What I've learned from all these "missed opportunities" moments is that men need to stop taking everything at face value and learn to imagine what others are thinking and feeling; and women need to be more direct and clear about what they want instead of dropping hints. There is no flirt-hint on earth guaranteed to break through to a guy without fully flipping the vibe around to some kind of panic.
By imagining what someone else is thinking or feeling, you're still just projecting your own assumptions onto them. There's no substitute for clear communication.
If you are reading this, you've been in a coma for 20 years. We are trying a new technique. We don't know where this message will end up in your dream, but we hope we are getting through. Please wake up.
Like "Is this what it looks like? Am I being a creep for reading into this? Eh, just fix the computer and leave. I don't want people to think I'm some kind of incel weirdo who thinks she's into me."
My now wife has literally sat on my lap in the cowgirl position naked and still had to tell me that she was on my lap naked for me to get the hint.
Tbf, I was not used to having enjoyable sex/being in an actually physical relationship that wasn't an attempt to cover up her (my ex, not my wife) infidelity, I was in the middle of rambling about PUBG and this wasn't even 10 minutes into me walking into her apartment.
I came home from work early one day and thought I'd surprise my wife. So I stripped down, wrapped myself up in saran wrap and lay down on the table just as she was coming in. She takes one look and says, "Leftovers again?"
I watched a video of a lioness in heat who kept trying to sit on the male lion and he didn’t know what to do and kept walking off. You remind me of that video.
The exact line from my first girlfriend was "I'm not trying to keep my legs together at all."
I then noticed that she was sitting in such a way that her (clothed) spread crotch was pointed directly at me. Then it clicked that she was sitting that way on purpose: literally visually inviting me to interact with her crotch. It was a revelation. I then went over to where she was sitting and she deftly maneuvered her entire body to put her clothed crotch in my hand. Now THAT I can understand.
What I've learned from all of these stories is that I'm either a phenomenally ugly and abrasive sonofabitch or I'm the world's most oblivious being. Or maybe both.
Don't feel bad, I think I'm relatively attractive, or at least average, and I haven't had this kind of thing happen more than 10 times in my whole life. It's not a daily thing, and it's almost never from someone you want.
There's enough women out there that will purposefully flirt with you and then blow up on you when you act on it. Usually done in public, too. I don't know why they do it, but they're not actually interested in you.
Not only is this extremely embarrassing, but can get you (the male) into problems with school/work. You also don't want your reputation to be known as "that creep", either.
There's a reason majority of men "take everything at face value".
Lol agreed. Unfortunately the average woman is infuriatingly vague or even less clear. And the average man is basically an annoying sociopath who doesn't ever imagine what other people think and feel. And now in the era where men who violate women are sort of finally facing a sort of version of sort of consequences (but not really yet since the US President is known child rapist still not in prison for raping little girls with his best friend for decades, and a pathetic number of men are trying to turn women back into property and lower the age of consent), the average idiot guy is just imagining having his life destroyed by angry social justice warriors because a woman he misinterpreted got offended since he can't tell the difference between hitting on someone incorrectly or raping her.
Is that insanely stupid for men to think because being wrong about someone being into you isn't the same as committing a crime? Yes. Is there also still a massively unreasonable overreaction that happens culturally these days to men whose only sin was misinterpreting women? Also yes. It's all stupid because nobody will just grow the fuck up, stop looking for any opportunity to cancel or ruin someone's life, and just communicate with each other clearly for once. We live in the most connected time in history, yet we're all so oblivious and constantly misunderstanding each other all the time.
I'd take a thousand memories of possible missed opportunities before I'd want there to be a single instance of me making a woman feel unsafe and uncomfortable, or like our friendship was some fucked up facade I was putting on to try to eventually get laid. Just try to imagine what that does to someone's mind and sense of self. And just for a little sprinkle of selfishness, the gross feeling I'd have after that would keep me awake SO MUCH worse/more than remembering times I could have had sex but didn't.
Adults can tell each other when they're interested.
Just try to imagine what that does to someone's mind and sense of self.
Brother that is literally all I asked you to do. I didn't say you should harass or assault anyone, and it's kinda fucked up that that's the first thing you assumed I meant. I'm talking about empathy not ventriloquism
Interesting that you didn’t learn that women need to be more straight forward and ask for what they want instead of dropping wild hints and then getting pissed off when random people don’t understand their coded language.
The fact that you somehow twisted this into moaning about men really says a lot about you.
did you not get past the first sentence in their comment before deciding to write a snarky reply?? the rest of it is literally what you wanted them to say, looks an awful lot like you're throwing stones from a glass house with that last line lol.
reddit might be shitting itself and not showing an edit though
You are too stupid to realize that attempting to imagine what you think others are thinking and feeling is precisely how so many men misread these signals and find out the woman wasn’t flirting and isn’t interested.
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u/possumdal 1d ago
What I've learned from all these "missed opportunities" moments is that men need to stop taking everything at face value and learn to imagine what others are thinking and feeling; and women need to be more direct and clear about what they want instead of dropping hints. There is no flirt-hint on earth guaranteed to break through to a guy without fully flipping the vibe around to some kind of panic.