How often do men approach women platonically?

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But don't you see--the more you separate yourself from the platonic company of women, the more nervous women will make you in general when you do want to or have to interact with them. If you could "practice" being around women just talking platonicly and being yourself without worrying about trying to date them or attract them, being around women in general will become easier and less stress/anxiety inducing. It's isolating yourself from platonic interactions with women that is one of the main sources of the struggles with women of many of the guys here. If you had female friends or at least were comfortable interacting platonically with women, dating and finding a compatible partner would be a million times easier. You are shooting yourself in the foot by devaluing the platonic company of women.

I've never approached anyone for any reason beyond asking for information with no other intent so

I only form relationships, friendships and beyond, with people I already know/had forced interactions with at some point

Everytime I try to approach a female platonically, it gets taken the wrong way.

Edit: Ok, I am supposedly an attractive person and it's hard to make friends with straight women, when they only see me as a romantic option. It makes me uncomfortable.

Even if I just give a neutral glance at a women it gets taken as an advance.

I don't even know what that means. I'm not sexually attracted to any non-human being, so, if anything, to me, their sexual attractiveness marks them as distinctly human (and female, among other things). I don't know how it could possibly be the other way round.

I think that is completely wrong. Sabreclaw has a healthy attitude that keeps him out of trouble (unreciprocated feelings). I don't think it is possible to train yourself not to get romantic feelings when interacting with women, because that's not a conscious decision, rather something that just happens. By having more platonic relationships with attractive women, he will only increase the frequency of unreciprocated feelings.

Also, the advice to "train" to get along with women in a platonic way as a way to increase dating success seems rather contractionary to the claim that you can learn to stay platonic. It implies you actually can control who you fall in love with and who you want a relationship with, and I think this doesn't work for many people.

I approach women platonically all the time in my dance classes. They usually give an hour or more of practice time after the actual lesson. That's when they play songs, and everybody dances with everybody to practice what they learned. There are unwritten boundaries and etiquette rules in place, but they all boil down to pretty much one thing: dancing together is just that and nothing more. (Google "dance etiquette" to find out more.) So when you ask a woman to dance and she says yes, it doesn't mean she likes you. It only means that she wants to practice what she learned, and trust you enough to practice with you.

The boundaries and etiquette rules are universally respected in dance classes, to the point that people come with their significant other, and dance mostly with other people. Of course, when two single people dance with each other and are working well together, those boundaries get crossed on occasion. But this is far from universal.

I agree about dances. I also dance a lot, and it mostly works because of the rules of dancing. So dancing is a great way to learn to get along platonically with women and also to practise being close to women, but doing so in other contexts often is not.

If you can't interact with ANY females at all without feeling romantic feelings for them (even the ones you don't find attractive, which is going to be a good amount of the women out there) then you need therapy or something. If you find every single woman in the world, every single woman you interact with sexually attractive and can't help but develop romantic feelings with all of them that you talk to, that is also seriously f****d up. I can't imagine not being able to platonically interact with men without wanting to date all of them, that's weird. WTH is wrong with you people?? Women are just human beings, we are not walking sex objects. If you can't just see us as people without wanting to f**k every single one of us, then the problem is definitely with YOU.

If the idea of interacting with women in a non-sexual, non-romantic way is completely alien and foreign to you and not something you could ever do, then do us all a favour and stay away from us all and don't try to date women because you are sick. The more I read here the more I wonder if dating a guy on the spectrum would be right for me after all, if so many of you struggle just to be able to see a woman as another person worth talking to just for the sake of them being a person. I used to think it might be easier to look for others with AS because I might find more compatibility and understanding with guys on the spectrum, but the more time I spend here the less likely finding an autistic guy I could be compatible with seems. This is so disheartening, reading this s**t. This is why I don't date at all anymore--it is pointless, being a straight woman, if you actually want to be with a guy who sees you as a fully formed human being with just as much value and validity as himself. I'm glad I don't waste my time trying to find that anymore.

I don't get romantic feelings for every female, but then I cannot detect or control the few I actually might get feelings for. That's why it ends up as a statistic thing, and the more women I interact with the more common it will be that I develop romantic feelings for somebody. That's a simple statistic rule, quite similar to people that claim the more people you date, the more likely you will find something interesting.



I'm asexual, so sexual attraction means nothing to me. That doesn't mean I won't get crushes on women.



I don't date anybody. Not my style.



Talk is not typically important at all for me. I prefer a woman that don't talk a lot, and I would definitely not be interested in somebody that had to talk all the time.

You don't know me. How can you tell what I can or cannot do?



I wonder if you realize how arrogant that comes across. It's no better than telling someone you don't even know, who happens to be male, "I'm so damn sexy I know in advance, without bothering to ask you, that there's nothing in the world you could desire more than to have sex with me. And, since you fall so pathetically short of my standards, I take issue with it. Who the hell do you sorry excuse for a man think you are to believe you have a chance with such a goddess as me? Furthermore, I also know in advance you're so envious and such a poor sport that you can only cope with your wretched lot in life by meanly and cowardly trying to undermine my self-esteem and take advantage of me. You can't just acknowledge how desirable and how far beyond your reach I am, and treat me respectfully; rather, the very fact that you are the one communicating with me, instead of someone actually up to snuff, makes it disrespectful in and of itself".

Have you considered that, at least part of the time, those sexual undertones may be just in your head? Especially if the guy already expects the interaction to be awkward and doesn't know what to do.

I've had this problem with essentially every woman around my age since I began to learn about these basic behavioral differences between the sexes, and that was in my early-to-mid twenties. At your age, I was completely oblivious to them, and thought that, by default, a girl would be just as likely to want some physical intimacy with me as I was to want it with her.

On the other hand, I've never fancied at all the idea of doing anything sexual or romantic with someone much younger or older than me. Approaching a nineteen-year-old girl in that way at this point would make me feel like an outright paedophile, and I find it quite disturbing that they'd expect me to, but I understand you need to be alert. That's also one of the reasons I avoid people much younger than me entirely (most boys probably don't fear being raped by me, but I fear being beaten up by them, especially if they believe I want to take "their" girls from them).

Needless to say, I avoid everyone. For every demographic, there's a different set of very convincing reasons to avoid it.



Then maybe you should make sure the guy also wants one, whatever you understand by "platonic". I don't think there's any way around telling him you don't want anything sexual or romantic with him as soon as he shows he does.

I don't know what's wrong with being open about this with an opposite-sex friend. To me, the basic rule would be, "we do only what both of us want". If that turns out to include sex, that's fine; if it doesn't, it's fine, too. You need to have enough mutual trust to know neither will pressure the other to do something they don't want just because they did it previously, or because they did something that could be viewed as leading to it, or with any other excuse; and, if they behave that way, the friendship is over. I don't think I could consider anyone a friend without this level of mutual trust.

Maybe this is why I've never had a friend, but so be it.

All I want to know is, how am I supposed to tell if a man is interested in me in a sexual or romantic way? So that I'm not unintentionally leading anyone on (which apparently has happened before) or putting myself in danger.

I really can only tell with the obvious ones. Like men who make sexual comments, or those who follow me around, stare at me, or try to get too close to me physically.

Now I feel like I'm paranoid. I'm always wondering, is that guy just being friendly or flirting with me? I just want to be able to tell so I know what I'm dealing with and what to expect. Nobody seems to know the answer.

I just can't go around being oblivious. Well, I can, but it's gotten me into trouble. I prefer to just be friendly towards everyone but apparently that isn't safe.

Do they compliment you a lot? Do they seem nervous around you? Do they look you up and down? Do they ask to hangout with you? Do they want to hug you? Do they ask about how you're doing a lot, more than what could be considered normal? Do they talk about themselves in a positive light, almost as if trying to impress you?

Way to come off as a complete tool. There is nothing wrong with being attracted to a majority of women. There is nothing wrong with it. I am attracted to a great number of women. Most women I have ever talked to, I would of probably developed feeling for them, or would of had sex with them if they offered. What does this mean? It means I have high testosterone. In fact, I've liked women even as a child. There isn't anything wrong with this. Now, maybe you have really high standards, or your testosterone isn't that high. You just simply can't relate and calling people out like this, really makes you come off as a idiot.

The question seems a tough one indeed.

When in doubt, it seems like women would be well advised to assume every man wants to have sex with them, and men would be to assume no woman would touch them with a ten-foot pole.

Well, usually they just seem friendly and talkative. I even mention that I'm in a relationship, but that hasn't stopped men from being interested once they know. With most I had no idea until later on.

Unfortunately, I can't always tell what normal behavior is supposed to look like. So I just see that a guy seems friendly and I can't tell the difference. I guess one or two seemed a little bit too interested in talking to me. But I only realized it in hindsight.