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Lol, men should have a mantra, "She's a WAITRESS, she's just being nice!" "She's a BARTENDER, she's just being fun!" "She's at the grocery checkout, she's just making small talk!"
"She's just a person being nice to other people. You are just a person she is being nice to. Be nice and leave her alone!"
maybe it's more, women feel like they have to give hints because being direct can receive judgment or not be safe. so it's not that they're bad at hinting it's just that they have to use hints a lot more often than we do, and I can't pick up a hint to save my life
I agree with what everyone has already said and...
Some people flirt to practice, or see if they can get a response, to measure their own self worth, to see "if they still got it", as a measure of power, or something to do when bored.
The game ends when the target takes the next step, and then it's no longer fun, and now 'creepy'. You can see similar behavior on dating apps with people who swipe yes, but then reject people in conversation.
So now not only do people have to recognize the hint, they also have to figure out the intention of the hint giver... i.e. was this a serious hint?
I had a woman flirting with me yesterday at the bulk food store. Happened to be at the coffee grinder, and she was struggling with it, and I just spontaneously teased "you broke it I'm telling"!
This led to a little bit of banter and talking about recipes, which led back to how she likes to get her coffee here.
I told her how I like ro enjoy my morning espresso.
She smiled and gave me that flirtatious side look and mellifluously intoned "I'd sure love some morning espresso... Brought to me in bed..."
The words floated off my lips "is your kitchen floor cold? Should I bring my slippers?"
She immediately looked shocked, faced directly at me pie-eyed. "I should have known better. Typical response from a man."
I was fucking gobsmacked.
Don't ever tell me that men don't pick up signals, we have been trained... by women, to never pick up signals.
Hahh! I'm bad at picking up on anyone's hints!
"Why is this man so dense? He never responds to the subtle clues I carefully place behind a veil of plausible deniability."
If you're trying to make a move without making a move, that might be the reason he's not responding. You're asking him to take on all the risk of misinterpretation. At some point somebody has to be overt. If you're presuming it should be him, you should ask yourself why you think that.
You're spot on, I no longer deal with said "veil of plausible deniability"
This is 100% how I approach all sorts of relationships in my life, not just romantic. That's called direct and open communication.
I will straight up ask (politely) that someone clarify what their explicit stance is, if they refuse or try to play coy about it I simply let them know I don't know where they stand and I don't know what they want.
I've done this with bosses, siblings, my son, and my partner. I have grown to respect people much more because I understand them better and have also cut out some toxicity from my life that I didn't know was eating away at my happiness.
I know a girl who hinted so badly that she wants me to send her nudes but kept laughing afterward. Until one day I told her that I would send her then she said she was joking and acting like a horny man. That's one example of many I have in my life where a girl would tell me that we should be boyfriend and girlfriend, then when I proposed to go out with her and gave weeks to choose from where I know she had no work, she replied that she is a busy woman and keeps her day offs to her many friends. I was devestated and felt like a creep. I also had a female friend who had forever hinted that we should fuck, and when I went to her house she showed up to me covering her boobs behind the door of the shower wet covering her boobs with her hands , and I immediately apologized and said I didn't know she was in shower, and she said it's okay come in. So I go in thinking she wanted action, but guess what? After I kept pushing and hinting she said she was just being herself and never wanted shit. I can go on and on with such stories. They all made me literally too numb to give a fuck anymore and I wouldn't pick up a hint if a girl I'm with started masturbating in front of me unless she made it clear she wants me to join. Anyway, I gave up on this shit long time ago. I came to terms with the fact that females and males have different brains when it comes to sexuality
It’s not just men, as an autistic woman I have a hard time with this too. It’s better if people are just straight forward and plain spoken
It's true, I basically had to learn to be super blunt to men.
"I think you're cute, want to go on a date with me"
Because literally nothing else gets through :|
It gets through, but we're not 100% and don't want you telling your whole circle of friends how much of a creep some dude is because he shot his shot.
Could you help fellow lemmings by saying how even approximately pick hints, i mean, many men mistake goodwill and good chat for relationship hints, as for me, I'm like op, I'm way too pessimistic to trust hints
Picking up on hints is a thing that requires a lot of social context and emotional empathy/intelligence. Unfortunately I don't think there's any pro tips I can offer to help you better identify them except interact with girls more and have honest conversations where you're not trying to get the girl to date you - it's learning the hard way, but bridging that emotional understanding gap is the only good way to get a better understanding of girls as people (and get your heart rate down so talking to them isn't a panic).
That said, if you can find the confidence, being a little blunt yourself can work as well. Girls can be dense too.
A lot of the reason girls are doing the subtle hint stuff is because they're also not confident / unsure / scared of rejection / scared of coming off too strong. It's a way of feeling out a situation without strong commitment. We kind of expect guys to do that back so that we can have a sort of subtle social fencing game to figure out if there might be mutual interest. (unfortunately, most of the time, everyone involved is too dense for this to be effective)
Honestly both sides kinda suck at this in their own ways.
Thank you)
It's true. I once played spin the bottle with one other person and didn't realize what the plan was after playing it. Thought it was just an awkward interaction until she asked brought it up a couple years later.
Later on in life, a girl invited me to a sleepover and we were joking and having fun shared a bed and went to sleep. I woke up to her crying because she took it as me finding her ugly and not being into her.
Needless to say neither went anywhere because I guess my smooth brain was not an attractive trait.
That's actually kinda sad. Oh well. Clear communication is key!
I too suck at it.
If I am picking up on a vibe I don't go all in. I point at the elephant and say: look, I think I see an elephant. Is it really there? My eyes play tricks in me sometimes, but I could swear you brought this elephant with you into the room.
Then they will say: yes, I did, or no, no elephant.
And then you carry on, with or without the elephant.
I always pick up on women's hints... the next day, when it's too late.
I think my personal record is about 6 years.
...ohh, THAT'S why she wanted to go back to her place. Damnit.
Try 15 years. There was this cute girl who'd always kind of hang around in the background, but never said a word. She made a big mistake by repeatedly sending her solid-10 friend to talk to me about her, and we fell in love instead.
Years later, another girl tried the genius tactic of inviting me and about a dozen gorgeous female friends of hers to a bar, then sitting straight across the table from me and just glaring at me intensely. I started thinking "gee, she must really hate me" and made my move on the girl sitting next to me. Who was the only one I could actually talk to, because it was just too noisy in that bar.
There were other times when I immediately picked up hints from girls because they made it abundantly clear what they want from me, but they simply weren't my type, so I basically ignored them, which only made them try harder. I realize now that to them, genuine disinterest and blissful ignorance must be indistinguishable.
The hints are sometimes trash
We're not bad....we're careful.
Make the wrong call and you are considered a creeper or worse.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't
I honestly cannot tell if anyone is flirting with me or not. I also cannot imagine that anyone would flirt with me in the first place, but if anyone did, I still wouldn't know. The only flirting I knew was when my wife called me up and lectured me for not asking her out. Apparently, she had been flirting with me and I didn't know. I am not bright.
Doesn't mean you're not bright! You might just have difficulty recognizing emotion / subtext like with ASD.
