How can a girl tell if you are "looking" for a gir

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I don't have anyone to fantacize about, that's the problem. No possible relationship opportunities... all my relational stuff is in my past now...

That might work against you. a woman might see you doing that and think you were trying to have an affair. You have to be clear that it's not a real wedding ring...

For the rest of your life? What kind of situation is that possible in?


Actually, she seemed to lose interest when I made it clear that it wasn't a wedding ring.

Women are weird. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes...

Do you think that a girl wants a guy that thinks of her as 'some chick?' Do you truly think that seeing a guy stuff a wedding ring in their pocket and lie that it wasn't a wedding ring attracts a girl that you would like to have a relationship with? My gawd, if you cheat on your wife, you will cheat on her too. And if she does enter into a relationship with you, she will cheat with other men, married or not. You signaled her interest alright, but as a liar and a deceiver, not as a potential mate, and that is probably why it 'didn't go further'.

you are just kidding yourself, Goatie. Real relationships are not attracted and conducted by disrespect and deception. Sounds like a recipe for heartache.

It's just frustrating nonetheless. No amount of psychiatric medication can fix this.

I always think the middle road is the best, but this one girl hasn't even made that attempt. Am I that that uncomfortable to be around for other people?

Last edited by Northeastern292 on 31 Mar 2010, 8:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

That explains a lot. I tend to stare a lot and I have very low confidence, especially since I feel uneasy in public. I try to be welcoming and interesting, but I'm still tense.

Hi sinsboldly.

Apparently she did, so in some cases, the evidence leads me to believe that the answer is yes.

Of course not. It was actually an accidental discovery. I stuffed the ring in my pocket on an impulse that was more of a fidget and she interpreted a different way. When I found out that was the reason she wanted to go out with me and when she figured out I wasn't married we both lost interest. This would not be a way to find a girl to have an emotional relationship with, but it could have worked as a booty call had I wanted it to. It technically works towards the OP because it is a way to show interest to a girl, just not advised if you're looking for more than a f**k buddy. It would be temporary, although, with you mentioning limerence all the time it seems like any true emotional attachment will be temporary and more painful than an unemotional booty call anyway. Waiting for true love might take forever, I was just suggesting an alternative.

Had I kept up the deceit it would have gone further. I wasn't looking for a f**k buddy and she was more intrigued by the idea of a married man, which I found alarming.

Girls can sense desperation. Sad but true.

Bahaha!
Actually, that CAN work; Humor! If such an over-the-top display is contrasted with other elements that describe moderation and stability, then it could work. It's also part of why sinsboldly's ring thing sorta worked. It's clear and communicative, it's somewhat confident(in an odd way), and it engages good feelings - fun.


I mostly agree with this. However, for the start of a relationship, loves got nothing to do with it. There's no basis for love, not yet. You don't know each other enough, generally. Particularly the younger one is.

So the turn-on aspect of it is simply appreciation. No more, no less. If there's appreciation for his/her body/sexuality, and if there's appreciation for their personality/mind/ideals/whatever, then that's the good middle ground. The door is open, but it does not necessarily mean anything larger. Indeed, it could simply be a throwaway 1-time date, but that's okay.

Heck, a lot of women feel at ease with a guy who's able to give it a casual shot, find out it's not quite right and end it, yet still remain genuine friends without any lingering emotional desire or apprehension. It represents a lack of judgment toward their sexuality, and acceptance and appreciation of the personality beyond the sexuality. That can be very comforting and validating.
(FYI, this is also one way how f-buddy arrangements are maintained. However, that is beside the point.)

Stop thinking in terms of love, in the present tense. Having a GF/BF does not necessarily mean loving them. Progressing that relationship and strengthening it over time is where love comes in. When you're just flirting, usually love is a turn-off unless the other person is needy. As well it should be.


No, your problem is that you have even located "this one girl," and made a big deal before you even dated her. She deserves to be a big deal after you've dated her, and got to know her. Not before.

So another way of looking at it is that you should loosen your set of requirements. Notch it down to, "If she seems alright, ask her out," effectively. Stop looking at dating as a vehicle to love and marriage. Instead consider it as another way of simply enjoying other people's company.
It can be more, but save that for later.

Depends on what sort of girl you are looking for.
One method is to pay attention to only ONE girl and pay less to the rest.
If you are in for the serious relationship stuff, you can have long, confidential talks with her about how lonely you are and you think that companionship is necessary for existence. Mind you this is more for sentimental, serious girls. It also helps if you are the sensitive nice guy sort.

Sorry to be blunt, Villette, but this is awful advice, if taken simply and literally. What you've described(minus any nuances) is a tried-true recipe of ensuring a guy's prospective lady winds up as "just friends," whether she considers herself serious or not... With the exception of equally needy/desperate girls..

I wish this were not true, but it has been shown time and time again that it is. A nice, nice guy who easily confides about his feelings and sentiments and vulnerabilities above and beyond other factors and communications is the model of the man who is generally unsuccessful with women.
He is reminiscent of me at the age of 23 and younger.

While I agree to the necessity and desire for honesty, women generally put more weight on various expressions of strength, such as independence, confidence, social aptitude and influence, and novelty. When a guy is 'told' to be a nice-guy, as you are basically saying, it is typical that they devalue and forget about the larger slice of the pie.
They focus on this idea of chivalry, and goodness, or whatever, to the near-exclusion of everything else. Even if that kind of extreme behavior is not what's intended by the advice, this is what usually happens.

Don't tell your average guy to be nice. They will usually misinterpret what you mean, and start walking in the wrong direction.

But that's why I become friends first... that's how I can get to know a woman before actually starting a relationship. I generally leave the door open for any female friends anywhere near my age, but I don't expect anything out of it.

How is that any different than hanging out with a friend? I mean, i'm fine with doing something like that, but I can't call it a date. There was this one female friend I had lunch with last summer (she had just come back home from college). I liked her, but I ended up having lunch with her once and that was it, and I was fine with that. I'm not saying it's a bad experience (on the contrary, it was nice to see an old friend again), but it just wasn't a date...

Well, fortunately, my approach to relationships makes it rather easy to remain friends with people I've been in a relationship with. I'm still good friends with my ex, for one...

Hopefully I'm past that point of initial attraction before I actually start the relationship. Initial attraction can be so volatile, and isn't really a basis for one to get romantically involved at all. Acting on that type of attraction is what produces those 1-time dates that you mention. I'd rather wait and see if a deeper connection forms on its own (and, at least for me, it will form if I really like her and she likes me back)

That just doesn't generally work, unless you're really physically attractive or otherwise charismatic. Women don't really shy so much from approaching a guy who's out-of-this-world hot. However, for the rest of us, we usually have to do the work. 'Leaving the door open' is like opening a shop without any signs. No one's comin' in.
If you're just doing the friends thing, and not making obvious pursuit, or flirting, or otherwise broadcasting specific interest, why should they respond? Usually that makes you out effectively as asexual, unmasculine, somewhat cold, truly uninterested, unappealing.

It's utterly stupid, I know, but usually for a young guy, if you get to know a woman before you ask her out, it's too late. It's hard to really detail out why and how that works, but the pieces of that puzzle are spread out all over this forum. Now, as a disclaimer, this is not the 100% certain outcome of your actions - there are no certainties at all - but there are trends. And this particular trend is really against you.

Consider this experiment - The next time a new girl, who's more-or-less your age, is introduced within your social groups, try to get something going with her within the first two days. It might not turn out totally great, or even work, but I just about guarantee that at least things turn out a little bit different than usual with this one.
(And of course if there's rejection, take it well, don't feel bad, don't resent her.)


If you didn't know her well, or it had been like 6 years, then it may have been a date. If you already knew her well, and a platonic relationship between you two had been already established, then it was not a date. Precedent tends to determine the tone. This is why it's so important to avoid hesitation, to get ahead of precedent, and make a change before 'default' takes effect. Once a small groove has been made, it's tough to avoid staying in it, and letting it turn into an overwhelming rut.

In the situation where you do preempt precedent, and it's a date, and then the date fizzles, then the date's status changes in retrospect to what you described. Just an outing with a friend. That's because after it fizzles, your relationship has been slightly formalized into platonic, so everything tends to go through that lens from there on.
However, at least you gave it a go. If you had not, there would be nearly no chance for it to be anything but platonic.

That's great. That's a big deal. Keep part of that, because everyone appreciates such behavior. Just be wary of it getting in the way of other things. It does not have to.


Past that point of initial attraction? I don't understand.

And you're wrong, that initial attraction is based on our repoductive instincts. It gives us an excuse to want romance, and not just friendship(two very different things). While yes, it produces fizzles, you're acting like this is a bad thing. WHY is it a bad thing? You met someone new, gave it a go, it didn't work. That's not a big deal.
As someone else aptly put, every relationship is a failed relationship, until marriage. Trying to cull out all attempts but that one, singular, shiny, magical attempt is pure fantasy. It does not work that way.

Moreover, if you pursue her, go on a date, you give her an additional excuse to like you better, to like you back. A big excuse, at that.

Dating is good. One-shot dates are good. Failed dates are good. You shouldn't fear these - those failures do not reflect your worth.... Indeed, they're not even failures, in a sense.

Okay. Let's say I did that. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that she accepted. Then what? I don't know anything about her. I don't know what she likes, what would drive her away, stuff like that. What happens if I try to take her to dinner at a nice italian restaurant only to discover that she hated italian? But then consider had I been friends with her for a while, and I know now that there's this steakhouse that she really likes. Then I would know to take her there instead. I'm merely trying to apply certain strengths that I have as an aspie (such as good long-term memory) to compensate for weaknesses (like the fact that I am completely fucktarded in keeping up conversation)...

It was something like 3 years since I really had any meaningful contact with her (although I saw her around about a year prior). Back then we were sort of semi-romantic (although there was no relationship and we never went out other than being in rehearsals for a musical together)

What do you mean? If a woman rejects me, then I have no right to say no to that. She's living her own life, and I have no right to be in that life if she doesn't want me in it (and vice versa)...

Not when you factor in the intense emotional pain I go through... When I invest so much into someone, it really is painful to hear the word "no", because it's the equivalent of a stock broker investing in a company and then it goes and tanks the next day. Like that stock broker, I lose everything, and it's all my fault...

Or give her a reason to humiliate me, which is what tends to happen...

Except such failures do reflect on me. A woman that rejects me isn't a b****... because I don't become attracted to b****es. That means that if she rejects me, there's something I did wrong. And if I experience nothing but rejection, that means there's an intrinsic flaw in my core being that cannot be fixed.

But that's where the fun and the intrigue of dating is. The fun is that you don't know anything about each other. This discovery phase of dating is where a spark can be lit. For myself at least, what killed things (when things didn't work out) was not a fumble because we don't know what each other liked. It was how he reacted to the fumble. One man got angry that I didn't like the things he liked and tried to convince me that my likes and dislikes were wrong because they didn't match his.FAIL. One man got miserable that I didn't like what he liked and spent the date apologizing for his "wrong" choice. FAIL The man I ultimately married found the humour in the mismatch and said "ok, that's cool. Next time you get to drag me to something I hate too." That reaction was a fine combination of 1)accepting our different tastes 2)laughing about it instead of getting defensive or mopey 3)compromise: sometimes I would try things I wasn't crazy about and he'd do the same for me. SUCCEED. It wasn't in the choices themselves but rather the reaction to them.


The fumble as you discover each other provides the mystery and the spark. Your mutual reactions to those inevitable fumbles determines whether you are compatible or not. But waiting until you know somebody so well that there can be no fumble means that romance is unlikely because the chance to discover the mystery of each other passed long ago.

That's okay; it's the expected state of a first date. You are not at disadvantage by the fact that you don't know her. You're really not. There may be hurdles, big ones, and many, but simply not knowing her is not a hurdle for gaining her interest.

If a woman asked you out on a date, and took you out for Sudanese food, and it turned out you hated Sudanese food, would this make you see her in a lesser light? Similarly, her disliking the food would have nothing to do with you.

Actually, this is a good starting convo/flirting topic. Meet up with her without knowing where you want to eat, and ask her what she likes. Make sure to say what you like, and shoot down the stuff she proposes which you don't like. Find the food you both like, and do that. In the process, you have a little fun with the topic. Poke fun at her for liking icky food, etc. Fun times.

All that said, taking a girl to dinner is a very old-school style date, and in modern America, it has it's pitfalls. But I'm not gonna get into that, that's a different topic.


There is no point to going out of your way to make sure you do what she wants, to cater to her preferences at your own expense. That's what a established boyfriend or fiance might do, and you are certainly not her fiance. A more appropriate action would be to choose a place/activity/food/whatever in the same way you'd choose it with a friend.... A guy friend. You mess around, you have fun, you might compromise, you might take turns, you might grudgingly pay and demand reciprocation next time, whatever. But you don't think in advance what you should do to make him happy. He's simply your friend.
The same concept goes here for the same reasons.

Although you may want her to become more than friends, you are not there yet. So act appropriately.

Although it might seem that 'doing right by her,' in this fashion, is conducive to helping her come to like you - After all, it is very thoughtful and considerate - it does not help her come to like you more, not romantically.
Actually, it is potentially sexist, and objectifying. By treating her differently than another stranger-ish person, or friend, you are taking away from her equal status, one way or another. Some men degrade women, some men put women on pedestals. Both are objectification, and do not consider or respect the woman on the equal terms of a peer. I understand that this does not feel like objectification, but it is. It really, really is.
That said, it is only a milder form of it.

So, you might then wonder: How do you do something good for a lady without objectifying her? My criteria sure does seem strict....
Well, it both is, and isn't.

There is a way to be good to a lady and do nice stuff for her without objectifying her.
It has a prerequisite: She has to basically like you back, EQUALLY, beforehand. If she does not feel mostly the same toward you as you toward her, and you try to bring her gifts, buy her dinner, change your schedule around for her, give her beyond-ordinary effort and attention, then your actions constitutes the equivalent of a bribe.

Although it does not appear as such on the surface, you are trying to attain her affection with goods and services. In a sense, you are treating her similar to how one would treat a prostitute. Women don't usually feel this way directly in their reactions, there's a number of ways they might feel about it. However, one of them typically does not include, "He buys me stuff and drives me around, I think I'm starting to fall in love!"
They may value you for providing(who wouldn't?), but it's not love. If they come to love you, it will be for different reasons, mostly determined by who you are, and your character.

....Boy that was quite a tangent.


I can dig that.
But this ain't the right tool for the job. The only way you're going to get better at keeping up in conversation is practice. Yes, we suck at it, yes, we learn it slower. But we DO learn it, and we DO improve, and we CAN get good enough to pass-off like everyone else.

That said, if you pair your RL practice with some reading to support your endeavors, you'll see better results. There are tactics that you can keep in mind to keep a convo fun and paced, things you can prepare in advance. It's not a stand-in for your personality. It's just enough to help you get past those nervous times, when you don't feel comfortable and loose. It makes a huge difference. This is what I did, at first.



Argh, that's a missed opportunity if I ever heard one! Oh well. We've all got plenty under our belt, and we would never recognize some opportunities without losing a couple. Again, no big deal. Though, your chances with her are likely blown.


Of course. What I mean is that, beyond accepting her decision, you don't let it drag down your relationship prior to then. You do not feel resentment toward the rejection. You do not judge her harshly for it. Maybe you're just fine in this regard, and that's awesome. A *lot* of guys have a real hard time not feeling bitter after rejection, or perhaps just feel cast aside, etc, avoiding her, not engaging with her, not continuing to have fun with her and enjoy her time... Etc.
For a lot of guys, the goal is to be able to handle rejection as if you'd never been rejected, while still respecting her boundaries. Girls dig that in a big way. Who wouldn't? It avoids needless drama and bad vibes, and promotes only good vibes.


That makes perfect sense.
But you know the solution to this issue. It's been explained over and over. Instead, you invest less in women who might say no. You start out with few expectations, always. When a relationship starts to become successful, then you gradually invest more over time. That way you never go broke on a speculation, so to speak. Only on a breakup(there's no avoiding that!).


We've been over this before.


No. By assuming that you only pick pure pretty princesses who do no wrong, and by assuming that if you are rejected it's because you didn't meet their standards, you are once again putting women on a pedestal. You are not treating her like the fallible, emotional, whimsy, farting, whatever girl she IS. Objectification.

It is TRUE that your own ability to display quality of character and sex appeal and whatever is judged by women... But they can also judge you wrong. It goes both ways.

Optimally, you put in a lot of effort on your end of things, working to be an awesome person. By putting in that effort, you're holding up your end of things. If things don't go well, then there's a pretty good chance that it was actually her fault, or her loss. Not yours.

So as you can see, yeah, it's a tricky setup. But there's a system to it, by god. And we can understand it, work well within it, and even excel.
It takes work... my goodness, does it take work.... But it's worthwhile.