this post was submitted on 07 May 2026
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When I was young, I was naive to the ways of romance, and especially romantic communication. I was often oblivious to advances made upon me, and awkward and unskilled at making any expression of interest without just looking a bit foolish. However, after a lot of experience and many ups and downs in the pursuit of love, I find that I am no longer young.
Men are dense and women are indirect.
I know these are generalities, but it's sooo freakin common that it's a well-known trope.
I'd actually go a step further and say that it's not so much that men are "dense" as it is that they are full of self-doubt...I.e., seeing the advances, knowing they are there, but not believing that they are actually intended for them, or it's a joke/prank, or for whatever other reason, they convince themselves that it's not an advance and they are misinterpreting.
IANAD, but I'd guess this has more to do with mens mental-health awareness than anything else.
Or maybe he just wasn't in the mood? Despite the tropes, men don't want sex ALL the time, and just like women don't want to be responsible for the feelings of men, we don't want to always be responsible for quelling the insecurities of women. This doesn't even have to be a gendered thing. No one wants to be the only source of validation for their partner. Often we hope they are on some level emotionally mature and self assured.
OP was doing the person equivalent of a cat walking across your keyboard because you were typing instead of petting.
Not worth the risk of misinterpretation in this age of everything is harassment, plus most (humans) are uninteresting to begin with anyway.
or it's that the risk involved isn't worth it.
because for every woman who 'is sending you signals' 7/10 of them will actually not be, and 2/10 of them will be, but deny it, and 1/10 will actually be happy you got the signal.
not to mention one woman's 'signal' is another's ignore you, is another's just being friendly, is another's desperately trying to passively tell you to fuck off. there is no consistency because every woman is different.
and plenty of women will up sleep with you, tell you they love you, want to be with you, and then laugh in your face and ask you why you thought she was ever interested a few days later. which is a total mindfuck.
as a man, who are you supposed to make any sense of any of that? you can't. so you just learn to ignore it all and focus your efforts on ladies who are clear with their intentions and behaviors... of which there are not a lot, and if you find one you marry her.
many people are totally inconsistent, straight up lie, and are otherwise unclear about what they want and who they are to the opposite sex.... because SEX.
a lot of people engaged in compeltely different personalities and behaviors when sex becomes involved. hence why their friends can't understand why they 'struggle' with romantic partners... well because the person they are to their friends is totally different.
personally, i've always been SHOCKED at how radically different some of my gfs would behave around their friends vs around me or in public. it was like they were a completely different person. Stuff they'd tell me they hated, they told their friends they loved, etc.
It's a trope, but it's also supposedly "well known" that men are horny bastards who think with their dicks... yet somehow we have these the two very opposing scenarios.
Personally, despite a rather distinct lack of interest from the "fairer sex" prior to college, I found that plenty of women were more interested in sex than me in later years and not particularly subtle about it, which was actually off-putting as I wanted a relationship with a bit more substances. A lot of guys I know were in the same boat. Sex was easy. Finding somebody who actually wanted to do activities together was quite hard.
Something I've noticed in myself, maybe because of the lack of interest from women at a younger age, is that women will almost throw themselves at you sometimes. Like, yeah I get it, I'm down for that too, but I won't be able to make it move for you if I don't know you ma'am.
The tropes are projection.
The people who say that shit are almost always... the ones who do that shit. Every woman I know whines about shallow horny non-committal men... was talking about her own behavior and just blaming men for it. whenever they would meet a new guy they would go off about his looks and his money and other shallow traits, and then they would say they knew he wouldn't commit but they didn't care and would date him anway, and then if he didn't commit she'd be so upset, but if he did commit... she'd dump him because there was 'something wrong with him'. etc etc
Just like dudes who complain about shallow gold diggers... are mostly shallow gold diggers themselves.
This really seems like some sort of cognitive bias, maybe Clustering Illusion?
She sees the horny non-committal men because they make obvious advances towards her (and, for that matter, she reciprocates).
The results of how men behave when she makes the first move, is first limited to the men she makes a move on first. That sounds confusing as hell but I don't know how else to write it.
I don't really want to figure out the
( n(n-1) / n)number of potential outcomes between which person makes an advance first, whether or not they are (interested/reciprocate; not interested/do not reciprocate; do not notice), and then further how the originator reacts and the outcome of the interaction.Needless to say, though, I imagine the number of men who do not reciprocate on her "first move", either intentionally or not, would be significantly bottlenecked by the amount of people with whom she makes the first move to begin with.
There's also the coy/flirty method of "playing hard to get" vs a lack of interest being interpreted as such.
Relationships are complicated.
Improved your sword making skills along the way?
Why of course I have. I'm pretty good at forging with a hammer and anvil and I have branched out to casting bronze swords. Though my knapping skills are still weak.......
Succinct, eloquent prose there. Well said
Amazing