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Notes -
You are focused on the "give the man a signal that you are open to being asked out" while my main focus has been on the topic of the thread, that the man should be the one to ask the woman out. If the man is too shy to do so, the woman should offer some encouragement, but not enough to completely overcome the challenge the man faces. This challenge is important and demonstrates many good qualities. I don't think anything you have said has really rebutted this or offered any opposition to this all all, except that your wife asked you out online.
I think you are very wrong about how much communication is non-verbal. When people study such things, the percentages are generally flipped around (less than 20% is word choice, tone and body language is more significant.) If someone is actually blind to body language and tone, then that doesn't seem like a good way to spend a marriage either.
Under current sexual harassment norms, you're wrong. It currently reduces to an arsehole filter; current norms are that asking out a woman who doesn't want it is evil, so asking out a woman not known to want it is, probabilistically, also evil, and only arseholes do it.
Set fire to those norms, and you'd be right.
The filter works in reverse too. If a woman acts crazy because a man asked her out, then the man is better off not dating her. Best to figure that out early, instead of pining and waiting for her to ask him.
I also think the idea of a woman liking a man first is flawed. Women's sexuality is responsive. Read romance novels. How many women-centered romance novels are about the woman meeting a guy, liking him first, and pursuing him? How many feature one or more men adoring the female protagonist first, then the protagonist coming around to the idea of loving one of the men?
Women have crushes, but a strong component of their desire is the feeling of being pursued (in a safe, playful manner.)
If we're building a whole dating culture where men can't ask women out first, then no wonder nobody's having sex.
I think we are functionally in agreement.
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