Q4Men: Have you, or any of your friends, ever mistaken a woman's friendliness towards you as flirting?

mensahi41 · 2020-10-26T08:19:09+00:00

Actually the other way around. Mistook the flirting of a fellow student as friendliness. I don't see the point in reacting to things such as being overly friendly or trying to be around me often. Friends do the same so in how far are you supposed to guess a different intention. Espacially when all actions look the same.

Gravel_Roads · 2020-10-26T08:46:31+00:00

Yes. But if it helps, I've had women mistake my friendliness for flirting as well.

This is always the problem with being friendly, unfortunately. It makes people feel good, and then they want you to keep making them feel good. They think "wow, we're really compatible together, we should date" when no, no, you aren't. The friendly person is compatible with everyone, and you are relying on them to "be friendly" to get along with them. They are doing all the work and you are confusing it for compatibility.

SherbertBacon · 2020-10-26T09:52:40+00:00

Me: not to my knowledge. I tend to err on the side of friendliness unless I'm particularly interested in her.

Many of my friends: definitely.

In many cases it was just waitstaff doing their jobs. A few times it was people (like two friends/classmates/acquaintances) having a regular, boring conversation. I think on a few occasions women were flirting for fun (which is normal) and the guy assumed more serious romantic intent.

How did ~~you~~ they respond ~~to her~~?

Usually they were just hurt or a little confused. Politely accepted the rejection but also felt a bit frustrated to not understand better.

How did she respond ~~to you~~?

When the women who were being nice were asked out they just politely turned the guy down. Depending on the context they'd have an excuse, but most often they just bluntly said "I don't see you that way, I'd rather be friends."

Why do you think you or your friend misread her?

I think many guys just haven't been around enough women in purely platonic settings. The reason I think I don't misread signals is because I've seen just how obvious "keen" vs. "friendly" is, I grew up around it and see it among my female friends. Some men don't get that opportunity. Beyond that, some guys crush really hard and want to read into anything—if anything it's to their advantage to assume attraction and be corrected, rather than the other way around. But fuck off with "shit tests" and other bullshit. If she says "no thanks" just accept she either plays games or isn't interested.

I'm intrigued to find out why so many men misinterpret a woman being friendly as a sign of flirtation.

There's a biological imperative and most men are clueless with reading the right signals of attraction and interest.

Or maybe it's not realising the context of a woman being flirtatious like a waitress looking for tips.

A waitress "flirting" for tips still does it in a quite different way than romantic flirting. It's fun and playful. Thirsty dudes will jump at it, but I usually just flirt back playfully when I know it's in good fun.

BIGFACTS98 · 2020-10-26T16:11:48+00:00

The reason men over interpret flirting is because sex is historically a scarce commodity and women are not historically upfront about their attraction

So men evolved to be open to opportunities wherever possible and men who didn’t evolve that tendency likely missed out on reproductive opportunities and so that is less common

If most men won’t reproduce and sex was a rare and valuable commodity back in the day

It would make sense for most men to overestimate their chances than underestimate

This coupled with generally hidden, non obvious signs of female attraction

And viola you have the perfect recipe for the tendency to overestimate attraction

Not to mention the fact that males in the past and currently are expected to be the initiators of a sexual relationships.This would also explain a slight over tendency to initiate, as women, due to their natural and ubiquitous tendency to take the passive role in sexual relations, aren’t subject to the same pressures.

Then also coupled with the fact that most men find most women attractive but women rate male attractiveness on a Pareto distribution,

Women who do imitate and make mistakes are far less likely to be doing so with someone that is not already somewhat interested in her than a man would be in the same situation. There is much less of a chance of such an overestimation to lead to a negative consequence with a woman as one - men tend to naturally feel less threatened in sexual situations due to a generally larger physical build. And two - most women are accurately or at least have a higher likelihood of accurately perceiving interests as men are much more overt about their sexual interest

In sum

Women are not subject to the same evolutionary pressures of finding a mate and so don’t make the same “mistakes” that men do when seeking a mate, and even when they do are much less likely to face negative consequences for it.

pre-dental23 · 2020-10-26T18:03:32+00:00

Nah but I never really bust a move unless I get hella clear signals anyways

If she acts like a bro she gonna get bro treatment

xFallacyx69 · 2020-10-26T08:10:58+00:00

I’m sure I have, but I’m honestly a flirty dude anyways. If a girl is serious, it will come out as continual flirting, otherwise I don’t read into one instance of “possible flirtyness”...

BUT guys misinterpret flirty/friendly behavior because women are absolute shit at discerning the difference sometimes. It’s been said here before, but if women were responsible for escalating, and men were the ones with the lower sex drive... there would be a lot less sex happening in the world.

mechanical_elves · 2020-10-26T07:33:33+00:00

Every once in a while I'm sure I used to with Uber girls. You ask about them, joke, flatter a bit and you wait to see what atmosphere it creates. A guy can easily misinterpret a chummy atmosphere for interest, because if any girl acted like that outside of "having to" it would probably be on to at least ask for a number.

I don't see how average guys would ever get sex without overestimating. Usually they don't get great signals from women. It's either overestimate and get lucky 1/100 times, or go your whole life with dry dick.

NinjaOfTheSouth · 2020-10-26T11:51:03+00:00

Lol plenty of times. Society really doesn’t teach us the different in between.

thedeadpill · 2020-10-26T13:59:30+00:00

Me and everyone I know. For myself, countless times in a lot of different contexts (once, it's that they sat next to me in an empty cafeteria, but they weren't even interested in talking). I kind of learned mostly that people aren't generally interested, so I now default to 'not interested' (obligatory youtube lols on this topic).

I think people misread them because there are just playful people out there who are flirty but in committed relationships that matter to them.

There's a lot of factors why it might be the case, but, I'll bet that the fact men don't generally get a lot of positive attention is one.

like a waitress looking for tips.

We should probably not pretend that this isn't a woman preying on a man's probable misinterpretation instead of 'just being nice for tips'. There are lots of ways to get a good tip without being flirty. Being flirty is absolutely preying on men's poor ability to figure it out.

NiceGuyNumber4 · 2020-10-26T14:38:20+00:00

Yes, this is extremely common. The only women friendly to the average men are family, women in the service industry, and/or women who want his money. Men often mistake women in groups 2 and 3 for genuinely being attracted to them.

TheLotusLover · 2020-10-26T23:00:26+00:00

Yes, but the last time a women was that friendly was a customer I had 3 years ago and then it was a couple years before that was the only other time. Loneliness make your feelings into a hammer and any affection no matter the intent a nail to draw those feelings. But it's a rare enough occurrence I know after a moment these women are just trying to get a rise out of me or just auto piloting with their social and outgoing mask on

darksoldierk · 2020-10-27T03:02:09+00:00

Generally speaking, I learned early on to assume all "nice" behaviors from women to be "friendly".

Men misinterpret a woman being friendly as a sign of flirtation because women have poor communication skills.

I'll give you an example that I've given often cause, well, it's one that I find particularly interesting. It's a little long.

So, in my mid twenties, I had a friend, lets call her, Beca. We had been friends for 7 or so years, and we were always close. She was a part of our friend circle, and as close to me as some of my guy best friends. We did stuff alone together, like go out on hikes, go for dinners, watch movies, ya know, the stuff that friends do. She would hug everyone every time she saw us, and at the end of the night, and that was normal cause women do that. nothing out of the ordinary. Anywho, my friends and I had this stupid thing, when we ended the night, or ended a phone call, we'd say "ight, g'night, love you", just cause it made things awkward when it started and caused some laughs, and it stuck. So, for a few months, when it was just me and her, walking somewhere, she would take my arm and put it around her shoulder. When she hugged me, this girl hugged me for forever, every time we ended the night, she'd be holding on to me for like, 5 minutes. I just shrugged it off, figured she was cold or whatever. One time, as she's hugging me, she goes like "love you", and I laughed, like I usually do and say "love you too, g'night", and she goes "no, I LOVE you, more than anyone". I said "oookay, I love you too, good night".

So a few weeks later, we were (beca was there) at a party. At this party, we all got drunk, and this other girl, lets name her, nancy, was constantly talking to me. I was enjoying getting to know nancy, but every time I turned around, there was beca. I mean, it was fine, cause It hadn't occurred to me that nancy was interested, so I figured we were all just being friends. At some point, nancy went somewhere else, and all of a sudden, Beca wasn't there either. A slow song came on, and Nancy comes up to me, yanks on my hand and says "hey, lets dance". So we dance, and in that moment, with my arm around nancy, and nancy's head tucked into my shoulder, I realized that nancy could, maybe, potentially, like me. So, song ends, I go to sit on a couch to deal with my spins. Nancy follows, and she and I go back to talking. Beca comes by, and now we are all talking.....the three of us.....again, and nancy goes " I hope someone puts another slow song, I liked our dance, you are a good dancer", which I knew nancy was bs'ing, cause I stepped all over her feet that first time. Beca goes "you danced with her? you've never danced with me!" and I say some bs to move along the conversation. So, when another slow song came on, I'm looking at nancy cause I'm about to yank her arm towards the dance floor, but Beca goes like "okay, lets dance", and I say "i'm all outa dances for the night, it was a one night show". But, she insists in a way that makes me think she's going to make a scene, and conversations would be had within the group of friends, and drama blah blah blah, so I dance with Beca. I go to get a drink, and on my way, I stop by the ipod that was connected, and put another slow song a few songs down the list. Then I go back to the couch, Beca decides to come back to the couch with me, sits on my lap, and wrap her arm around my neck, in this very, well, if she was my girlfriend and we were somewhere alone, it would be nice, but she wasn't and we weren't. I mean, her ass was literally on top of my dick, and I literally had to "think unsexy thoughts, think unsexy thoughts" to not get hard, cause every time she'd adjust her butt to get more comfortable, she was digging her ass into my dick, which, to me, felt intentional, but I unno, bitches be crazy.

Nancy obviously gets annoyed, she stays and talks for a bit, but was clearly looking for an exit, she leaves and spends the rest of the night doing other stuff, and she and I don't really ever talk again, the last memory of nancy that I have is her getting up to walk away and me thinking "no, nancy no, please don't leave!".

So as I'm sitting there, with beca on my lap, her arm around my neck, and her ass dug so deep on top of my dick, that if we didn't have clothes on, my dick would be coming out of her mouth, and I'm sitting there thinking of how beca is sitting on me, thinking of the long hugs, the "I love you", the arm around the shoulder, and so, my mind says "hmm, maybe Beca likes me. I should see whatsup, but, now's probably not a good time since we are both drunk. Don't take advantage of a drunk woman". A few days later, Beca and I are out for sushi, and I, as covertly as I can,(which is not very covertly at all) bring up the question of whether or not she has feelings for me. She looks at me, smiles and says "oh honey, no. You're my best friend, you'll always be my best friend" and continued to say how I'm a great guy, blah blah blah, I wasn't paying attention cause, well, some pretty intense emotions were going on inside me in that particular moment, but I figure it was the regular schmele that women seem to have memorized.

Now, I'm not going to get into what was going through my mind as she said that, the complete and utter confusion, the anger, just pure hate, I felt sick, maybe it was the sushi, or maybe it was the thought that one of my closest friends, someone I loved as much as I could ever love a friend, had been manipulating me, playing with me like I'm some sort of, play....thing, I don't know. All I knew was that I never wanted to see Beca again, but realized from her point of view, she probably thought she had just rejected me (which was weird cause I didn't ask her out)so I tried not to ruin a long friendship over it, and was just like "oki doki, so, uh, what does a guy gotta do to get the bills?".

The point of the story is, the reason why men misinterpret women's' friendly behaviour with flirtation is because women are very poor communicators in this regard. To women, they think they are being very, very clear, but they aren't. To this day, I still can't tell you why Beca acted like she did, maybe she didn't want me to be with Nancy, maybe she was jealous that I gave Nancy more attention, maybe she knew something about Nancy that I didn't and was doing a nice thing by protecting me from being involved with Nancy. Maybe she saw me as an orbitor, an emotional tampon, a thing to prop up her self esteem, and was worried that I would no longer be that if anything happened with nancy. I don't know. But, I do know that what she did was very confusing. So, what was I supposed to learn from that interaction? that every time a girl dances with me it meant she liked me? Maybe that every time a girl sat on my lap it meant she didn't like me? Or maybe that when a girl acts like your girlfriend when she isn't, and does things like tells you she loves you in a weird way, pulls your arm around her shoulder constantly, holds your hand when you walk constantly, it means she's just being friendly. I don't know, but I do know that whatever it is that I was supposed to pick up on in that series of event, I didn't. You know what I did learn though? I learned the "don't take advantage of a drunk woman" was bs, cause I'm pretty sure that, in that moment, whether she actually liked me or not, if I kissed Beca, we would have probably fucked. I learned to not be so considerate of women's feelings, to not care if they make a scene or whatever, cause, if I hadn't danced with beca, maybe I woulda ended up with something truly special with nancy. Those lessons served me very well.

I can tell you another story, where all night long, I thought this woman was just being friendly, straight up, nothing sexual about our interaction. But after passing out in a bedroom at that party, I woke up to her on top of me and her tongue down my throat. Cause I was magically supposed to know that just because this girl kept talking to me, that she was interested in me.

cuckspace · 2020-10-26T11:13:13+00:00

I don’t think it’s a mistake to assume that whenever a woman is not being bitchy towards a man, and it’s not explicitly a part of her job description, she is being flirty.

rivetcitymayor · 2020-10-26T11:07:33+00:00

The friendlier she is to you the more likely she isn’t interested in you romantically, women that like you tend to be intimidated by you in my opinion

MasterTeacher123 · 2020-10-26T11:27:43+00:00

A lot of men will only be “nice” to a woman if he wants to fuck her, so they interpret it in their minds that if she’s nice to me, she wants to fuck me.

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RedPill_is_a_cult · 2020-10-26T12:08:40+00:00

Yup. I've also mistook flirting for friendliness. To focus on the original questions though:

What was the context of the situation? Was in my mid twenties at the time. Group of friends went out for sushi and karaoke. She was a friend of a friend. She asked me if I wanted to duet b-52's Love Shack with her.

How did I respond? Agreed. We talked some that night, the context I thought at the time was flirtatious. Asked her for her # at the end of the night.

How did she respond? Said she was interested in hanging out, but not dating, was very upfront.

Why did I think I misread her? A combo of alcohol induced misreading signals, and general ineptitude at being social. I was very late in developing social intelligence, and struggled for many years with depression and poor self esteem. I think in many ways, I was looking in the wrong places to fill a hole in my life, so I saw what I wanted to see.

wtknight · 2020-10-26T14:03:51+00:00

Yes, did this once with a woman whom I worked with. I flirted back for a while, asked her if she wanted to get something to eat after work, and found out that she actually had a boyfriend.

I don't know why I "misread" her. Maybe she was flirting with me and actually found me more desirable in some way than her boyfriend, but wasn't willing to be disloyal to him. She wasn't offended when I asked her out, at any rate. There were women in the past who actually were interested in me who were less obvious than she was.

In my opinion, some women's natural friendliness comes across as flirty, while others who may actually be interested can be a lot shyer. I think that it's really just a difference in personality thing among individual women and not really a man's fault. Your post seems to imply that women are some kind of monolithic in how they express flirtiness, which I don't think is accurate. I think that this is what confuses men.

SonicBackScratcher · 2020-10-26T14:59:21+00:00

I'm far more likely to miss flirting than miss interpret friendliness.

Joey_Lopez · 2020-10-26T22:33:06+00:00

I don't think most men mistake being friendly with flirting. Men just try to make it flirty just in case.

kawaii_neet_bot · 2020-10-27T02:25:29+00:00

People see the world as they are. If someone is super horny they will interpret friendly flirting as sexual interest. If someone is not super horny they will interpret friendly flirting as friendly flirting or just friendly small talk.

pangolin001 · 2020-10-27T03:54:25+00:00

Of course I have and It's quite simple. It's called "positive thinking". How else would an interested person show interest but to start by being friendly. There's a lot of nuance to be considered though. I don't think the friendly cashier wants to fuck me. But if someone is being friendly and they have absolutely no reason to have the encounter or to be friendly, there's a decent possibility she's saying "hey, i think you're kinda cool and cute"

This works the other way around too. I think I'm a pretty friendly guy. All too often though, I can almost see "he wants to fuck me" come over their face. When this happens a woman instinctively starts shit testing. Then I'm going "omg, I was just being nice and now looks, she's shit testing me and trying to get me to do tricks or provide something for her"

It usually only takes a few seconds before some of them are exposed. It's offensive a lot of the time too. I mean, it's one thing to wonder "what does this person want" but when they jump RIGHT to "he wants to fuck me" it's insulting, and what makes it truly disgusting is when they start playing it, trying to get you to do or provide things based on their assumption. These are women that usually don't bring anything else to the table. So when their brain asks "what does he want" it has no other option BUT to conclude that it MUST be sex - because it's all she's got. When I see that, I fucking RUN. She has objectified me as a stupid monkey that must bring her treats and perform tricks for her even though she has no intention of ever fucking me because she sees me as a stupid monkey. Turns out that's just projection from a stupid feral monkey that has nothing to offer except sex. But good luck trying to get them to see that.

anonymouscausefuckU · 2020-10-27T15:26:11+00:00

I think this happens roughly about equally to men as it does to women, and as well it also happens no more and more less frequently than the other way around: mistaking flirting for friendliness.

I don’t believe any of this has all that much to do with social intelligence as much as it has to do with one’s desires and life experiences. A painfully memorable example of this was about 2 years ago when an incredibly gorgeous girl I had just met flirted with me and I was in such an intense state of dream-like shock that my brain literally didn’t fully accept the situation as reality, despite the fact that she was being extremely straightforward and verbal about it. I had just had sort of a “glow up” experience in the year before this from losing weight and growing my hair & facial hair out and I was just so not used to situations like this that it was just hard for me to believe it was actually happening. I’m also very sexually inexperienced. This situation and it’s aftereffect actually took a very huge toll on me emotionally and I still effects me to this day to be honest. I ended up having a sort of Moby Dick-like obsession with this girl that I still haven’t fully shaken 2 years later and it’s made it difficult to connect with other girls who I meet. I could go on and on about why it happened this way and why it affected me so profoundly but this comment has already turned into an embarrassing diary entry so I’ll just leave it at this lol

mae1995111 · 2020-10-27T17:43:52+00:00

Nope never. I have seen women however misinterpret a guy being friendly as him flirting too many times to count.

Workaholiconew · 2020-10-27T22:25:49+00:00

Have you, or any of your friends, ever mistaken a woman's friendliness towards you as flirting?

Yes, many times when we were young, almost none for the last decade or so.

I think you are mistaken, many women think that men are confusing their friendly behaviors as flirting by lack of social intelligence... when in reality, they aren't confusing anything, they just interpret it as non rejection (which it is) and thus will continue to push forward. I.e. men have the social intelligence, they just lack a reason to stop, as it may still lead to success in the end or not, in about the same rate as anything else we do. So we just keep on "grinding".

If anything it is women who seem not that socially intelligent. After all women's inability to put useful information in their speech in the crucial times, their constant jumping to conclusions, their inability to discern the same friendliness from flirtation, their propensity to put token resistances in all interactions and all other kinds of social games women like to play makes men (and other women) consider women in general as unreliable informants and thus act in the way which disregards anything short of words and in many cases even disregarding their words (There is actually a series of articles about that, which I think you may be interested in).

Basically, it was women who made social clues (and their own words) useless by constant social gaming. Men (and other women) just acted accordingly and disregard those whenever there is a good reason to. Women who are known for not playing this game when constantly proven by the other party may be take that said woman seriously. But otherwise, none does (think of Thatcher and Merkel, they actually avoided these behaviors after their 40s, contrary to almost all other women).

lonelinessmademecave · 2020-10-26T18:26:18+00:00

I feel like I usually can tell now. But it takes a lot trial and error. If you’re expecting a guy who has never been flirted with to really understand the difference between flirting and someone being nice, you’re literally asking for the impossible. Which you’d know with a little social EQ.

Lmao women always boast about their social intelligence, but I really do wonder sometimes

Title	Q4Men: Have you, or any of your friends, ever mistaken a woman's friendliness towards you as flirting?
Author	Danger3214
Upvotes	13
Comments	78
Date	October 26, 2020 7:06 AM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/jia1oz/q4men_have_you_or_any_of_your_friends_ever/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/q4men-have-you-or-any-of-your-friends-ever.323747 https://theredarchive.com/post/323747

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