The psychology of men

Men don’t understand women.

Most of my gender freely admits this. We don’t, what you do makes no sense to us. What is far less commonly realised however is that women don’t understand men either. This comes to a head with flirting.

First of all, if you think you’re being subtle about it, you haven’t a chance in hell of us noticing. It’s never going to register on our radar, not one bit.

Secondly, if you think you are being obvious, you’re not. This might register as possible subtle flirting to us. Then again it might not.

What women don’t seem to understand is that anything short of “hey, I like you. In that way.” is considered subtle. Anything else we could simply be misinterpreting even if it registers as flirting so put together the general obviousness of men together with the suprisingly fragile ego and fear of rejection and you can go as far as to pull us as we’ll still debate whether you actually like us.

There is also the issue that flirting from a girl’s perspective is quite ambigious. Something that one girl does to flirt, another girl will just do out of routine. Some girls just have naturally flirty personalities. Close and personal dancing is something some girls do with everyone. It’s not flirting. Making jokes about you and me hucking up – I do this with most of my female friends, it’s not flirting.

Finally it’s also worth considering that every action you take it thrown into the debating ring when a guy is trying to work out if you are in to him or not. This includes how often you accept invites to come out, what reasons you give when not coming out, how you phrase it, how you act when you do come out, etc. Also it’s usually an assumption that you’re not into them so sending any kind of mixed singles won’t keep a guy interested, they are more likely to conclude you’re not into them and move you into the dreaded friend category.

To conclude my 2 cents, if you think you are being subtle you aren’t going to get noticed, if you think you are being obvious you are being subtle and if you are just honest and let the guy know, he may actually realise you’re into him. We’re scared, pessimistic, conservative thinkers and you really need to realise this and re-align this phase shift. Happy boyfriend hunting.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 2:48 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.