Reddit seems to think men are missing obvious hints of romantic interest from women regularly. Based on my own anecdotal experience, my guess is that it is the opposite. I’ll give some examples from my own life:
- I was heading home from my first day at a new job, wearing a suit and feeling good. I was riding public transportation, and struck up a conversation with a woman sitting across from me (I don’t remember who initiated the conversation). When she reached her stop, she gave me her card without my asking for it. I called the number the next day and introduced myself. As soon as I did, I hear “Oh!” on the other end of the line, and the call goes dead. I tried calling back, no answer. Tried a couple of times over the next couple of days and then gave up.
- I met a woman through Craigslist because we had studied the same foreign language and she was looking for someone to practice with. We met up at a coffee shop and talked about our learning goals, and she seemed very receptive to meeting up again. We later set up a time to meet, but she had to cancel due to a conflict. She asked to reschedule, but invited me over to her house to watch a movie and have dinner. This was over twenty years ago, but I recall that she sounded eager to meet up and like she was interested in more than practicing a foreign language. I reached back out to her near the time we were supposed to get together (I didn’t have her address), and received no further responses.
- When I was a freshman in college, I tried to make friends by helping people connect to the campus network and solving their IT issues. One young woman was having problems and called to see if she could come to my dorm. I had just woken up, and I said something about appreciating the warning so that I didn’t answer the door in my boxers. She replied that maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I laughed, and thought she might be a little interested. She arrived, dropped off her laptop, and showed no interest in engaging beyond that.
- I made a new acquaintance on Facebook because we had mutual friends and a common interest. When she learned, based on one of my posts, that we were both employed in a niche field, she posted an enthusiastic comment, which I replied to. A couple of my female friends at work told me that I was “oblivious” and that she was “obviously interested” in me. She had just had a baby a few months ago and, by all appearances, was (and still is) happily married. She was just enthusiastic about her field.
I have a lot more of these. In my experience, when women appear to be flirting with you, they aren’t. And when they don’t appear to be flirting with you, they also aren’t.
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I think the idea that men don’t get hints is mostly a meme. It’s true for certain demographics of men that are overrepresented on the internet, but overall, I think most men notice when women pay them extra attention.
It’s just that women do it in ways that are too deniable for most men to want to act on.
We don’t live in a culture where walking up to a woman off a hunch is likely to go anywhere, and for guys who are the type to weigh their options, they’ll just walk away without engaging.
One time at a party a gal grabbed me by the hand and made me dance with her in the living room for a few minutes. She wasn’t interested, she was just mad that I didn’t know how to swing dance.
I have no idea what a hint is even supposed to look like.
The concept of giving “hints” about interest is odd. You have encoded a message and attempt to send it to someone without giving them the cipher used. Maybe they decipher the coded message, congrats! Maybe they don’t, now you have failed in what could have been a simple form of communication.
The downside to all of this is that people start scrutinizing all your actions for secret messages of interest, even when none are being transmitted.
If women are worried about men missing “hints”, they should use a weaker code.
I think you’re conflating a bunch of things here.
Some (most?) women are terrible at expressing their interest clearly (if at all.)
Some women flirt when they aren’t interested.
Some guys are legitimately oblivious.
Some guys are overly cautious when it comes to interpreting women’s interest in him.
Most women aren’t interested in most men.
All of these can be true at the same time.
I don’t think most people are that focused on sending out hints and trying to meet someone all the time. It’s one thing admire someone in public without wanting to connect with them, and a whole other thing to want to initiate the process of starting a relationship
>I have a lot more of these. In my experience, when women appear to be flirting with you, they aren’t. And when they don’t appear to be flirting with you, they also aren’t.
Uh-huh.
However, IF you were missing their flirting clues, you wouldn’t know you were missing them. You might realize it later, or you might not.
In some instances I have missed such clues and only realized it when another woman told me that the woman in question had absolutely been flirting with/sending me signals. I’ve become much better on picking up on such signals over the years, and I can assure you that many, many men, are utterly oblivious to the messages women are trying to send them.
I recall one time i had woman asked me out for coffee, we then went on a beachside walk where she took my hand and we held hands as we walked…turned out she just wanted coffee and liked holding hands.
Some are misses, but many I’d say are our interpretation based on the best info we had at the time. The opposite like you mention is common too even if it’s not just a server or sales person being friendly.
Really recent one I met a woman at a studio I go to frequently. First two meetings were just friendly chat. Third one we found out we had a few mutual friends there. On the way out as I was with others she was rubbing my back to get my attention to say bye. Added each other to socials, she asked about other events, said she’d love to do more with me and let me know when.
She told me she was available for the coming weekend to get together. Told me how she just moved here for work and has been going to explore the city by herself. Messaged for a few weeks leading up, heart all my messages and sent the heart eye emojis often.
We made plans, went out, then on the “date” told me about her home country, work, and that her husband worked in another country and seeing how they can get him here. She kept it friendly the entire time and didn’t cross any boundaries and still gave a hug at the end wanting to hang out more. Didn’t ask me for anything, I didn’t give or pay for anything, and in no way using me for anything at all.
I might be missing some hints, but I ignore the ones I do recognise anyway. I’m not interested in a woman who is either unable or unwilling to communicate with actual words.
If a woman is interested, she should talk to me. I might just buy her a coffee and take time to have a conversation.
Im worried this post is a hint from my wife that I’m missing.
One can miss a signal, one can not care about a signal, and/or one can pretend not to have noticed a signal.
Wouldn’t say often but 100% I can think of dozens of times when I have missed what was in hindsight quite clearly a hint that she was DTF and I missed it. And for quite a few of these I’ve had the girl in question or a friend confirm it.
I don’t entertain women who give hints. If you want me say so. Giving hints to me is a glaring red flag that she’s gonna play Jedi mind tricks the whole relationship and be passive aggressive, not speak clearly/clear communication.
Hard fucking pass
A woman I was friends with for a year or two, about 20 years ago, spent some time flirting with me. We spent a lot more time together, I walked her to her car, she kissed me. Then on the phone, she told me she was interested in dating someone like me who was trying to get an education and work towards a career (for context, I had met her previous boyfriend. He was nice enough, but he was trying to become the next big White rapper). I interpreted this as a subtle hint she was interested. We never spoke again.
Hindsight tells me, a TON!
Often the reason things are confusing is that ambiguity is a good policy when you aren’t sure about your feelings about somebody. Nobody is 100% sure how they feel about someone the first time they meet them. If someone thinks they might be interested, they ay express interest so they can spend more time with you to get a better idea. Even before they meet you again they might decide “wow, I was drunk/in a weird mood when I did that, I should just not follow up.” But also, they may meet you and decide not to get further involved. So, OP’s coffee meeting might have been an actual exploration of interest. Or maybe not — the ambiguity is often intentional, so they don’t have to go into details that might be embarrassing for them or hurtful for you. Maybe you want to know the full story, maybe you can take it gracefully like a champ, but 1) she doesn’t know that about you, and 2) she doesn’t owe it to you.
All the time
Most of the time i think. Woman at work told me that another colleague is in to me and that she been dropping hints at me but i never clicked.
When she walks by she looks the other way, walks as far away from me as she possibly can, basically hugs the wall when we walk past eachother in a narrow corridor. If that’s dropping hints then I really don’t know what to make of it
Miss “hints” that women think are hints? All the time.
Miss actually hints? Not super often.
All day everyday. At this point if its not clear cut I dont wanna take the chance.
I often miss hints from women because I error on the side of caution always. I’ve been told, in my past, that I mistake kindness for romantic interest.
A woman with whom I have a mutual interest (we both like each other) with drops hints and clues that I frequently miss and she gets upset that I don’t pick up on her intentions.
I’m like can you just tell me.
at least 99% of the time.
When I moved back in with my parents after grad school (while going through LinkedIn hell) I helped parents out by doing shit like running errands for the day
One time I ran into the mom of an old classmate from grade/high school
While catching up, she casually dropped that her daughter had the biggest crush on me since like 3rd grade and I had no idea the entire time
But yes, guys who are looking for a hint are prone to misread things and read too much into every little thing as a sign she likes him (it’s an entire meme genre for a reason)
But if a guy isn’t looking for a hint, he’s never going to catch it
Think of it like that video where you’re supposed to count the number of times they pass the basketball? And you completely miss the guy in a gorilla suit that walks through the scene until you’re looking for it. If you aren’t focused on the right things, you’ll miss the detail entirely
I once had a girl show me where her condoms were and told me i wouldn’t give her an ass massage (i did, can’t loose a bet like that, right?) and i figured out what it meant years later.
I also got diagnosed with turbo autism after that, related? Maybe. An hotel? Trivago
Unless it’s extremely obvious, we probably miss a lot of them. I used to work with this chick who was obviously interested in me. She would go out of her way to find me, and talk to me. It was cool, then one day I get back to the office, and EVERYONE was telling me that she was talking about me, asking questions about me. I was pretty embarrassed, and that kind of killed it for me.
Probably less often than most think, because it’s impossible to say how many “hints” are genuine interest and not just the woman wanting attention or not wanting it to go any further.
For me, because that variable is so vague and large and the potential outcomes of getting it wrong are devastating, its just easier to lalalalalalalala and assume no woman is actually interested in me, ever, and any “hints” are them just being nice (and ill be pleasant to deal with in return), but otherwise pay them no mind.
This allows me to at least function in society with women while removing any ambiguity around attraction. The only real difficulty in this is, of course, deliberately crushing any hope that may fester on my part. I hold no ill will or resentment toward women regarding this as it is a choice I continually make to protect myself.
I will miss every hint. Gotta be a lil forward with me. On a normal day I got dozens of other things going thru my mind. Flirting is never on the board so I don’t ever think of things like that.
When I was in 7th grade every time this girl walked past me, she would grab me by the shoulders and say, “I just love looking at your eyes.” I never made a move…
One time a chick pinched my ass, that was pretty sweet. Definitely got a conversation going.
I dunno, but when I was in university after s party a girl called me to her dorm for “cuddles”. I went and she opened up the door in lingerie and I just went to her bed and fell asleep in it thinking nothing special of it.
It took me years… YEARS to realise…
Catrina, if you see this, I’m sorry. You looked well fit and I was a blithering idiot back then!