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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2638 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 27, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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If batting your eyes and saying, "You know, I like spending time with you," doesn't work

This is clearly ‘asking a guy out’, though.

What is actually likely to happen is that he, in a literal sense, will conclude that she likes spending time with him - that's it. Nothing more.

Sure, if you swallow all the feminist propaganda about men being the same as women, and how just because a woman is sending [insert signal here] doesn't mean she's interested, that makes sense. Otherwise it's just failing the 'tism test.

Women vastly overestimate how clear their deliberate outward presentation is to observer's, much less thoughtless presentation. Leaning forward and pushing ones chest out may be an tremendous effort for a woman that is blindingly obvious to other girls who understand the effort made, but to guys we literally have no clue it could be happening.

Bearing in mind that our own lived experiences will feature a gigantic amount of inconsistent behaviors from different women, and any man who lacks mind reading and errs on the side of caution will find the mental effort of parsing microbehaviors too exhausting.

The alternative is to he a dweeb who thinks every friendly interaction with a woman is a sign of her wanting to fuck. These guys are the worst, mainly because their mechanistic approach to parsing sexual receptiveness captures the error bound of drunk/lonely/bored women who decide to catch some strange for the hell of it regardless of the womans actual effectiveness in displaying receptiveness. With a statistically high rate of success to expended effort for the shithead guys, this reinforces shitty behaviors of both men and women. The guys think their shitty pickup lines and NPC flirt phrases are actually good tools to get women, the women think their subtlest of subtle hints was sufficient to bag a dude without seeming desperate. Women are more likely to regret their choice of bedpartner after coitus, but till the deed is done women are as capable as men in deluding themselves that their chosen partner is a prize worthy of the expended effort.

Unlike others I won't disagree with you, though I'd suggest that what you say is true arguably only after he has reached a sufficient point in life that he accepts the notion that any girl might find him attractive. Many, many guys take a surprising number of years to figure this out, despite the eyelid batting or coquettish arm touching of whatever female has been pitilessly tasked by destiny with sharing space in time and a Buick with him. (Oh for the return of bench car seats).

I suppose this doesn't even bear reiterating but I'll state it anyway: Boys need time to figure out their role in dating. This has always been true, and if it's never modeled for them by anyone (or is modeled, but with grave inaccuracy, in, for example media) the process runs the risk of turning them into man-boys or themselves feminine enough that they wait around for some luckless girl to brain them with a metaphorical steam iron of romantic know-how.

I recall my first prelude to actually having sexual intercourse (apologies if this is TMI but I won't get graphic) I was with a woman considerably older (or so it seemed at the time I was 22 and she was 31). We were sprawled on some church steps under the African night sky, having left our companions at some outdoor bar. Her exact words to my fumbling passivity: "Are you afraid to screw me?" Only the fact that she was clearly wanting me to pursue the matter (I didn't, not at that moment, that would occur another night, in a tent, largely by accident) kept me from having to excuse myself to step out into the bush (no pun. I mean actual bushveldt) from the shame of it. I felt like a boychild both rewarded and scolded at the same time. This rapidly accelerated my level of prowess however. I did not immediately become Rico Suavé (I probably never did) but through this moment and others like it I reached a level of sufficient competence that enabled me to function romantically. And though I eventually broke up with this same woman rather (unintentionally) cruelly, she taught me a lot.

Whenever I hear of a couple who hitched up young and with both having relatively little or no experience, I think they're either extraordinarily lucky or just blessed with great tolerance.

This is the perfect microcosm of the female vs the male view of reality.

Has a guy ever asked you out by saying that he likes spending time with you and leaving it at that?

The best way I've heard it explained is that it's not asking a guy (or anyone) out if there's plausible deniability. Batting your eyes and giving hints doesn't meet this threshold.

No. No it is not.

I feel your bewilderment too... I've had married women say shit like this to me and much worse, so they are willing to be homewrecked but not ask explicitly? But at the same time she a girl whos single and lives alone could say this just as a friend!!

Is the woman saying this while batting their eyes? Acting bashful or coy? Are her hands clasped behind her or is she leaning forward? She might actually want you to flirt back. But that doesn't mean she would accept a proposition. She might want a proposition, to stroke her ego, but she wouldn't accept it.

It's about posture and context. "I would like to spend more time alone with you" is way different from "I'm glad you were the one assigned to this task" or "I like to hang out with our group of friends, of which you are one." It's the woman's job to figure out how to get across "I would like to spend more time alone with you" without crossing the line of plausible deniability (because if she has to throw herself at a man, he's probably not invested in her.)

Is it fair that it's this way? Women have the more vulnerable role in continuing the species. She needs a man who will actually support her, and that is generally a man who seeks her out.

She needs a man who will actually support her, and that is generally a man who seeks her out.

This is not true at all. There are a lot of men who are good men and are going to support their woman, but aren't mind readers who can magically tell that a woman's statement of friendship was actually meant to be taken as a statement of romantic desire. If anything, choosing men who read into things is going to select against getting decent men, because jerks are more likely to not care about the woman's intent and just go for it.

It worked for me.

because jerks are more likely to not care about the woman's intent and just go for it.

That's one good reason to avoid being alone with a guy for the first several dates and to save sex for marriage. Helps weed out the jerks.

All the traditions work together, we can't just throw away one and expect it to work.

It worked for me.

Well, I met my wife online and she initiated contact. So that means waiting for women to ask you out is a winning strategy, right? ;)

My point wasn't that it's impossible to find a good man following your heuristic. My point was that a) many people ruled out by your heuristic are in fact good men, and b) your heuristic is more likely to rule in bad men. You're right that you can compensate for point B in other ways. And point A doesn't mean all good men are ruled out. But it's still a very flawed heuristic even if you can succeed while following it.

I think most men ruled out my my heuristic are not men I would have wanted to marry. My heuristic means the men I dated had the bare minimum risk tolerance, agency, and social graces.

"Doesn't abuse you" is such a low bar. I selected for a man with the agency to pull over on a highway and yank away a ladder blocking a lane, while other drivers just passed it. I selected for a man who will volunteer to reboot a router when the local coffee shop has trouble with their POS system. I selected for a man who is familiar with the social norms my friends and family share.

Again, your heuristic is ruling out men like you describe even though you think it isn't. Being someone who takes initiative to fix things has pretty much nothing to do with whether one can Intuit "hey that girl likes you".

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Some of the split might be terminology then. For me, "asking out" means to set the time and venue for a date.

Unfortunately for the nerds out there - no it is not.

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