you seen a grey glasses case around here?"
Your parents are not out of touch entirely, as this is a culture thing. Largely a generational one, but still, an existing culture. I personally do not believe it good, but I'm also somewhat like you, except 3,000% queer, poly, and engaged. Sometimes I wish guys would just show up and shoot their shots. Be respectful and accept defeat, but still shoot them. Years ago (when I was about 25), I used to work sort of near a bar and this random dude from a bar somehow made his way to me, working, which was, again, fairly far away by foot. And he REALLY wanted to take me home, putting on all the charm and offers. Which was flattering and all, but I wasn't interested and was forced to steadily increase my level of rejections, plus I was still working. My really cool boss apparently overhead and saw a bit of it, and after the guy finally left (honestly like 30 minutes of him trying), we talked a bit about it and had a good laugh. The guy really just couldn't take a hint. Luckily though, he was a little guy and where I worked was very open and very well lit and so there was no threat.
I think that there's a time and place for everything. That you need to be comfortable in being yourself, and have your own drive and reasons for the things you do. Your parents ARE trying to help you, but often exacerbate their kids by pushing too hard or not putting ANY effort to learn or meet their kids even halfway.
And then you have to take into account that, yeah, people really ARE all different. I know girls who wouldn't want to be cold approached at all, for any reason. I know guys that way, too.
But I also know people that wish they'd be swept off their feet by a price charming or hulk or something. Honestly, I'm kinda that way, but with the duality that as much as I fantasize the forceful, having it be by somebody I don't accept is terrifying and horrifying. And that's not on any one specific thing - people are weird and have all their own unique, weird, internal, intuitive flags and needs. Be it a political alignment, a philosophy, an interest, an appreciation, an open mind, wanderlust, a sexual dynamic, a certain look, a certain feature, a familiarity, an unfamiliarity, for them to be monog or poly, a smell, certain kinds of armpits, tabs vs spaces, etc, whatever.
We are all different, is my point.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. And you, as it seems, are not a seeker type. So, you should focus on what you want in a partner and who you are and want to be. You can listen to your parents a little, but realize that, they, too, besides from being your parents, are just some random ass people with some opinions they've formed by their own unique vision, through their own unique bodies and personalities - what works/worked for them may ONLY work for them, and that's fine. It doesn't make it better or worse than what works for you. I say, try it, at least once, and be prepared to apologize, and then learn from it. You're only young once.
The key is to be respectful.
Also, have you tried... 🫴 femboys? ;)
Woman here who gets approached from time to time… casual chats are fine and low-key expressing interest is ok. The least stressful approaches I’ve had are when a guy sends his buddy over to expression interest. So you can appease your parents by asking a friend to make the approach on your behalf, maybe.
I'm forty, so a different generation than your parents, but I still grew up and had my first dating experiences before the internet. Online dating wasn't really a thing here until I was in my early twenties.
At least where I grew up the guys who randomly approached girls to ask them out were seen as creepy even back in the 90s. I and everyone I knew met partners through activities like sports clubs, parties, bars etc. (I'm not from the US, so people from my school started going to bars pretty early). While there wasn't a big discourse around men approaching women in public (or none that reached my little town), we did have some guys in town who'd just walk up to girls on the street and ask them out and the consensus was that they were weird and should be avoided.
I met all my partners so far through activities. My first boyfriend was a regular at the same student café and we ended up sitting next to each other during quiz night. I met guys I had dates with in uni - sitting next to each other during lectures and talking about the Prof, going to the same presentation or cooking night etc. None of them "approached me" in the sense of coming up to me and asking "can I have your number" with zero context. We chatted, had an interesting conversation. At the end we exchanged contact information to meet for a coffee, usually without any expectation of it being a date. When coffee went well, someone would ask the other out on a proper date. No approaching, no deciding within a few seconds wether you want to date someone. Just casually getting to know each other before asking for more.
I also met my husband that way. We went to the same event, talked, had a lot in common. We met the next day to continue a discussion about a certain topic we were both interested in. That's when things started getting flirty and by the end we made plans to meet for a real date. I don't even remember who asked whom, we were both heavily flirting with each by the time we talked about seeing each other again so it was very obvious the next meeting would be a date. He didn't ask me out out of nowhere or hit on me, we were just getting to know new people and eventually we started flirted somewhere along the line.
Some people enjoy casual chat with random people, and some people find it annoying. There's no right or wrong answer. It's definitely not the only way to meet romantic partners, though, especially these days.
It’s ok to talk to a woman. But judging by your wall of text… maybe it’s not ok for you specifically to talk to a woman.
I have a different problem - I sometimes perceive extremely attractive women as "usual", until my head is too dizzy with them, and I also sometimes perceive them being kind as flirt, and flirt as being more serious, and being more serious as being kind, and all the combinations, and get confused when they approach me, and in general this leads to trying to start\see possible relationships being a point of pain. I don't want to treat another human being as a piece of nice meat in any fundamental regard. At the same time when a beautiful woman does certain things with her facial muscles, willpower and feel of reality just leave the chat. At the same time she might be a very good person and do that as part of a sincere emotion, so just discarding moments where feel of reality leaves the chat would discard most of women who do that. And the rest would be discarded by fear of not delivering on expectations (not of being nice and smart, that I can accept mostly not being, but of being barely reliable and not again falling into depression or stagnating in personal development or emotional fakery or something like that).
OK, yes, this thread is not for autistic people.
Your parents might be right, you are paying too much attention to the rules. The rules are like a noise canceling filter, you shouldn't apply them for moments important to you. If you really like someone, break the rules, then lick your wounds if she says that was ugly ; she most likely won't. By breaking the rules I don't mean doing anything , just what's not fully appropriate, but not evil. Like - if you lost your phone and need to call someone urgently, how appropriate would it be to approach the first person you see? But is that justified? Relationships are kinda important and rare enough.
Yes and no. Now I'm not an expert womanizer by any means, but you kinda just gotta treat attractive women like regular people.
You can't just walk up to somebody and go "ooga booga, wanna go out?" It's gotta be a little casual. So you're kind of right. But to go as far as to say you can't strike up conversation with somebody will be insane.
Now am I going to strike up a conversation with an attractive woman? Nah I'm go pussyshit to do anything, I'll partake in my recreational activities and hope for the best, at least I'll die doing what I like.
Your parents are definitely right.
This thread is not meant for autistic people.
"Yes you can talk to women in public, but also not flirt with them even though that's the obvious context of the post, but also there are some public places you can flirt with them that are somehow different from the other public places, and also it's fine in the places where it isn't."
I've come to the conclusion from this thread that the answer lies somewhere near "actually some women hate it and some women don't, and since the only way to find out which is which is by stepping on the landmine, you might as well flirt with anyone you want at wherever you see them, but do it politely and move on if she says no."
And in all honesty, yeah fuck it, I'm gonna. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable, but being that the other option is "die alone and get eaten by my cats" I think it's just going to have to happen.
Let me prephase this by saying that I have never been officially diagnosed but there's a good chance that I'm in the spectrum.
This is my philosophy on the matter: you won't find a girlfriend talking to a random person just because of their looks, so if it was a guy, would you talk to them? If the answer is no then I won't. For example, pretty girl on the bus, I wouldn't talk to a pretty guy on the bus so I don't; Pretty girl talking about something I have an interest in, or similar, I might talk to a pretty guy doing that about our common interest so I feel it's okay. That being said I'm not much for talking to random strangers in person unless we're in a social gathering, and I would feel very uncomfortable itlf a random person came to talk to me out of the blue, so even though all that I said above there's a 99% chance I won't talk to a random person anyways.
Makes me think if I'm autistic
you might as well flirt with anyone you want at wherever you see them, but do it politely and move on if she says no.
Yeah that’s about all you can do in reality.
Just remember not to be persistent if it feels off immediately, do not violate anyone’s space more than necessary (do not go for physical contact as a rule of thumb, strike up a conversation instead, if unsure of social rules) and most importantly, listen to them and try your best to take the hint if they can’t find a way to be direct and instead attempt to politely fend you off.
But there are a lot of social rules and cues everyone should be aware of, which definitely makes it hard for those unable to feel them. It doesn’t mean you can’t try your darnest though. Intent is important, so as long as you mean no harm, and do not break the obvious rules of personal space and no is no, nothing irreversible will happen.
It is and will be awkward, but it often is for us too who can sense and understand (at least most of) the “rules”. That’s just being human.
The worst is if you overthink it. Just figure if it’s appropriate and follow some sensible rules of thumb if it’s hard to sense the appropriateness, and then be the awkward clumsy you that most of everyone is in context like this.
Even if you radiate charm, are a natural with words and gestures, are in perfect harmony with the ambiguous rules of social interactions etc, you’re bound to misread people and situations sooner rather than later, and that’s just something that happens.
Being human is… very human. That is, awkward and clumsy and often disappointing. The upside is that it’s also surprising, exciting, invigorating and so full of possibilities and such joy, if you just manage to get past the also very human aversion to any potential awkwardness or disappointments.
This became a weird rant. But as someone with adhd and some weird natural drive for other humans that I haven’t been able to understand myself, I do often fail to think things through and approach people without much thinking. I have the benefit of naturally not overthinking it until after the fact. The world has never ended and I’ve lived a colorful, socially rich life, and for whatever it’s worth, I’ve not ended up being perceived as a creep or a threat or whatever, at least not widely so. So that tells me it’s pretty hard to cause any real damage to yourself or others as long as you’re respectful, aware of the dynamic and even if not fully aware of the social cues and rules, follow a set of your own rules of thumb that you find result in socially acceptable behaviour.
Don’t let the fear of unknown or being ridiculed or whatever block you from having meaningful social interactions. Even the most charismatic or naturally social and talkative of us end up in awkward situations and sometimes end up disappointed or ashamed for reading the cues wrong. Stuff happens. That’s life. For everyone.
But just try and be mindful of the place, the time, the surroundings, and do not violate anyone’s personal space more than necessary, and take no as an answer immediately if even hinted at. Might sound like even that’s a lot, but in time, with practice, as with just about everything else we do, these things will start coming naturally and built in in our everyday goings on.
Trust in yourself if you mean no harm. That’s about it. No one can fault someone with good intentions and respectful manners, if they keep their space and don’t persist when told or hinted no. You might get ashamed or even shocked for how wrong you read stuff, but again, that happens to everyone, even if rarely. We are all humans, and there’s a baseline level of awkwardness and inability to really read anyone’s mind that comes with the territory. So just try and trust yourself in that.