Re: Women and Approach Anxiety

[reboundstudent]

RBS ( I hope you don't mind the abbreviation) I guess I was projecting my own obliviousness onto the matter and the reddit stories in particular.

Yes I guess some men do consciously ignore women's advances and thus are delivering a "soft no".

When making approaches I myself err on the side of bailing out early if I think I'm not getting any strong signals.

If your friends are telling you that you are bailing too early it probably indicated that you are not being creepy.  Not that friends are always right or get to deny other people's boundaries.

Pushing past the point of creepy is a stumbling block many women who approach have.  Since both men and women tend to hold the myth that men are always game and welcome any approach by a woman, men struggle to give a direct " No" and women fail at recognizing men's "soft No". Hopefully this will change as more women approach because hot damn have I seen women, including me, pull some creepy ass, cringe worthy shit!

V- feel free to call me RBS. :-)

Except in very rare circumstances, my friends aren't usually around to see these approaches. Frequently I think they suffered the same kind of social conditioning Reboot is talking about here.... the tendency to believe that men are almost-always game, and that a woman can never truly be creepy or boundary pushing.

[reboot]

Let's see. In high school I followed a guy around a party sexually propositioning him as he was clearly attempting to avoid me, I blew up another guys phone with calls for days after he gave me his number (to get rid of me most likely) despite him not calling me back, I reapproached men who said no on different occasions hoping no had become yes and kept doing it, I did a whole lot of Nice Girling



Reboot ages 14-23 was a major creeper

[V]

Yes, I'm up for tales of women's approaches, in all their glory!

[Guest]

Let's see. In high school I followed a guy around a party sexually propositioning him as he was clearly attempting to avoid me, I blew up another guys phone with calls for days after he gave me his number (to get rid of me most likely) despite him not calling me back, I reapproached men who said no on different occasions hoping no had become yes and kept doing it, I did a whole lot of Nice Girling



Reboot ages 14-23 was a major creeper

Ohhh, okay, yeah I can see the issues there.

Sounds almost like me from 13 to 16. Though I probably wised up earlier than you might have seeing as how I'm 23 now with little to no creepin'.

Reboot at ages 14 to 23 also sounds adorably endearing (despite the Nice Girling). -hugs-

[KMR]

Pushing past the point of creepy is a stumbling block many women who approach have.  Since both men and women tend to hold the myth that men are always game and welcome any approach by a woman, men struggle to give a direct " No" and women fail at recognizing men's "soft No". Hopefully this will change as more women approach because hot damn have I seen women, including me, pull some creepy ass, cringe worthy shit!

I think this is especially more common in the geek community because the stereotypes of geeky men are that they are both more oblivious to flirting and more welcoming of and/or desperate for approaches from women than the average man. Additionally, if you're a geeky woman, there's a tendency to hold the belief that geeky men are automatically going to be interested in you because you're one of those "rare" women who share their interests. If a woman holds these beliefs, she's probably more likely to interpret the lack of response to her flirting as, "He's just not getting it... I need to be try harder," rather than, "Well, I guess he's just not interested."

[eselle28]

I've done some Nice Girling too. I once arranged my entire social life around a guy I liked who was rather new in town, introducing him to all my friends to make sure he wasn't lonely or bored, and asking him to do things one on one but being too cowardly to use the word date. That lasted until he found a girlfriend outside the group and made some of his own friends, since he was a perfectly competent adult who wasn't romantically interested in me and didn't need or ask for my social organization services. Yeah, definitely not my best moment.

When much younger, I was also really prone to Firthing and/or pointedly avoiding my crushes on the theory that they'd be repulsed to learn I was interested in them.

[reboot]

Let's see. In high school I followed a guy around a party sexually propositioning him as he was clearly attempting to avoid me, I blew up another guys phone with calls for days after he gave me his number (to get rid of me most likely) despite him not calling me back, I reapproached men who said no on different occasions hoping no had become yes and kept doing it, I did a whole lot of Nice Girling



Reboot ages 14-23 was a major creeper

Ohhh, okay, yeah I can see the issues there.

Sounds almost like me from 13 to 16. Though I probably wised up earlier than you might have seeing as how I'm 23 now with little to no creepin'.

Reboot at ages 14 to 23 also sounds adorably endearing (despite the Nice Girling). -hugs-

I am just glad I made it through without touching anyone, but I came close enough, often enough that I am still kind of horrified.

What I wish is that someone had told me I was being creepy. Instead the type of advice I got from friends, male and female, was along the lines of, "Just walk over, grab it and put it in" Back then, though, the message that men are incapable of saying no was much stronger, so no one told me to cut it out, hence the long creeping spell. Which only ended because I boundary pushed and Nice Girled into a relationship with my ex, mores the pity

[V]

RBS

Unfortunately in that case your friends may not always have the best advice perhaps.

[reboundstudent]

I think this is especially more common in the geek community because the stereotypes of geeky men are that they are both more oblivious to flirting and more welcoming of and/or desperate for approaches from women than the average man. Additionally, if you're a geeky woman, there's a tendency to hold the belief that geeky men are automatically going to be interested in you because you're one of those "rare" women who share their interests. If a woman holds these beliefs, she's probably more likely to interpret the lack of response to her flirting as, "He's just not getting it... I need to be try harder," rather than, "Well, I guess he's just not interested."

YES. Geeky women have their own Social Fallacies to grapple with, and this is a huge one that haunted me for years. It still gets really reinforced among geeky women themselves, too.

Let's see, creepy stories from me. Well, back in high school I was less creepy and more just a total bitch. I had a huge crush on a guy for years, and yet any time I interacted with him, I was just awful to him. In 11th grade, I and a group of gals were sitting outside in the band hallway talking about our politics class. My crush was sitting near by, and after I mentioned my stance on some political issue, he says "I feel that way too!" I snapped "Nobody asked you." When I found out I hadn't gotten into the musical, he came up to me and said he was sorry, "but I didn't get in either-of course, I didn't audition!" I told him he was dumb and ran away. One year at the marching band state championship, I asked my band director for some Tylenol for a headache. My band director didn't have any, but my crush (standing nearby again) did, and offered to let me have some. I took some without thanking him, and ran away.

Dozens of instances of this kid being super nice to me and me repeatedly being an asshole, because (so goes teenage thinking) if I'm not an asshole, then he might figure out I like him and reject me!

And of course I accidentally creeped out my current coworker several weeks ago as I posted about here. :-P (I had almost forgotten about that. Damn.)

[Guest]

I've gotten some hard push-back from fellow ladies about my giving up at the first sign of obliviousness, but I feel it's better to err on the side of "accept rejection, avoid creepy behavior" than hope the guy just needs a neon sign and it turns out you're making him deeply uncomfortable.

Oh definitely this. I may be a big proponent of initiating, but (after some embarrassing lessons) also a big proponent of reciprocity. It took a few embarrassing lessons to learn how to interpret a soft no, too, including some instances where guys would try to subtly avoid me.

At this point for me, if someone can't find it in themselves to respond with interest to an open proposition/chatting up, they're either uninterested (and I should stop bothering them) or they're too oblivious for me to deal with. Win-win either way.

I definitely did a fair amount of Firthing in high school and elementary. (In elementary, especially, I had a huge crush on one kid who was my assigned desk partner. I was a shitty student at that school and slept most of the time, anyway, but I spent most of the time I was awake with my head on my arms just staring at the guy. Poor dude. No wonder I was a pariah there.)

[reboot]

Mikey, do you want me to split this into a new thread? Because we have drifted to your dating challenges and away from Women and Approach anxiety

EDIT: New thread here

[Guest]

Mikey, do you want me to split this into a new thread? Because we have drifted to your dating challenges and away from Women and Approach anxiety

Sure. c:

I dunnou what else id have to contribute to the new thread, but yes, only so we don't clutter this thread with my own idiocy.

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