When people just like attention

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This is a thing I don't understand. I tend to fall for someone hard, but then find that they simply liked the attention I gave them and just liked having someone to admire them. I guess some people are just superficial. They liked me, but didn't want a more meaningful connection.

I'm not sure what my question is. This just confuses me. I feel like I've been led on a few times and don't know how people can do that.

I don't understand it either. It's like some people just want everyone to be attracted to them. It also seems like they try to compete with others when they weren't even that interested in the person that they were competing over. It's pointless and cruel, imo.

I feel like I was taken advantage of and it's a really crappy feeling. Also I feel like I should have known better. But then how do you know who is just a flirt and who is actually interested until you spend some time with them? There's nothing you can do about it. You can be too cautious and end up not letting in some one real, or be too trusting get hurt. It's catch 22.

All the bouncy happy feelings you have at first, just turn to hurt and anger when you see how hollow the whole thing was.

Last edited by hurtloam on 04 Jun 2016, 11:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Maybe see if you notice them checking out or hitting on other girls. It's hard to tell if it's online though. I feel like the guy I was in a LDR with just wanted to be with me to make himself feel better and not because he genuinely liked me. I mean, he wanted to talk to me all the time for several months and then he started acting flakey and distant towards me. Then eventually we never talked again. It was frustrating and confusing because he would always talk about how people would drop him and flake out so he didn't seem like that kind of person. He said things to me like we were going to be friends forever. I started to feel like I could trust him, but I guess I expected too much.

Last edited by slw1990 on 05 Jun 2016, 12:46 am, edited 2 times in total.

Well I suppose that's good advice. Observe how they behave with other people.

It is hard to know why a person will like us for a while and they stop liking us. But I think all of us do that at some point for one reason or another. If someone dates someone just for attention that would be rude. But its hard to know someone's true motivation. I mean I know there have been times I really thought I liked someone then at some point realized they weren't right for me. My intentions going into it were good, I just realized it wasn't going to work.

As Germaine de Staël (1766 - 1817) once observed:
"The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.”

Or, some people desire what they want, others want to be desired. Just one of the ways in which people are different. I don't think it's necessarily a sign of superficiality.

The question would be: is it just attention she wants, or your attention specifically?

Oh i totally agree, but if even after a period of getting to know each other the flirting continues without there being a relationship that's kind of hard to deal with.

Ordinarily when I realise "this isn't working out I don't want this person after all", I stop encouraging their attention, but I have a weird relationship with someone where it's just flirting, I'm not flirting back. When will this be over? Nothing goes further. There's just that same annoying level of sexual tension without anything else.

I tried to organise things where we could spend more time together and I'm not getting the same effort back. Just silly flirting. You'd think he'd actually get bored eventually and move on.

I'm confused.

Nice quote. I'm looking for a relationship that is a friendship too. I'm not enjoying the sexual flirtingness. OK, I did at first, but I'm sick of it now. I've accepted that we're not going to be a couple, but It's not even going to be a fwb relationship, so what's the point of the flirting. It's frustrating.

I think you need to realize that when a guy flirts with you, it means he thinks you are interesting, not that he wants to be in a relationship with you. You need to judge his interest in a relationship in other ways. At least, that's how it works for me. I will flirt with girls I find interesting, but that doesn't mean I want anything more than that. OTOH, if I don't flirt with a girl, I'm not interested in her in the romantic way either, so it works as a means to signal "I'm not interested", but not the other way around. Still, not all guys will flirt, so that probably doesn't work either.

Also, I don't think flirting needs to have anything to do with sex. I never flirt with girls because I want to have sex with them.

It's fun. It makes my day. I think it is similar to how NTs feel about smalltalk.

You could be hurting people and you don't even know it. What's the point of arousing someone with no release?

Most girls that are receptive to flirting seems to enjoy the game, especially if they are in a group of girls. I'm sure that in many cases, it makes their day too.



Smalltalk has no release, so why would flirting have one? What counts is the enjoyable experience of interacting with somebody, which is similar both for smalltalk and flirting.

So if you view flirting more like smalltalk, and not as a serious romantic interest, you are less likely to get hurt. You cannot affect how men that want to flirt with you are, but you can affect your own way of relating to it.

When I have a more serious romantic interest for somebody, I'll start trying to be at the same place as her as much as possible. Unless I do that, I'm not likely to have a serious romantic interest. Most guys will start to talk to you instead.

Last edited by rdos on 05 Jun 2016, 3:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's not how I roll rdos. Flirting is a form of expressing sexualitly. Small talk is just small talk.

I'm not asexual btw.

Uhm, yes, I actually agree to that. Still, just because you find somebody sexually interesting doesn't mean you want sex with them or a relationship. If that was the case, most men would find most women interesting for a relationship, which is not the case.

So I still stand by the point that flirting is a nonverbal variant of smalltalk. It has the same function, even if it might contain sexual aspects.

I still don't think it's right or fair to send signals of sexual interest to someone who is attracted to you if you have no intention of following it up. It hurts people and causes frustration.