Creepiness

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I think you're supposed to stop acting attracted to her, i.e. don't make any further advances. You can't choose to be attracted or unattracted to someone, even after they've turned you down.

And yeah, unrequited love is a good thing culturally; it's very romantic (think the Lady of Shalott or Severus Snape!), and it's also a testament to true caring and friendship. If you are attracted to someone (more than just sexually), then the reasons you are attracted will still exist even if your feelings aren't reciprocated. So yeah, seeing beyond that rejection and making a friendship work, without feeling 'friendzoned' or otherwise maligned, is a great thing to have with another person.

If you're "friendzoned," the way a woman feels towards you varies widely.

She could sincerely want to be your friend, yet she doesn't feel romantic towards you.

Or she could merely not want to offend you, so instead of saying you're not "dating material," she'll say she wouldn't mind being your friend (and not mean it).

The same thing happens to women. Men "friendzone" women, too. For the same reasons.

Being "friendzoned" is not a pleasant feeling all round--but one has to get over it, and move on.

No, you need to move on with your life rather than hanging around someone that things won't work with.

Unrequited love is great because of passion?

That's rubbish. All forms of love can be passionate and romantic.

Unrequited love is only 1 thing - one of the greatest sources of emotional pain and misery, second only to depression (and the two often go hand in hand anyway, sooo...) and trauma.

Unrequited Love is the Ultimate in Frustration, Depression, and just Feeling Bad overall!

Sigh.



It can be a good thing, I suppose, but I wouldn't think of it in such terms either way. I've been there and went a bit doolally for my troubles (and was too often an overbearing prick in how I acted to the object-cause of my affections, for which I later apologised), but there was some personal growth wrapped up in it all. It fades, but I imagine I'll carry some sort of torch for her til I draw my final breath.

Others have gone through the experience and created remarkable works of art out of it. My point is that no such enduring work is going to come from talk of the 'friendzone'.



Yes, well, they're idiots. You may as well stop being hungry if you don't have any food in the house.

You can neither start nor stop being drawn or attracted to someone. What you have some say in is how you conduct yourself, and what you do while you wait for the attraction to fade.

Two Cures for Love

1. Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.

2. The easy way: get to know him better.

- Wendy Cope



Does it, though? Either way, it changes not a jot of what I said.

But for argument's sake - so? How brutal do you expect or want women to be when turning down your advances? How dismissive of them do you think it's safe for them to be? How easy is it to learn that sort of thing where the cultural pressures are on them to be the peacemakers, to not upset anyone?

Just say no and walk away.

This is not the case in the US. It's perfectly acceptable for a man to give his number and not ask for hers here. Are you sure it is inappropriate where you are, or are you applying some rule of reciprocity to a situation in which it might not be practiced?



The point is, which I clearly articulated in the part of my post you skipped, is yeah, some women have hangups and insecurities and will think a man is a creep no matter what. But just because they might think you are a creep, doesn't mean you are or that you did anything creepy, and you need to have the ability to discern who has the problem here. You or her. If it's her, oh well, you tried, walk away and find a woman who doesn't have those problems.

There are two groups of people who are guaranteed to end up alone forever, and that's women who think all men are creeps, and men who can't bring themselves to interact with women because she might be one of those women who think all men are creeps.

...note to self?

Anyway, seeing as you take/understand 'no thanks, let's just be friends' to effectively be 'no [walks away]', and you probably don't actually want to 'just' be friends in such a situation, why not allow the woman the comfort and safety of the social etiquette/ritual? She's declining your romantic interest/advances - ignore the way it was delivered, and take the key message.



It's the unstoppable force/immovable object of gender rancour.

Outrider - all you can do is try, and be philosophical about it. Not just in the easy-come-easy-go sanguine sense, but also analytical. Someone could think you creepy because they're just having a sh***y day. You could be behaving creepy, but someone overlooks it because they're having a good day.

Personally, should I ever approach someone I've never met before, I wouldn't do so outside of a social context where it was allowed, but that could just be being British (I don't drink, so that's out). Say, if they were friends of friends, or a fellow attendee at an event, both of which would provide for conversation ('so how did you meet Jess?', 'what did you think of the lecture?').

I read that part, but I wasn't sure what to say.

I think sometimes that is true, but other times a behavior may genuinely be 'creepy' and if it makes a number of women uncomfortable, we'd have to rule it out as an appropriate thing to do when speaking to a woman.

So it becomes confusing when you're not sure if it's you or her.

I know sometimes it can simply be her; maybe she just had a bad day and is rude because she's not in the mood for talking, maybe she interprets perfectly normal behaviors as creepy when to any reasonable person they wouldn't be.

But when you say sometimes it is her, not you, I argue it is also sometimes you, not her.

I am as anti-just world fallacy (the belief good things happen to good people, bad to bad people, if you're failing at dating, it's always your own fault, etc.) as they come and still realistically believe sometimes a person's failure in dating really does partially have to do with them.

I never thought it was appropriate for a man to give a woman his number even if she didn't ask. It feels a tad intrusive to me and something maybe only a minority of women, at least here, would find acceptable.

In videos I only ever see men asking for the woman's number and not just him giving her the number. Various dating advice webites and discussion forums have also confirmed my beliefs.

So if it's ok for a man in the U.S. to give a woman her number after a 5 minute positive conversation if she didn't ask, you're the first I've ever seen, read or heard it from.

Though of course I could never truly understand the U.S. as I don't live there.

Anyway, please don't take what I'm saying as advising men against cold approaching.

If anything, I fully advocate it as a last resort to trying to meet and get to know women if nothing else is working.

Still, that doesn't mean I don't think trying to cold approach is very difficult and risky and will more than likely only ever end wrong.

Hopper:

Yeah, events or groups of some kind I would frequently be visiting or volunteering at seem like the best avenues.

As of this time I have very few ways of leaving the house though, but I'm trying to get back into volunteering soon.

It be best I start pursuing girl's my age now while they care less about income, whether I drive or not, whether I'm living at home or not, etc. now before they all start to feel the need for a man with all those sort of things in life sorted out.

Still, I feel a lot of young people today, aside from living at home, are working harder than ever and the rat race is faster than ever.

There's girl's I graduated high school with who are already so far ahead of me in life.

One of them is currently 18, sharing an apartment with her brother in the big city hours away from the humble and modestly sized small city we went to school in, owns her own car, drives, is studying at university, and currently traveling the U.S.

That's a lot to live up to. I personally predict many men and women want someone 'equal' to them in categories such as income, socio-economic background, educational level, background, etc. and so this just makes it difficult for me.

Also, WP has auto-logged me out three damn times in the crafting of this message. It's starting to tick me off.

You would know Australian culture better than me...to be honest, I've always found Australians somewhat confusing, as the ones I have interacted with would initially come across as what Americans would perceive as friendly, as they would make mild jokes, and chuckle, but then seem to shy away at the last minute, and this always had me wondering if I did something creepy to suddenly put them off, but then I learned that in Australian culture, this joking and chuckling is a means to smooth over nerves, and is not necessarily indicative of an attempt to form a closer social relationship with someone. It's similar to the American "We should get together sometime."

Not my cup of tea. First, I make sure I'm never rejected (simply by never 'asking out'), and then it doesn't turn into the bad kind of unrequited love. Second, if I'm romantically interested in a girl, I'd never settle for a friendship. In fact, if I've had a crush on a girl, it will never be like a friendship to me.

Only if you have been rejected, or you see her with other guys. Unrequited love without rejection means the hope still lives that she will eventually fancy you, so no need to feel down or depressed about it.

That's fair enough. I'm not great at the whole dating scene and understanding people's motivations in romance so I expect I'm missing a key part of understanding all this! Thanks for the p.o.v.; I don't really have friends so I don't maintain friendships with guys who have asked me out. I know it must be hard to be rejected and I do feel guilty, so I just stay friendly with people after I turn down a date or an advance. I can't really tell how much they care, how much they were into me etc., but I always assume it's more difficult for the guy than it is for me, since he's the one who's put himself out there, and I've just kind of held the line.

I'm not saying you should moon over a girl if she's rejected you, I'm just saying that in time you might see a value in remaining friends that will outlast any romantic feeling. I can see why it would be hard, even impossible in some situations, but in other cases I have seen friendships work after romantic rejection. After all, if you like her because you have things in common, or because she's a nice person, then that could be the foundation of friendship too (indeed, it already is from her perspective). Again, I get that it would be hard though. I don't understand the full range of sexual/romantic emotions, but I totally accept that it can be hard to get past them.

You have as much of a right to refuse to be her friend as she does to refuse to date you. If the latter can’t be questioned, the former shouldn’t, either.