When girls smile at you

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Ok so I am assuming the thread is about "female strangers" who smile at you rather than co-workers, your friends, sister's friends or distant cousins?

I agree with Mona that part of this is cultural. I notice that Brits and Australian girls rarely smile at all....Australian culture is rather stoic and macho/male orientated and individualistic. The other day a young girl nearly walked into me as she was (you guessed it) staring at her phone. I looked at her and was about to apologise (despite it being her fault) when I realise she gave me a look like "piss off" with a scowling face. I thought "gosh" if I said something this little 5ft2 petite thing I would have likely been beaten up!!

Contrast this with American girls....for some weird reason American females are always smiling???? they are so friendly and polite?? then men too are very positive and polite. I have actually never met a rude American in person (although a couple here on WP ).

American girls not only smile but will confidently engage me in conversation if (in return) I acknowledge them. It's the confidence that hits me! American females are more self-confident than even Australian men!

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We Aussies have a reputation in old blighty[/quote]

Aww what's wrong with Australians? I think the accent is cool ha they're very different from us the way they act though but I don't mind some alternative ways of being

Obviously, it depends on the Australian.

In general, though, Australians tend to be less reserved and more outgoing people.

Some time ago I compiled a list of ten things I wish someone had told me when I was younger. For what they may be worth, here are things 5 and 6:-

5. If a girl smiles at you and seems inexplicably interested in you, this need not indicate she might like to go to bed with you or spend her life with you or have your children; whether or not there is any discernible reason for her to be so overtly friendly towards you, being friendly is what she is doing, and that’s likely to be all she is doing.

6. If a girl of your acquaintance rushes up to you and hugs you and says something gushingly complimentary about your appearance, this again does not indicate she would like to go to bed with you—indeed, if anything it strongly indicates the idea has never ever crossed her mind and she would be embarrassingly perturbed if you were to suggest it. Neurotypical girls who would like to go to bed with you will tend to treat you with a disdain verging on contempt (this being so, how the human race has avoided extinction is perplexingly unclear); however, the fact a neurotypical girl is treating you with a disdain verging on contempt may not indicate that she would like to go to bed with you: it is more likely to indicate that what she feels for you is disdain verging on contempt.  

It means nothing, nothing at all.

@RaphaelF

The thing you need to understand is that the average NT girl is highly socially skilled and runs rings around NT males (so for Aspie males theres even more catching up to do).

Judging from WP and from other forums there's plenty of NT females who choose to date/marry autistic men but there are probably individual and situational factors involved in each relationship.

Taking a girl on face value (and this applies to anyone, male, female, aspie) is only taking a one dimensional view of that person. You need to know that person for some time before you can be confident what the cues/signals they give mean what they are really feeling or trying to convey.

For an absolute stranger to smile at you actually means they are coming across pleasant and it would be reasonable to smile back in return. Nothing further should be interpreted.

Broadly agree with all of Cyberdad's comments, but unfortunately it took me about three decades (three VERY BEWILDERED decades...) to reach my own similar conclusions.

There is not an NT policy document telling them when to smile and when not. Some very warm-hearted and well-meaning and affectionate NT girls are shy, so they're too freaked out to smile. Some NT girls smile because they think it's the thing to do, and some of those are hard-hearted [expletive deleted]s that you wouldn't necessarily want to bother getting close to anyway.

So far as I can tell, it isn't considered manly to smile (unless you're trying to get elected). After three or four decades of people scowling at me in shops, I realized the sensory overload and social anxiety of BEING in a shop were putting a very negative expression on my face. So all the other people thought I was scowling at THEM!! ! Ooops... So now I plaster a smile on my face in shops, and total strangers smile back at me, and some children wave. This is a bit weird, but it's better than being scowled at and making small children cry.

Getting back to the original question, people who know me don't tend to smile at me. I include my best friends there!
Maybe because they're conditioned to expect no smiles from me: in order to smile, I have to activate the Manual Override control, and I often forget to do that; my face does not automatically select Smile Mode. Obviously some people don't smile because they find me weird and irritating, which is understandable, but never mind. I find most NTs weird and irritating, so it goes both ways.

So, with reference to the original question, and putting myself back in the (exciting but crucifying) position of a young person wanting a girl, it would be (and WAS) very very very weird when a girl smiled at me. Even now, three decades down the line from my teenage years, with the benefits of loads of therapy and loads of specialist assessments and loads of A.S.D. pamphlets, when I unexpectedly find myself on the receiving end of an unsolicited smile, my cogs grind to a halt and I have NO idea what the [expletive deleted] is going on nor how the [expletive deleted] hell to react. Klaxons begin to sound, like in a submarine in a disaster movie, and by the time it occurs to me to smile back, it's probably three weeks later.

Is this what the psychometric dudes meant when they said my processing speed was defective?!?

Again, trying to stick to the original question, I feel the only real answer is: Yes, if you think you like girls, then a girl smiling at you is VERY confusing, and unfortunately there is no standard textbook telling you what a girl's smile means, probably because there's no such thing as a standard person of any gender, whether NT or ND.

So I sincerely feel the pain behind the original question, but Cyberdad is (if I may say so) perfectly correct in alluding to the fact that many NT people who like girls also struggle to interpret girls' signals correctly.

I can't say it causes me pain tbh, it just results me glancing quickly away with a blank expression on my face followed by a mild 'oops' feeling. But thanks for the responses people, a smile doesn't seem to really mean very much in the vast majority of cases but as far as I can choose to have a friendly disposition rather than an unfriendly one I will attempt to have the latter and learn to smile back if possible

The trouble is that the social cues are happening in real time, and for some of us real time is like being played at 45 when we were meant for 33⅓: so, even if you begin to learn to spot the cues and interpret them (which NTs apparently do instinctively, but which we have to process consciously), by the time you’ve worked out what’s going on it may be too late; in my case, usually days too late.

So I’ve given up on social cues, because I don’t think I’m ever going to get the hang of them. Not only are they extremely subtle, they’re also just too damn’ fast! I try to remember to say Please and Thank You, and if I notice a smile I try to remember to smile back and I try to believe it’s probably some kind of expression of goodwill and I remind myself it’s probably no more than that.

However, this is not repeat NOT a defeatist attitude, because here’s the good news: social cues don’t necessarily matter anyway! There are sensitive, intuitive NT people out there who can read you even if you aren’t signalling your feelings or your intent in conventional NT fashion, and likewise there are those who identify the need to spell out to you what they realize you aren’t subliminally picking up on, and if they like you they won’t mind making that effort. If this were not true, I’d have no friends and I’d still be a virgin. Those who can pick up on your essential character will either like what they see or not, and if they like it they can forgive a lot. And if they like it enough, they’ll want to go to bed with you.

Admittedly if I could buy some aptitude for social cues, as an add-on package or aftermarket kit, and send it back through time to my teenaged self, I would do so; but being inept in the realm of social cues doesn’t sentence you to total solitude: in one way it limits your opportunities, which is undeniably frustrating, but in another way it filters out a lot of superficial relationships that you wouldn’t necessarily want.

Occasionally I’m attracted to other males (words such as “demisexual” and “demiromantic” seem to fit me), and I don’t find it any easier to work out what their smiles mean either! So it’s probably important not to blame females alone for being inscrutable: I find all genders equally impossible to make sense of.

I can't fault your reasons Raphael F....

This is why I say apply filters and stay reserved (don't jump in). Take time to process the cues and disregard the other person's impatience. A patient friend is a prerequisite. Interview as many as you like because at the end of the day if somebody doesn't like you then what's the worse that can happen? they will go back to ignoring you then try somebody else.

People who dislike you for who you are will be the same regardless of whether you introduce yourself to them or not. I use the word interview because you are entitled to interview everyone in your vicinity, it's your prerogative.