Viral thread explains why men are baffled by women’s advances

There's no doubt about it – romance is a minefield.

While dating and relationship norms have come a long way in the past few decades, some men are still absolutely baffled by the romantic cues sent their way.

A viral thread on Reddit has gone some length to explaining why.

It began with user Topvennie asking:

"What are some signs that girls give to boys that they like them that are obvious to girls but totally not obvious to boys?"

The top-rated answer came from shadowrangerfs, who sagely pointed out:

"It's not that men don't get the signals. It's that every woman's signals are different.

"He had the same thing done by a woman who WASN'T interested in him. One woman's flirting is another woman's "just being friendly".

"For every woman talking about how a guy missed the obvious signal, there is another woman talking about how her friendliness is mistaken for flirting," the user continued.

"You laughed at his jokes because you are interested. Another woman laughed because it was a funny joke.

"Unless you are literally getting naked or grabbing his d*ck, I guarantee that your "obvious signal" has been done to him by a woman who wasn't interested in him."

Another user named theslyturtle suggested that a fear of misreading signals stops men from trying to interpret them full stop.

"I think the problem is that guys don’t want to misinterpret things so we just don’t interpret them at all. If we tried to figure it out, we’d drive ourselves crazy.

"We don’t want to come across as creeps and lose potential friends or make a friend-group weird."

Others pointed out its not only men who can be slow to pick up on signals.

"A girl I liked once asked me "How can you tell if a boy is into you or not?

"...she asked me this a day after I picked her up and went for coffee, a long walk along the beach, and a lot of arm touching.

"In retrospect, I think that was a date. In retrospect part #2, I'm an idiot and took the question as a sign she was into someone else."

This advice seemed to sum up the general sentiment.

"Trust me, gals, boys are dense. To get through to a dude, you gotta just tell him.

"No playing with your hair. No laughing too much at his jokes. No putting your fingertips on his arm. Just be straightforward with it.

"Boys are SUPER bad at reading between the lines."

The best solution it seems to avoiding awkwardness and potentially toxic behaviour in modern dating? Talk more. People are confusing and when we make assumptions, it can make people uncomfortable or embarrassed on all sides. So let's never assume.

HT Topvennie

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