How to tell if you are leading a boy on?

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I am confused about how to tell if you are leading a guy on / welcoming unwanted sexual advances. I have a hard time knowing when I am leading a guy on. I am worried that I might do or say something to a guy that I'm friends with, and he might perceive it as flirting, and try to touch me inappropriately. I hope I posted this in the right forum......

I get that someone might not know whether they are *being* led on, but how do you not know whether you are leading someone on? Leading someone on, to me, indicates that you actively encourage them, but really aren't interested. You would know if you did that. If you're worried your friend might misinterpret your intentions, tell him that you're only interested in friendship.

Well, at least he'll tell you once he gets disappointed.

The whole thing depends on how he feels more than how you act, in my experience.

It's not as easy as that. Often guys mistake friendliness for something more. And often guys who are your friends are interested in something more. It's not often that a guy will be your friend and not want anything else.

If they try to touch you inappropriately and you're clear that is isn't wanted - they are not your friends.

Meh, I don't know about male friends being always interested in something more than just "friendship". I grew up in a house full of boys (my brothers and a bunch of male cousins), was a tomboy, and just "one of the guys". I have always had male friends and sometimes prefer them over female friends as there tends to be less drama when your friend is male ! Women can also be very competitive with each other - even sisters, actually especially sisters - and I never run into that with my brothers, male cousins or former male classmates / coworkers that I am occasionally in touch with.

Men also like to fix things, which is just as important to me as being to just talk my problems out of my system.

Now all that said, I will say that you may run into men who are interested in something more than just "friendship". BUT, IMO, these types will very likely make their interest in more than just friendship known sooner rather than later. If you have been friends with someone for over a year, and he has never said anything about wanting to "upgrade" your friendship into something more, then chances are that he thinks of you as just "one of the guys" and your friendship is solid. A dead giveaway of a rock solid friendship is when he talks to you as he would with his male friends. Like "dude", "man", "bro" etc. All through University, I was addressed by my male friends as "brother-in-law" -- which is slang in our language for a best (male) friend ! !! ! Never ever had a problem with inappropriate advances from any of them - I was just one of them, a "bro", if you will ! !! Except that I was invaluable to them for helping them decipher the fairer sex out !

If you have recently become friends with someone and he hints that he would like to go on a date with you, then you put a stop to it by clarifying your intentions, backing off, and preferably breaking off the friendship. It is not at all a good idea to be around someone who sees you as more than just a friend. You will, in this case, be leading them on. Put a stop to it and save them from further pain by ending your "friendship". If you don't do this - and because IMO many men are very WYSIWYG - then he may get ideas in his head that you want something more, too. THEN, you will be guilty of leading him on, and have only yourself to blame if he starts making advances that he presumes will be welcomed by you.

The key is to nip misunderstandings in the bud. Some men you will WANT to be friends with, some you can NEVER be friends with. Harry from "When Harry met Sally" wasn't 100% correct, but there is scope for plenty of mishaps if you aren't careful about setting up and keeping your boundaries from the very start.

^ That is good advice, although I think male friends are often open to more than friendship. It's especially hard to tell when a male friend gets a girlfriend and suddenly starts being really distant or horrible to you. That has happened to me a few times. I'm not sure how to decipher what went on.

As for being, "one of the guys", I wonder if they really treat you like a *man*, or whether it's more acceptance into their group. I mean, women in general are more easily upset (on the surface) than men are, so I think men are more careful about how they act around women.

I have been told I think like a man, but I sometimes wonder if those men said that to me because I was good at listening to them. They might have mistook it as "GMTA", and all that.

I think it depends on what you define as a "friend". ANYONE - even women who happen to be homosexual - who wants more than just friendship - is NOT a "friend". Friendship is truly platonic, you can LOVE your friend, but the love is the love you would have for a sibling, not a potential mate. It is very important to understand this critical difference before you label someone a "friend". You may like someone in a platonic manner and enjoy hanging out with them, but if THEY have "feelings" for you that are anything but platonic, then they aren't really your "friend". You may think of them as such, but sooner or later, they reveal their true intentions, and you may be disappointed.

If this happens to you several times with the opposite sex, it may lead you to conclude that ALL men want to be your mate, whereas the problem really may have been that *you* simply did not realize that the men you were picking to be "friends with" never had any intentions of staying "just friends" with you, in the first place.

Since I grew up around many boys who eventually became men - my brothers and my cousins - AND I also went to an all-girls school run by nuns, I had the advantage of knowing how both sexes are wired. I HAVE made mistakes in the past where someone told me that he thought of me as more than just a friend, so I am not perfect, either. We all make mistakes, but if it is happening to you repeatedly, maybe you are not really picking up on the fact that your male "friend" was never just a "friend" or just had "friendly intentions" in the first place ?

As for why friends become more distant once they get a girlfriend, well, it could be a few things. First and foremost, men and women alike tend to be more interested in spending time with their romantic partner than with their buddies. You might think that they are pulling away from you when, in fact, they are just doing what anyone might do - including you - when they fall in love and want to spend as much time as possible with their mate. After all, your friends aren't going anywhere, right ?

Or, it might be that the man really had feelings for you that went beyond what a "friend" would feel for you, and once he found someone else, he left you alone to be with his girlfriend. Why would he continue pining for you when he now has a woman to be with, who actually reciprocates his feelings ?

Thirdly, he may just have an insecure girlfriend who views you as a threat or who believes - maybe irrationally - that men and women can't be friends. And, why would he WANT a female friend when he has HER ? Not wanting to rock the boat, your "friend" may just pull away from you at her insistence. It's not fair, but hey, she is his mate. Mates can be unreasonable, but true friends understand !




LOL. Possible that they believed just that !

My brothers and cousins treated me JUST LIKE one of them. That meant playing cricket with them all day long in the hot sun, climbing trees, back-slapping and wrestling, the works... until I turned about 15 or 16 when they suddenly began to realize that I was actually - GASP - a girl ! !!. It was hard, but it also had its benefits in that they became quite protective of me. NOT that I needed any protection, I could give back as good as I got (usually).

My University classmates called me "brother-in-law" but their affection was also like the affection they had for their own sisters. Thing is, unlike their sisters, they knew they could confide in me about their romantic escapades, ask for "advise" (not that I was much good at it) about how to get a certain girl, how to keep the girl they got, etc . Yeah, I was their best buddy, almost a sister, but a real friend at the end of the day. Almost 2 decades now since I last saw any of them. Some are on Facebook, almost all married with kids now, but I choose not to rekindle any of the "friendships" just because I feel that I have undergone a personality change in the last almost 20 years and I am no longer a "tomboy" or wish to be one.

I want to be a woman now, not "one of the guys" anymore, so they wouldn't really know me anymore or know what to make of me....Great guys. Miss all my bros, may their shadows never grow any less !

Last edited by HisMom on 27 Jun 2014, 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hey HisMom,

I always thought you were in the USA.

Just curious: Which country do you reside in?

I *am* in the US. I just didn't grow up here !

Gotcha.

Leading someone on is by definition intentional. If you don't know whether or not you are doing it, then you are definitely not doing it. Someone misinterpreting your words and/or actions is not your fault.

Anna, this is a very good and valid question, and you need to ignore the people who are telling you that it's only possible to lead someone on intentionally.

Most of flirting and attraction is non-verbal. My lack of eye-contact is sometimes seen as flirting. My good-natured attitude and the fact that I smile a lot (I've trained myself to smile a lot) is sometimes seen as flirting. My shyness when I'm stressed is sometimes seen as flirting. I touch my hair and face a lot, which is apparently a classic sign that a woman is flirting.

Basically, if a guy is interested in me at all and I'm not being mean and just being myself, it gets interpreted as flirting. This has led to some really awkward moments, but nothing really bad has come of it. No one touched me inappropriately because of it.

I don't have any useful advice, really, other than to say that if a man touches you in an inappropriate place without working up to it by first touching you somewhere more innocent but still sensitive, like your back or cheek, and without going slowly enough to give you time to stop him, then he is TROUBLE, and you need to just leave. A friend would never do that, because friends care; a friend who doesn't care is not a friend.

Great post, especially about flirting sometimes being unintentional. The onus, therefore, is on you to clarify and to set the record straight, should someone misinterpret your being friendly as you flirting with him.

Similarly, some folks may touch in a way that you deem inappropriate -- without realizing that you don't like it. It is just as important to give THEM the same benefit of doubt that you would want them to give you under similar circumstances. If ANYONE (man or woman) were to touch you in a way that makes you uncomfortable, then you speak up. Most people will apologize and back off. If they don't back off, despite you telling them that you don't like it, then you leave and never have anything to do with them ever again.

Any "friend" who does not respect you and makes you uncomfortable on purpose is no "friend" at all. A friend will always respect and value you and your feelings / opinions. ALWAYS.

Thanks for pointing this out, HisMom.

If any touch makes you uncomfortable, you have to either speak up or find a non-verbal way to say "no" (Like moving their hand(s) away from your body). If you don't, you're communicating to that person that the touch was OK. You definitely do not want to do this. You will end up leading boys on if you're not clear about physical boundaries.

No. Flirting is never unintentional:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/flirt?s=t

flirt [flurt] Show IPA
verb (used without object)
1.
to court triflingly or act amorously without serious intentions; play at love; coquet.


There is no way to unintentionally court someone or "act amorously." Acting "amorously" is flirting. Acting in a way that is mistaken for acting "amorously" is not flirting. If it were flirting, then anything and everything that anyone took for flirting would be flirting.

The meaning of an action is determined by the intent of she who acts, not the interpretation of the audience.

Yay! starkid wins the thread.