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Eh, I've got a personal story to share.
A few months ago, I ran into someone at the pub I'm a regular at and worked for during the span of a festival. She was tall with grey eyes and a strong jaw, a spacey stare-right-at/past-you expression and a throaty dreamy voice with a tiny hiss in it; a few sideways teeth. Kinda Debra Morgan-looking. She was also a regular and barbacked occasionally, otherwise she did merch distribution at festivals and venues. We both sperg'd out on eachother about this-or-that subject. Her stuff was Electric Cello, Cannibalism, Fullmetal Alchemist deep lore (what the fuck is Father? Our conclusion: the closest analogy would be a luciferian fallen angel). We were talking about Tieflings throughout the editions and character trope stuff, I said I like the Half-monster-guy-who-hunts-monsters-and-is-conflicted-about-it schtick, like Hellboy. Turns out Hellboy is her favorite/comfort movie that she throws on when she's down. I immediately know why. She shares some music she's working on with me, says she hasn't shown it to anyone else, even her best friend. Says I'm easy to talk to. Says she'd wondered if she'd run into me that night. I'm more a Show, Don't Tell sort of person, but I'm obviously internally smitten. In case you can't catch the hint, she's not 100% neurotypical. Neither am I. I mean, I post here.
I got her phone number so she could tell me when she'd be doing a cello set somewhere, but her set didn't pan out and she didn't reply past that, so I didn't keep at it, but she kept Liking my instagram posts (nature/wildlife/bugs and RPG sessions).
She posts about going to a House of the Dragon S2 watch party at another bar for her birthday, and I formulate a plan: Turn up at that party and give her a laser-guided gift. I have an extra copy of the Hellboy paperback that's the main source for the film (she hasn't read the comics). Inside the front cover, I write "all us freaks have is each other" (Like I said, I know why we both love the film, and DelToro in general). I also fire up my filament printer and print out three full-size tooth faeries from Hellboy 2 in blueish-green plastic, assemble them, and color in the eyes and teeth. (This isn't that big of a project for me; I've played Warhammer in the past)
I turn up to the watch party, which is full of goddamn Kneelers who shout "woo, matriarchy!" which causes me pain. But it's still a decent time, a kid gets his head hacked off. Afterwards I run into her; she'd arrived after me and I intentionally wasn't looking for her during the episode. But we both make a big deal of running into eachother. I run back to my car and come back with a cardboard box full of faeries. She loves them, she's cooing over how cute they are, how they all have different heads, she's giving them names, she's showing them off to everyone around her. She spontaneously hugs me when she sees the dedication inside the book.
As an amusing aside, after the watch party this bar had an open-mic stand-up event. And everyone was terrible. Like, reddit-tier generic terrible. There were boos and groans. Some boilerplate edgy jokes (I think one guy joked about Gays for Palestine getting thrown off of buidings. It was just fucking inept). At first I think this is a huge windfall; I'm actually funny. But it'd be hours before I could get on and school these fools. My crush and her crowd get up to head to a different bar, because they're so affronted. I'm invited along, even though I'm slightly worried about the prissy reaction, I steadfastly hold to their work being bad because it's bad, not because its offensive.
The company my crush keeps is slightly worrisome to me. Many are fat feminists of the "Men, amirite?" sort, but I don't have the impression they're close friends, just acquaintances. I later find out that she's a preacher's daughter and was an activist from an early age, part of OG Occupy (she's in her early 30s, I'm in my mid-30s). I carefully talk around the subject and express my own frustration that activism these days is more about being seen having the right opinions and hating the right people than furthering a worthy cause, which seems to resonate with her a bit. There's a careful future conversation to be had, but at least she remembers a time before IdPol infected every cause.
She goes outside to smoke and asks if I'd like to join her. She smokes American Spirit; the same cigs I smoke, which I only do socially (too much time at bars in the smoker's pen; that's where all the cool people and cool conversations are) They last forever. She talks about how she loves pretending she's in a noir story when she smokes. I ask "Yes, but in this context, who's the jaded alcoholic detective and who's the dangerous dame?" She smiles as I take a cig, I reach for a lighter, but she beats me to it. "Pretty people don't light their own cigarettes" she says, with that same smile.
A few minutes later, I kiss her. We spend a little time just holding eachother, enjoying the closeness, and head back inside.
The evening continues. I try not to monopolize my crush and let her hang with the rest of the people there. We go back outside for another cigarette, I kiss her again, she pulls away a bit when I get over-enthusiastic, we talk more, I decide to dial it back. Typically my conversations with women are like pulling teeth; I ask open-ended questions and get yes-or-no answers. They never volunteer information or start a topic or ask me about myself or even talk about themselves; I get the impression that they're playing dead to make me go away. Maybe that's just what normal people are like. This evening isn't normal, we're chatting. She says things that surprise me, which is disappointingly rare in my interactions with people. We can talk about stories and ideas and random science facts. She gets my jokes. She makes her OWN jokes. We're both creative in our own ways. She talks about her job, how it forced her to learn social skills, which is something she struggled with for a long time; she's had to put the effort into learning stuff that other people seem to just do without thinking. The feels feel so feel I have to fight to stop my eyes from getting wet. I'm very much being hit where I live.
My crush starts mentioning how tired she is, people have been buying her drinks all day. I note she's acting even spacey-er than she typically is, and resolve to not push for anything. I also find out she's just landed an awesome tour contract where she'll be handling merch at a succession of festivals all summer and autumn; she'll be gone for six months, and she's got to pack tomorrow. But there's a few shows that are happening in the city, so she'll be back in town a few times.
People start clearing out, she's very tired, she talks about calling an Uber. I offer to drive her and save her $10, since my car is nearby and I haven't had any drinks for a few hours. We walk back to my car arm-in-arm, all cutesy and formal. There's hand-holding. There's continued verbal telegraphing of tiredness, and she's not escalating anything. I get her back to her place, unload the box of faeries, kiss her one last time and say "I wish we had more time together," then leave. Send a text the next day expressing how great it was getting to know her, how nice a time I had, how I'll miss her and hope to get together again when she's back in town.
A day later, I receive a reply:
I reply saying I'm sorry, I might have rushed things when I realized you'd be leaving town for a while, how would you like me to comport myself towards you in the future? I'm trying to say "If you never want to hear from me again, please just say that." I never receive any further reply. She hasn't unfollowed me on instagram; I've hidden her posts so I don't see them unless I go looking, so as to avoid further pain. I'm confused in addition to shattered; is there a rule that you're not allowed to flirt with women when it's their birthday? She wasn't so drunk that she couldn't have cogent conversations about wide-ranging topics, I sure as hell felt encouraged. I thought I was being gallant by not asking if she'd like to show me her place or otherwise head inside for "coffee" or to see etchings. Fuck, how much worse would this have been if I had?
I wonder where those tooth faeries are now. Thrown out? In a box in a closet? I can't imagine her scattering them on shelves like she planned if they're just going to remind her of that time she got molested.
This is what my life is like. Nothing ever, ever works out, and whenever I think I'm making an emotional connection with someone, reality itself seems to realize a mistake has been made and steps in to correct things. I have a day or two of emotional torment as I accept that I am going to continue to be alone and to feel arbitrarily alienated. I am not allowed to do the things regular people are allowed to do. I don't get to be human. If I try, even other weirdos reject me once they sober up and invent new rules regarding birthdays.
Someone else in this thread complained that a girl didn't text him back, and I thought to myself "Hold my beer."
Edit: I appreciate the condolences, but I kinda despair at the caliber of some of the replies, and its damaged my view of the remaining userbase of this place. I don't need regurgitated /r/Redpill advice about shit tests. I'm lucky enough to have spent most of my (albeit limited) intimate time with women in actual relationships with another human being that I like and respect and who likes and respects me, instead of some retarded power game with a bratty child. You can miss me with that gay shit.
Actual woman here (although not the woman in question), and my read is that although you had the best of intentions, this one was kinda on you. Why did you kiss her the second time in the same evening without any positive feedback from her, and the third time after substantial negative feedback from her (saying she'd like to call an Uber, mentioning too many people buying her drinks, telegraphing tiredness)?
First kiss definitively declared your sexual interest and established you as a confident guy who's comfortable taking the initiative. At that point, initiating more kissing, unless she's first initiated some reciprocal physical move toward you entirely of her own accord, adds no new information and risks tilting it over to "dude is overly aggressive and may or may not think he's bought himself a BJ with some figurines." You seem to be interpreting her passive compliance with handholding/ getting in the car/ being kissed/ etc. as encouragement, but plenty of women and especially preacher's-daughters-turned-leftist-activists were intensively socialized to be polite and go along when people demand interaction in social situations, particularly after somebody gave them a present. Then, at least in the normal social argot of the girls I know, "God I'm tired/ I've had too many drinks" is an expression of vulnerability, cue to visibly set aside your own goals and switch into gallant caretaking mode, "Cool, and you have a busy day tomorrow, so let's get you home safe, can I call an Uber? Is your friend around?" and then chastely load her in the cab with a squeeze of the hand and text the next day to say you enjoyed the evening, like Tom Hanks would do in a 90s romcom.
Note, this is a perfectly honest misunderstanding and I'm not trying to be harsh, more to address your fatalistic "why am I not allowed to do things regular people do??" This doesn't seem like anything wrong with you or her, just colliding sets of instincts, like you might see any day with a toddler feeding squirrels.
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Major bummer dude.
I don't think this was a shit test, I think another red-pill unpleasant truth applies: "What they hate, hate, hate hate hate, hate with a hatred hotter than a thousand suns, is that some guy whom they had sex with turns out to be substantially less alpha than they thought."
In this case I think she just wasn't that in to you, but with since she was drunk and it was her birthday and she probably felt like she should let loose (or perhaps she was feeling sad and vulnerable, who knows birthdays can bring out weird feelings) she was open to kissing you. But then in the sober light of the next day she moderately regretted it. Sorry :-/
FWIW, the girls I "crushed" on never worked out even if I got a date with them. It's easier if you aim a little lower and go for the girls who are crushing on you, without you having to put in extraordinary effort.
Also I second 2frafa. A future wife isn't supposed to share all your interests, that's what your guy friends are for, and you will have enough common interests once you have a household together. And she isn't supposed to be manic pixie dream girl, that will get old.
It wasn't about sharing interests, it was about sharing not being normal. The shared interests are a side-effext of the shared experience of having to constantly put on a show to the rest of the world that you understand people when you really dont.
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Bro; this sucks. I'm an optimist about your ultimate outcomes, the male half of the dating pool is absolutely terrible, but I'm sure this was just fucking rough at the moment.
I was once at a new years event at a board game bar in Milwaukee, 2017. It was a wristband all-you-can-drink thing. At around 11:30, a small, delicate woman with dark hair and a bare, well-defined back sought me out and loudly said she "couldn't find her friend." I say, well, I'll help you find them. We exchange names, re-fill our drinks, chat, she asks me to dance, I say sure. She has to go to the bathroom first, asks me to hold her drink.
While I wait, a fat redhead gets in my face and demands to know who I am, who I'm with, what I'm doing here, do I know her (small woman's) name. I reply her name is [name], I'm holding her drink while she goes to the bathroom, give her a confused raised- eyebrow look. Small woman comes out, takes her drink and my hand, and pulls me to the dance floor, doesn't acknowledge fat redhead. This is great, I'm gonna get a new years kiss, possibly more, frankly I'm just happy to get this person home safe (I had ubered. It was hilariously cheap back then in Milwaukee). I had only just moved to the city, this could be my big break.
At 11:53, the redhead suddenly re-appears with security dudes that step between us, her shouting in my face "who are you with, what's her name" and the security dudes repeating "who are you with" and pulling me towards the door. [Name] has been spirited away by security, presumably to be given a foil trauma blanket.
I repeatedly say I'm with [name], where is she? No I didn't come here with anyone, is that a crime? Am I being kicked out or not? No they say, they just want to know who I'm with. This loops a few times, I'm not allowed to see [name], but I'm not kicked out, who am I with, no I'm not allowed to see [name]. I'm slightly drunk and very pissed off, so instead of roaring in the face of the fat redhead demanding to know why she seems to think I am undeserving of love, I leave. It's 11:59, and I ring in the new year stomping down the snow-dusted sidewalk of Milwaukee. How fucking dare I go to a bar alone and let people ask me to dance?
So no, it wasn't just rough in the moment. It's been rough for a while. It continues to be rough.
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I haven’t read the replies yet but my two cents: give it a week and tell her she’s crazy - in a way that you feel and in your own words. And in a way that you’re doing so that you can have further connection. No back tracking or access ting hysterics. She’s either your type, or not.
Everyone knows she’s nuts … and she does too. She just needs to hear it. Shoot your shot.
This happened over a month ago, when season 2 of House of the Dragon premiered.
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god, the absolute state of dating in current-year America. I don't know what to tell you man.
"My crush starts mentioning how tired she is, people have been buying her drinks all day"
Yes I can see how that must be exhausting for her.
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Hello, fellow reasonable approximation of a human being.
Just spitballing - maybe she talked about it with her friends and they pressured her to go full feminist on the matter. Maybe she's a doormat who genuinely disliked the intimacy but went along with it to avoid confrontation. Maybe your perception of the whole evening is off by 90°. Who knows.
Overall, I have no advice to give.
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That’s pretty fucked up, seems like a very weird message to send (if she was “really upset” why did she take your ride home etc etc).
I think sometimes you meet volatile people and even if you like them and they share your interests and hobbies it’s not a good idea. A bartender who smokes and works in merch distribution at music festivals / on tour is that kind of person, no matter how cool or temporally into you they seem to be, no matter how much they’re just like you fr fr. At best (and this is true regardless of sex) they’re a promiscuous dilettante with a bunch of unfinished creative projects who never grew up. At worst, they’re an emotional vortex that will suck you in and spit you out.
You think this is the kind of person you’re meant to be with; it isn’t.
+1 on this @Skulldrinker. Speaking of spergs, we seem to have a built-in magnet for these kinds of people, and many of us had to learn the hard way to ignore it. Be one of the smart ones that learns it from others, instead of doing it the hard way.
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Quick question, what does "Make out with" actually mean in 2024? I assume both you and she share the same meaning in your heads when she writes it and you read it. Like deep kissing? Heavy petting (is that a term anyone uses?)? Groping around underneath clothes?
Either way my humble advice would be to text something similar to "I'm sorry you feel that way. For my part I enjoyed spending time with you. Take care." Then delete this woman's contact information from every device you own and never, ever contact her again. You're probably attracted to the edginess and always will be, and hey aren't we all. But you don't want that kind of volatility in your life. Move on.
Open mouth kissing, no tongue. Some hands on back of head/neck. Hugging with full frontal contact.
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Her message was a good sign! It sounds like a classic shit test. It's just a final check to see if you can stand up for yourself before she decides to date you. If she wasn't into you anymore, she would have just ignored you or waited for you to press the issue. She was provoking you to see if you'd show backbone.
A better answer would have been: "You're an adult, and you weren't that drunk. Don't play games.". I know this would feel like a 180 from your normal personality, but that's the point!
I once was on a relaxed second date with a very hot girl who was a little out of my league, hanging out in my room. I had had experiences like yours in the past and was expecting something similar. Almost on cue, the next time I tried to get her attention to talk, she ignored me to type on her laptop for 5-10 seconds. When she finally answered, I did something very unlike my normal personality: I warmly but firmly said something like, "You're being disrespectful, you need to leave for tonight." I said that I want to see her again but not any more tonight. She didn't even seem all that upset, and was a little shocked, but also almost pleasantly surprised. She came over again the next day and we had an intense affair until I moved away for school.
I know I must sound like an incredible ass, and you shouldn't take my word for it, but I'm normally an easygoing guy to the point of being overly passive. But I (finally) realized that you only have to show a backbone once or twice to make a girl feel comfortable around you indefinitely - but they usually won't feel comfortable until they've seen you do it - hence the need for shit tests.
I suppose a false rape accusation and tellling the police and all her friends as such would have been an even better sign, as a more classical, shittier, testier shit-test?
This would have given @Skulldrinker the exciting opportunity to really show his backbone by putting out that fire, and afterward show that’s he’s a Decent Human Being with empathy by not blaming her because she was, as a vulnerable 30plus-year-old woman, understandably STRESSED by the TRAUMA of them making out.
And then maybe she’d deign to give him another shot again, but if she didn’t it just means he wasn’t able to do the bare minimum of manning up and passing the shit-test with a high enough grade.
I don't get it - I agree that a more serious accusation would be unrecoverable, but she just said "I'm unhappy that you made out with me".
I'm also not sure what you're talking about in the second paragraph - this guy has already demonstrated all of the 'decent human being' virtues in spades.
Yes, that's what I'm claiming. I think it's actually not-totally-crazy behavior, either. It's similar to guys teasing each other partly to show that they can handle a bit of pressure / aggression.
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This might work. Otoh, it might result in her telling all her friends that he sexually assaulted her and then turned into an abusive stalker.
I am so glad I am out of the dating game.
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Wrong reply, sorry.
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Dude, she accused me of molesting her. She's also a fucking sperg, in case you didn't pick that up from what I wrote. Even if that's a thing women do, she wouldn't.
Sorry for the double reply: she didn’t accuse you of molesting her and of course she would - she did!
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This is consistent with what I was saying - my point is that she's being obviously unreasonable!
I also might be wrong about this, but my understanding from being a bit of a sperg myself is that things like the rules of attraction + most emotions are similar to everyone else, but with a layer of neuroticism and poor social skills on top.
I personally spent way too long thinking that sufficiently smart women wouldn't require, or play, these kinds of games - thinking something like "If they are so un-self-aware as to play the normal BS social games, I'm not sure I want them anyways". I've also known a few amazing women that were self-aware enough to understand their own reactions, but even they still had the same requirements for attraction as the others. I think your dating experiences would make way more sense if consider that even sperg women have similar romantic responses and impulses as normal women.
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Maybe this is the true meaning of red flags. Even if you really get along with someone, even if you feel like the positives could outweigh the negatives, no, it's not going to work if they have X. Even if they have Y and Z it doesn't fundamentally change things. Having X is all that needs to be said. IDK, I wasn't there obviously.
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Brutal. Unfortunately, such coffee moments are not at all uncommon. Never good when her friends sound like female Redditors.
On the bright side, you didn't bang her so she (hopefully) can't accuse you of Rape by Deception ex post, for that you didn't disclose that you were a participant in a hive of scummy and villainous wrong-thinking witches that is The Motte.
It's darkly hilarious how she is certainly no stranger to drinks, as a barback, smoker, and general scene-girl. Ugh, how dare you take advantage of her? She was only in her early 30s and was clearly DRUNK.
Blown Saves and fumbled opportunities plague me far more than successful Saves and deal-sealing. It's like an extreme version of loss aversion and inverse endowment effect.
When I'm lying awake unable to sleep, I almost never get random horny memories about having banged or facialed some chick. However, I often do get invasive and intrusive memories about missed chances—even about chicks for whom I haven't thought about for years—situations where I should have been more aggressive from the beginning to get the bang ASAP to situations where the opportunity somehow slipped away (usually not due to my own actions, even upon distant reflection, but male hyper-agency and hyper-accountability and all).
I generally try not to kiss girls I haven't banged in a bar/club/party unless they kiss me first. If I've already made the move to kiss her in a venue, it gives her less plausible deniability as to "omg, one thing just led to another teehee" when it comes to pulling her back to my or her place for the bang.
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