“Why can’t he see the signs I’m dropping?? I want him to ask me out, I’m trying to show him I’m interested, he just doesn’t seem to get it!” she wailed (well, it was an online conversation, but the wailing was implied). “What do I have to do to get him to see that I like him?!”
I sighed. This was hardly the first time that I’d heard a female friend bemoan the inability to pique interest in a desired male suitor. I was glad the conversation was through Messenger so she couldn’t see the tired and forlorn look that I was certainly displaying. So, as patiently as I could muster, I offered her the same advice I’d given everyone else.
“Guys,” I began, “are pitiful at picking up on signs. It comes from being brought up with constantly contradictory messages when we’re growing up. We’re taught to be respectful and not assume, but we’re also encouraged by society to think that women like guys who act boldly. We are taught that men are supposed to be the instigators, but then we’re also terrified of looking like a predator or a creep if we come on too strong. It’s why ignorant assholes tend to be the ones making the most moves- they just don’t care, so they’re not bothered by possibly looking like… well, an asshole.”
The conversation continued, and I saw all the usual elements from times past. She had liked the guy for a while, had done a little fishing for info and confirmed that, yes, he was straight and single, so she started dropping little hints. They worked for the same company, so she hung around him a bit more than usual at work. She laughed at his jokes, dropped hints that she was free on certain weekends and had no plans, and even showed interest in some things he’d planned, all to no avail. He remained polite but distant, never engaging in more than co-worker chit chat, not even hinting that he’d like her company.
I’d heard it all before. Woman likes guy, starts dropping hints, guy doesn’t respond, and now she was wondering if he wasn’t interested in her, or if he was just too damn blind to see the signs she was throwing down. When she’d finally started repeating the same questions- “Is it that he’s not interested, or am I just not being clear enough to him??-, I offered my usual two cents.
“You know, we’re living in the 21st century; we’re nearly a quarter done with it, actually. You could just ask him out yourself- it’s socially acceptable to do that, you know.”
“But he likes me; I know he likes me! Why doesn’t he just ask me out and get it over with??”
“First up, you don’t know anything about how he feels. He could just be being polite in the workplace. I know a lot of people who don’t like dating people they work with- it can get dangerous-, so it might be that. Also, we’re very good at seeing what we want to see when it comes to emotions, so you could be overinterpreting. Or,” I added, “he might just not realize that you like him like that.”
The conversation continued, and she still insisted that there was something there, and then she continued bemoaning her frustrations, and asked me the same question to which it always comes:
“Why can’t guys just pick up on the signs?”
That’s when I decided some tough facts were in order. “We can’t pick up signs,” I responded, “because we are, by and large, socially stupid. Guys are divided into two groups- the ones who can’t pick up the signs and the ones who don’t care. The latter are the ones who’ll try and try and keep trying until they find someone who’s responsive, they’ll take whatever they can get. The former, well, that’s the group that’s been getting mixed signals from tv and movies and, frankly, porn. In all of those, when it’s time for something to happen, it does- the guy on the show finally is in the right place, the woman he’s interested in realizes that he’s the perfect one for her, the music cues up and he asks her out, they have the perfect first date and everything’s great. Or else something happens, a disaster, and they magically bond, same music, blah blah blah. Or it’s a porn and he goes to her house to help her out with something and she walks out in a slinky outfit and starts dropping completely non-subtle lines (and even in some of those, the guy’s totally blind to it until she starts undoing his pants). A lot of guys just won’t see it unless it’s plastered on a billboard.
“It’s not just like that in the romantic world, either. People as a whole are incredibly lazy, it’s why we stay at jobs that don’t make us happy nor treat us well, it’s why we keep living in houses that aren’t satisfying or in cities that make us miserable. It’s why we still spend time with ‘friends’ who irritate us, or go to bars/clubs where we don’t have fun. And it’s why we stay in unhealthy relationships, or else stay single forever, because we don’t know how to change it.”
Long silence on the other end of the conversation. Finally, she responded, “Well, that’s just stupid. If people want to change things, they should just do it and get over themselves.”
“Then why haven’t you just asked him out and been done with it?”
“Damn.”
Dating world 101- guys are stupid. We don’t pick up on signs, we don’t read into things, or else we read into them far too much and try to analyze ourselves to death (I’m one of the latter). There’ve been times when we’ve tried to ask out a friend or co-worker and it made things awkward, so we shy away from trying. It grows exponentially if you’ve made a misstep with a member of a tight group of friends, because, as soon as that happens, you’re a bad guy to everyone in that group, and there’s usually no recovering from that kind of mark against you. Sometimes that kind of thing can be as easy as asking out one member of the group when another one likes you; you don’t even know that you’re putting yourself in that position, and suddenly you’re the enemy.
There have been multiple times in my life when I would run into a woman I’d known long before, and, amid the usual conversations of “Where’ve you been/what’ve you done/it’s so great to see you”, I heard some version of “So why did nothing ever happen with us? I liked you, you must’ve known.” With one exception (she wasn’t subtle, but I was casually dating someone else at the time and trying to make into something more), I was constantly flabbergasted. I had no idea they liked me; if I had, I would have likely asked them out and seen where it might have gone. And that part of the conversation was normally followed by some embarrassed and awkward laughter, maybe a sentence or two of “what might have been”, then back to the present realities.
I really wish I had better answers, both for myself and for the world. We drop hints because we don’t want to make things weird. We tiptoe around because we’re afraid of what bringing it to reality might entail. We accept the halfway for so long that it becomes a permanent blur in the side of our field of vision, to the point that we are terrified of it coming into focus. And so we remain friends with people from whom we would wish something more, we do not have the guts to put our feelings on the chopping block, and we doom ourselves to permanent mediocrity.
If you still need to find a goal for 2023, let it be this: NO MORE MEDIOCRITY.
—
Previously Published on Medium
iStock image
The post Dating (and Life) Goals for 2023: No More Mediocrity appeared first on The Good Men Project.
