HE SAYS: "Do you want a cup of coffee?"
SHE SAYS: "Yeah, okay."
(HE THINKS): "Sex is on!"*
(SHE THINKS): "Coffee sounds good right now."
*This is an Eddie Izzard reference. If you don't get it, watch the video immediately. If you do get it, watch it again anyway because it's funny.
Okay, in all seriousness now: this post is about possible flirtation miscommunications. This is different from the "Squirrel Flirting Business" because we're talking about times when a guy might think a girl is playing hard-to-get, when in fact, she is just trying to let him down/ignore him/be polite. We're going to go at this from a specific personal experience - my sister's. (If you aren't interested in the ancedote, you can just skip down to The Moral... but know that you'll be missing out.)
The story starts with your classic high school love triangle (the names are all fake and come from the Brat Pack movies, at my sister's request): Samantha likes Jake, who is best friends with Brian, who likes Samantha, who thinks Brian is creepy. Brian constantly hangs around Samantha in a futile attempt to win her affections. Samantha, worried about upsetting Jake, always tries to be polite to his friend. Her politeness includes smiling, nodding in annoyed agreement, and putting up with his constant, awkward presence. She doesn't want Jake to think she's into his friend and therefore off-limits, and she believes she is being perfectly clear about her disinterest in Brian (for example, she always ignores his invitations by saying she has a dentist appointment, implying that she would rather have her teeth pulled than hang out with him...but he never gets the implication.) Herein lies the miscommunication: he thinks her politeness and elusiveness are flirty behavior ("she must be playing hard to get!"), but she just thinks she is being polite. (Oh, dear.)
This miscommunication leads to a melodramatic blow-up via text messages when Brian finally confesses his undying love to Samantha. She rejects him, and he thinks she's a total bitch for leading him on all year. Here are some snippets of the conversation (just for humor's sake, and to emphasize the potential consequences of the flirtation misunderstandings):
Brian: "Is it really not obvious that I like you?"
Samantha: "I'm sorry if you think I led you on, but I just like you as a friend."
Brian: "You aren't perfect, you know. If you reject me, you're just sabotaging
your own happiness."
Brian: "What hurts the most is I opened myself up to you and put myself out
there and you just crushed me and you don't even care."
The Moral: Gents, you can probably safely assume that a girl is just being polite when she just smiles and acts nicely toward you; assuming more than that can be risky business. Sometimes going for a cup of coffee really just means a cup of coffee. But ladies, realize that when you act coy and elusive, it can very easily be construed as playing hard-to-get. I know that I often think that my body language and voice fluctuations are totally obvious signals, but it's not fair to assume that the "he" gets it. Samantha probably would've been better off just telling Brian flat-out that she wasn't interested as soon as she realized that he was interested in her; being upfront in the first place might've saved them both some embarrassment and some stupid texts.
So, to both ladies and gents: do you have any personal anecdotes/embarrassing memories about similar situations?
bahhaah!! oh poor samantha :( well here's the thing.. if the girl just tells the guy "i don't like you" don't you think it would upset his feelings because she just recognized the fact that he was flirting? (recall the responses to SlowLearner's post) and poor boys, howEVER in the world are they supposed to know when the girl is playing hard-to-get or leave-me-alone?? totally sucks to be a guy :p
ReplyDeletehere's another thing.. what if samantha was actually flirting and leading the guy on, and she just didn't know? i have friends who can't stop themselves because they flirt with EVERYONE. repeat. EVERYONE. that's their personality. then what?
i actually want responses to these questions :)
Sometimes it's really freaking hard to know whether or not someone likes you. In fact, you can be like 99.9% sure, then bare you soul, and it turns out they were just using you for your science homework.
ReplyDeleteI misread signals all the time!
This entire blog is devoted to misreading signs based on gender, and no one's omniscient. What if Samantha had been wrong about Brian's intentions and he hadn't liked her, or he'd liked her as a friend, or liked one of her friends, of was just trying to set her up with Jake? Obviously we don't know everything from this story...but neither does Samantha.
Only two people involved in a miscommunication can know how the miscommunication was begun. I would say that UNLESS you tell someone POINT BLANK how you feel (as rare and terrifying as it is) then you really can't get mad at someone for leading you on. They can't read your mind and there's no handbook, as much as we'd like one. Let's face it: We're all just really confused. And going out to coffee doesn't necessarily mean "let's have sex," or even, "I like you." I see coffee as, "I'd like to talk to you more/get to know you/spend time with you." This doesn't rule out sex in the future, but it does leave room for friendship.
Until a romantic declaration occurs, I don't think anyone's at fault for anything.
I think my experience with leading on/flirting/politeness might be a bit unusual (correct me if I am wrong). I had a small but growing crush on a guy, who is a charming, friendly, amiable sort of person, and he offered to buy me dinner as a bribe for my help with a project. I thought he was joking, until he asked where I wanted to eat. He proceeded to engage in a personal, intense conversation with me over an Italian dinner, and not only asked intelligent questions but proved to be one of the best listeners to whom I have ever had the pleasure of speaking. He then invited me out for coffee on multiple occasions, and offered to drive me on various errands and to the airport. If I had been falling for him a little before, I was head over heels shortly thereafter. He meant it all as friends, he later told me, when I asked whether it was platonic or an indication of something...more, and while I couldn't claim he led me on, it still hurt like a bitch.
ReplyDeleteWe have become friends since, but while I don't think that he did anything wrong, per se, I do think that people ought to be aware of the way their actions are likely to be interpreted. Maybe it's just me, but I think in our culture, new friends of the opposite sex going out to dinner seems, unless specified otherwise, kiiiinda like a date. So yeah, friendship is great, and you are not responsible for the way others feel about you, nor must you be able to read their thoughts. But if the way you are acting would reasonably be thought to mean more than just friendship, take care.
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ReplyDeleteAs a member of the as of yet unrepresented gender i feel like i would not be doing my fellows service if i were not to defend our over pompus egos in the only way i know how, a poorly writen and badly edited internet comment.
ReplyDeleteWe men are very aware of this difficulty and go to great pains to try and avoid embarrassment to all parties. We understand that cute girls who are just being polite can seem to be flirting however i would argue that we are hardwired to see it as such. We are aware of social boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable our difficulty is more subtle than that it is in deciphering which of the two codes of conduct to fallow at a given time. If it were simply a mater of what we thought im sorry to break the illusions you all might have had but we cannot help what our brains think, and what they think is "Me TARZAN me want to bring Jane to tree house" We cannot change that we can only change how we act on that impulse. If you feel I might be exaggerating I would say bring any male friend to your house tell him "You know i have a queen sized bed" and I guarantee 9/10 of them would forget about being "Friends"--mac might be an exception to this LAW of heterosexual males I came up with while sipping soda, I cannot be held accountable for any embarrassing social situations that come about due to this scientific information.
With this in mind, and knowing that we sometimes miss read cute girls intentions we tend to over exaggerate our filter and start ignoring legitimate flirting. So when it comes down to it we cant win we either ignore approaches leaving the girls feeling denied, rejected, ignored, or just generally awkward or we start reading into things which aren't there which come with their own slew of social repercussions. So the bottom line is they are here to stay and we can only hope that in the future when that friction arises that we (speaking on behalf of men) can handle the situation with a little more tact and reverence than none at all.
First of all, har har har on the Tarzan-Jane jokes. :p
ReplyDeleteSecond, I don't think it is a problem to take what what seems like flirting to be exactly what it appears, as long as you remember the possibilty that that is not the case. Don't brag about the cutie hitting on you to your friends, don't get cocky or assume that she wants sex or even a date, but a simply, "seems like she's interested" wont do any harm. If you think that a girl is flirting, and she was, GOOD FOR YOU. If you think she was flirting, and she wasn't, as long as you aren't embarrassing yourself or her then still, no harm done. Don't accuse her of leading you on or feel like she has been misleading you, and please don't lay your bleeding heart on her doorstep (bloodstains are a bitch to wash out). But if you are tactful and not counting on her affections... then thinking someone is flirting really doesn't hurt, as far as I can see.
You didn't like it? I thought it was a very cleverly done mild pass and relevant joke combined I'm ganna be honest I thought I was out doing my self in my subtly, apparently I set my standards too low and must REDOUBLE MY EFFORTS.
ReplyDeleteI think oh miss PlainJane has the voice of reason atm. To be honest i doubt any of us know what is happening in our own heads and so for any of us to try and figure out what is happening in anyone else's borders on the absurd. Sounds like our best bets are in being polite, tactful, in taking a chance every now and again, and playing what the field gives us.
Last time I bought a cup of coffee for a chick, I got laid... Just sayin' it works sometimes, gents!
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