DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m hoping you can help me out. I’m 38, a self-professed geek, and sadly, very single. I seem to be having a problem involving meeting women, that I can’t seem to overcome. I also seem to have another problem in relating to them, once I’m involved with them.
First issue: I was recently talking with some of my fellow geeks, bemoaning the sorry state of my love life, and how I never seem to meet anyone who’d be interested in me, when they dropped a bombshell on me.
As it turns out, according to them, I’ve actually missed several opportunities to get to know women better, simply by dint of not recognizing that they were flirting with me.
Now, I didn’t recall any times when someone was flirting with me, but my friends insists they’ve seen this happen several times – and have also seen me be completely oblivious to it.
Now, I was willing to blow this off as my friends just messing with me – until I happened to mention the conversation to my mother – and she voiced the same concerns! Having your own mother notice something like this is uncomfortable, to say the least.
I’ve tried reading articles about how to tell if women are interested in you, but they don’t seem to do me any good. I just don’t seem to recognize any of the cues I’m supposed to see, when I do actually talk with women, which is admittedly, not very often. I am a geek, after all. It doesn’t help that I have ADHD, but I know that can’t be the entire reason for my problem.
Second issue: this involves a kind of long story, so please bear with me.
I was involved with a woman a couple of years ago. We met, got to know each other, and things progressed into a physical relationship pretty quickly.
We agreed, at the start, that neither one of us was looking for a serious romantic relationship. I was still smarting from a break-up a while before, and she had just gotten divorced. So we both stated that we were just looking for someone to have some fun with – “friends with benefits”, as they say.
Well, for a while, that’s exactly how things were between us. We’d get together, hang out, talk, and have fun. Just as often as not, we’d end up in bed together.
However, after about 6 months, things seemed to change. First, she unexpectedly bought me gifts. Then, she started wanting to go out with me more often.
This seemed a little strange to me, given the nature of our agreement, but I went along with it.
However, after a few months, I started losing contact with her. I stopped calling her, and she stopped calling me. Eventually, she moved away to another state.
I recently spoke to her online, and happened to mention how odd it was that things between us seemed to just come to a halt, and that’s when she told me something I apparently didn’t see for myself – that her feelings had changed, and she wanted things to be more serious and permanent between us.
She also stated that the reasons she left me were twofold: One, that it didn’t seem to her that I wanted things to be any more serious than when they started; and two, that she couldn’t truly tell how I felt about her. When I told her that I had genuinely cared about her, she was honestly surprised.
A few days after this online conversation, I mentioned it to a couple of friends of mine, one of whom is female, and she told me that the reason my FWB left me was the same reason my last girlfriend before her left – she just wasn’t sure how I felt.
So, my question is: for each of these problems, what would your recommendation be? I don’t seem to be having any luck improving things on my own, and thought a fresh insight could be useful.
Hopefully, I haven’t bored you to tears with this letter.
Thanks for your time.
Blind Guy
DEAR BLIND GUY: Yeah, you don’t have two problems, BG. You’ve got one. Both of the issues you wrote about are the exact same issue.
But let’s take this one step at a time.
It can difficult to tell when someone is flirting with you, especially if you’re not used to it. In fact, most people are, quite frankly, pretty bad at it. Especially when both men and women tend to be taught to communicate in different, often-conflicting ways.
A lot of women are taught not to be overt in showing interest to guys, while others may not realize that what she considers to be an obvious sign of interest can be incredibly subtle to guys. It’s a classic “same planet, different worlds” sort of miscommunication.
I’ve written before about how to tell if she likes you – and a lot of flirting depends on people’s individual personalities –but I’ll reiterate a few significant signs of interest and flirting:
Proximity – If she’s hovering around for no good reason; if the bar’s not crowded but she keeps brushing past you to get drinks or hanging around your table anyway, for example, or if she just happens to be nearby every time you turn around.
Eye Games – the classic look, look away, look back and smile is a frequent come-hither signal, while the triangle gaze — eye to lips, to eye again is often a sign that someone is at least thinking of kissing or being kissed.
Touching – Casual physical contact while she’s talking to you, especially if she touches you while she laughs. Where she touches you is also an indication of how interested she is; the hand or face is more intimate than the arm, for example. If she touches you on the leg with her foot, it’s also a sign that she’s flirting.
Teasing – If she’s giving you s--t but with a smile – especially if she touches you when she does – she’s probably flirting.
Preening — little gestures like playing with their hair, adjusting clothing and the like are often about either drawing attention to a feature or trying to present themselves as best as possible
Laughing — If she’s laughing way harder than your jokes deserve or making a point that she thinks you’re funny, she’s often conveying interest.
Now, it’s worth noting: any individual signal is often useless; one person’s flirting signal is another person’s fidgety habit. You frequently need context for what any one person’s signals would be. The more you talk to someone, the better a grasp you get for what is a signal and what’s just them being them.
If you learn to keep your eyes open for these, you’ll start calibrating your social Spider-Sense. It may do you some good to do some gentle flirting first as a way of pinging for interest. How she responds will give you an idea of whether she’s interested and you should keep flirting, or she’s not and you’re better off to dial things back. You’ll inevitably hit some false positives, especially while you’re learning, but better to give it a chance, than to keep missing out on the girls that like you.
But while we’re talking about missing the subtle signs that a woman likes you, you’re also missing the glaringly obvious signs that she likes you. Such as in the case of your friend with benefits.
Now, I realize that it’s a cliche that guys are taught to be more “logical” and direct while women are more subtle and intuitive but Sweet Zombie Jeebus my dude, you took this to an unnatural extreme.
The problem here, BG, is that you seem to believe that the agreement you had with your FWB was a binding contract.
It wasn’t. One of the first rules of a friends-with-benefits situation is that the arrangement between the two of you is subject to renegotiation at any time. Which is exactly what your friend was trying to do.
This, my friend, is why she was suddenly bringing you unexpected gifts and wanting to hang out more often… she was trying to show you that she was thinking of you as more than a friend and occasional bouncy-fun-time companion. She wanted you to know that she wanted to spend more time with you and to show you that she thinks about you. Just as guys often afraid of being too obvious and risking being shot down, she didn’t necessarily want to risk outright rejection by asking you straight-out.
Especially since she wasn’t entirely sure how YOU felt, seeing as things had fallen apart between you two.
And judging from her complaint (and those of many others) that she could never tell how you felt, it’s not terribly surprising that she decided to pull up stakes and move on.
Here’s a hint: responding with a bemused “That was weird…” was not the response she was looking for.
As I’ve said before, most friends-with-benefits relationships end one of two ways: either you end the benefits or you quit being friends. She wanted to quit being friends… and be MORE than friends. Once she’d reached that point, continuing to screw around with a guy who liked her but didn’t like her like her was just going to be painful. Nobody likes to think they’re nothing but a sex toy to the one they love.
But hey, you say you cared for her deeply… but did you ever show her that you did? Did you ever tell her?
From the sounds of things: no. No you did not. For that matter, it sounds like you never told your last girlfriend either.
The answer, BG, is obvious. You need to learn to be more demonstrative of how you feel instead of assuming that women are mind-readers. You may feel that you’re showing how you feel already. Clearly you aren’t, since this is a recurring problem for you. Start learning how to be more expressive with the people you love and you’ll have fewer issues of getting dumped because they aren’t sure how you feel. And the easiest way to do this? Use your words.
As you’ve seen, what seems like a glaringly obvious sign of interest or affection to YOU (or them) can seem like a “well, clearly they think we’re just friends” to other folks. Skipping the subtext or even saying the subtext out loud (‘this means I’m interested in you and I want a relationship with you’) may be the difference between a new partner and missing a golden opportunity.
Good luck.
Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com