uh..everytime i ask girls out, they always ask

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ah. i see how you were taking it now. well no, i do not object to killing time. sure, a free meal and some conversation is great all on it's own. but it is still important to me to know if the guy is looking at it like a date or if i am just a way for him to kill some time. all i object to is the not knowing.

i don't find it to be a waste of my time to go do something just as friends. but it IS a waste of mental energy, worring about how i should act and what the expectation is. i hate the unresolvedness of it. just like you would rather have the band-aid ripped off, so would i.

also, if it is a DATE, then i am going to be myself. be a lot more honest i guess. whereas i know to be more reigned in, more "polite" if i am going to be in a setting that is more aquaintence/casual friend.

Hmm...

Whenever I asked a woman out "just to kill time", I expected us both to be more relaxed and casual, and without too many expecations - nothing deep or "meaningful" - just two people enjoying an activity in each other's company (the meal was the focus, and not the people). Whereas (for me) a date was more like two people enjoying each other's company during an activity (the people were the focus, and not the meal).

I always tried the casual approach first, under the assumtion that if she was willing to share time with me over coffee, fast food, or a quick buffet, then we might be able to find more common ground or similar interests.

But whether it was "hanging out" or dating, I asked a woman out because I liked her, and I never asked a woman out that I did not like. It seems that most guys I know feel the same way.

Round and Round it Goes....

My $0.02? As we here generally know, when it comes to furthering relationships, NTs seem to have a hard time saying exactly what they mean, out of "tact". I put my money on that the girl was trying to give a polite decline, without being insulting, or refusing any and all contact with that person. Trying, I say. To us, not so polite, due to the vast gulf in our approaches to the world.

Remember the mirror of this comparison: As confusing as NTs are to Aspies, so are we to them. A "perfectly logical inquiry" can be, in their world view, really not so logical. It's a completely different framework of Norms. (Not from Cheers, but as a technical term from sociology.)

While we do not generally cloak hidden meanings and nuances in our plain words, an NT will actually look for exactly that. I found a curious parallel in fiction, kinda later in the Wheel of Time series, by Robert Jordan. For the uninitiated it's epic fantasy, drawn out through huge tomes, about 11 books now averaging 900 pages. Anyways! There is this "Game of Houses" (referring to Noble Houses, or families, not our homes) that is rather political, and Machiavellian, and fraught with multiple layers of hidden meaning. But our hero in the tale shows up, more-or-less takes over, and refuses to play the Game. (He doesn't even know the rules, after all, and despises the idea.) The Nobles all individually refuse to believe he's not playing, because of course everyone plays! (Not logical, but it is what they were used to for centuries.) So he does not reveal all his secrets, but he does speak plainly and truthfully, and all the nobles fall all over each other (metaphorically) trying to decipher his (non-existent) hidden meaning. They totally undermine themselves by not simply listening to his plain words, and the regional societal structure collapses around our hero.

In the books, these people are shown to be not useful, and not trustworthy, so their collapse is not a problem. But! What if our hero really needed to make an alliance, and could not conform to their norms? Ah, well, here we are, in that situation, but one-on-one. Just as the Nobles could not conceive of someone not playing the Game of Houses, so too NTs cannot conceive of ones like us not veiling hidden meanings in our innocent question of "Anyone else coming?" Hidden meanings such as "I'm not interested in a one-on-one date-like encounter, but I'll allow you an honorable exit via inviting others to make it a non-date."

OK, more like ten bucks than two cents, but there you have it. -A