Since my last post, I’ve suffered from the dilemma of too much choice of what to write about. Too many topical write about-worthy things have happened – Glee‘s two most prominent female stars Britney Spears-ed themselves up for creepy pervo photog Terry Richardson; Famous Women with talk shows Disapproved of said Glee stars; an EW.com feminist Disapproved of the Famous Women’s disapproval; Boundless had another post with comments full of Christian female projection about what men find attractive and shaming of the “number rating” system; Boundless also had a post on international/interethnic marriages, which of course prompted dozens of comments reeking of the superiority of Christians who marry outside of their nationality; a personal experience that added another notch to the “all the good ones are taken, gay, or taken and gay” column; various other experiences that made me wonder if most women overrate their looks/SMV; and a message board post from a girl who is living with her ex-boyfriend and is very upset that he is getting involved with another woman, a situation whose stupidity makes me want to bash heads against the wall, not the least of which is my own. Choosing from any of the above is tough, so I’m going to go with another Dating Thread scenario, one which is exceedingly common these days.
I think I’ve discussed male/female friendships before, but it’s a situation that tends to cause a lot of heartache and grief, so it’s worth discussing again. Here’s what happened:
Esmeralda is a graduate student who has a massive crush on a fellow student, Phoebus. Esme and Phoebs are inseparable and hang out together all the time. When they’re not together, Phoebs constantly texts Esme. They are so tight that Esme’s roommates mistakenly thought that Esme and Phoebs were dating.
Recently, Esme and Phoebs met up with some other students in their program and went to hang out at the house of Esme’s arch-nemesis, Morticia. They all ate, drank, and made merry. Then, needing more alcohol, Esme, Phoebs, Phoebs’ roommate, and Morticia headed out to the bars and met up with some other friends.
Now, if Phoebus had been looking for an opportunity to make a move on Esmeralda, this would have been it. Fueled with liquid courage, she was more than ready for the taking. Instead, this happened:
Phoebus danced with Morticia and made out with her. They left a couple minutes later. Ten minutes after that was last call, and Esmeralda felt incredibly awkward passing Phoebus and Morticia outside and exchanging hellos.
Esmeralda now feels devastated/angry/humiliated/still in love with Phoebus.
I hear about or read about scenarios like this all the time. The daughter of one of my mom’s good friends had something very similar happen to her a couple of years ago. (In her case, she met a nice Christian boy and hung out with him all summer; he told her he wanted to marry someone like her; they went their separate ways when school resumed in the fall; she flew down to Florida to surprise him; she then discovered that he was dating someone else.) Candice Watters’ own history with her now-husband, Steve, very much resembles Esmeralda’s plight. (In Candice’s case, she confronted Steve and told him she would cut him off if he didn’t want to date her. Months later he decided to give up his Southern belle ideal and date Candice after she lost some weight and grew out her hair.)
It’s almost useless to offer any advice to women in Esmeralda’s situation, because the woman will rationalize away all reason. This guy is different, not all guys are like that, you can’t make generalizations, I’d rather be his friend than not at all, etc. Pretty much all you can do as a friend is just tell that person you don’t want to hear about any more of their self-inflicted melodrama.
A more effective solution is just not to get into such a situation in the first place. This means not having a male friend as an emotional confidant. This also means not having a male friend with whom you spend a lot of free time, especially if it’s one-on-one. This includes non-stop texting. If a male friend wants to send you regular texts checking up on you or sharing details of his day or confiding his feelings in you, he’s crossing the friendship line and should not be surprised if his female friend starts falling in love with him. Most women, even the most strident feminists who think that abortion is a self-evident human right and that rich white men should pay for everything for everybody (unless they’re on a date), want to feel emotionally taken care of, and will start falling in love in a typical feminine fashion if they sense that the man is willing to care for them that way.
A good litmus test for whether or not you’ve crossed the line is the one that Esmeralda failed: do your friends/roommates think you are dating this guy or that for all practical intents and purposes, he is your boyfriend? If there is any ambiguity, you should take a step back.
As for Phoebus…I think men who act the way he has are selfish jerks. Yeah, yeah, it’s the woman’s fault, she let it happen, she should have known, blah blah blah. Her lack of knowledge or self-control doesn’t make his actions any less selfish. It’s the equivalent of a woman dressing slutty, letting men shower her with attention and gifts, going home with the man she likes best, getting naked, and then saying she’s saving herself for marriage and she never intended to have sex with him.
Basically, don’t get emotionally intimate with a friend of the opposite sex, and don’t spend too much time together, unless you’re pursuing a romantic relationship. Otherwise one person tends to develop unreciprocated feelings for the other person, and a lot of heartache can ensue.
Haley's Halo 
Very very good post.
I was convicted and enlightened on some of my past behavior.
I agreed with everything in this post until here:
> Her lack of knowledge or self-control doesn’t make his
> actions any less selfish. It’s the equivalent of a woman
> dressing slutty, letting men shower her with attention
> and gifts, going home with the man she likes best,
> getting naked, and then saying she’s saving herself for
> marriage and she never intended to have sex with him.
Here’s one possibility of what he’s thinking:
I keep hanging out with this girl, sending flirty texts, hanging out and everything, but she’s not giving me any indication that she wants to be my girlfriend. Maybe going to this party with some alcohol will loosen her up… [later] Ugh, she’s drinking a lot but refuses to even dance with me! Ugh, I’m really at the end of my rope. I’m so frustrated and this other girl is really into me. I’m just going to go with this other girl since the first girl is so freaking dense.
Here’s another:
I’m so glad I have some friends now that I’m at this new place. I even have someone to study with and everything. We’re good friends now. She’s becoming a little clingy, sure, but it’s not like there are too many people in this program. I want to tell her to back off a bit, but she’ll probably be devastated. I know what I’ll do… We’re going to this party and there’s this girl I’m into… Maybe by flirting with this other girl, I can make it clear to her that maybe we shouldn’t be hanging out so much.
————————
Basically, you can’t expect every guy to have great game. Most guys have very little game and don’t know exactly how to say things to a girl without having her hate him. It’s not “selfish”, it’s just lacking tools to do what he needs to, which may be A. he likes her but doesn’t think she’ll like him back or B. he doesn’t like her but enjoys her company.
Toz, yes I’ve been this guy in your second scenario myself.
Most guys have very little game and don’t know exactly how to say things to a girl without having her hate him.
Game isn’t knowing how to say things to a girl without having her hate you; it’s knowing that no matter what you say she will hate you, but just not giving a s__t.
Agreed. To clarify, I meant that if a guy has enough game, he wouldn’t be afraid to hurt her feelings by saying “back off”.
In either scenario, a guy with game would have found resolution looong before this “devastating” event. Sadly, most guys have very little game, so it’s not them being selfish, it’s just that they don’t have the tools to do what they need to do.
It’s interesting to get the female perspective on this; I don’t believe that I’ve ever been in such a situation, but if it was long enough ago to be in my completely clueless period I may not have recognized it.
I would point out that I’ve had people in certain circles advise me that this is the the way you find someone if you’re not using that dirty dating word: make friends with the opposite sex, find out what she’s like, do group activities, etc. Admittedly, there’s an assumption that you’ll eventually man-up and declare your intentions, but only for someone you throughly checked out first.
There’s a difference between hanging out occasionally in a group and consistently singling someone out for individualized attention. If you were hanging out in a group, people would probably not mistake your object of affection for your girlfriend – it’s that type of “friendship” that’s gotta go.
(I do agree that guys who hang out in groups, timidly, ploddingly trying to “friend” a girl into becoming his girlfriend, need an injection of testosterone.)
How many men are realistically going to tell a woman they’re not interested in to back off? Most men are happy to get attention and affection for free.
It’s happened a few times in my experience, despite my not knowing anything of game back in my single days. Sometimes the attention just gets weird and you can sense that the girl isn’t acting normal. Most guys don’t do just go up and tell the girl to “back off”, they just stop returning texts/emails/phone calls and find other things to do if they feel smothered. Some just give in and start dating the girl, just to have something going, which is generally a recipe for disaster. Either way, the situation resolves itself eventually.
Some of us just don’t know what to do, though. The above describes me more often than not, but despite having been familiar with the seduction community for almost 2 years now, having read quite a bit on acting alpha, social skills, body language, etc., it still seems like I’m left with a choice between 1) the above, or 2) just bluntly asking a girl out, which my gut tells me, if I were to do it, would come across as awkward and creepy and therefore I’d be worse off than before I asked her out. Other than becoming a PUA and developing a whole second social life centered around the bars and clubs (so I don’t feel so vested in every little interaction with the Christian girls,) I don’t know what else to do.
Hermes, you really have to stop giving a flying flip about what women think of you romantically. As long as you are concerned about what they think of you, you’ve given them all the power and will never be seen as a romantic potential.
my first thought is that story – strictly speaking – didn’t really need to be told (lovely though it was). Probably you could’ve just said “take your typical boy-girl friendship, and reverse the roles” and the same message would’ve come across… because, frankly, the reverse scenario involving Eric and Phoebe happens WAY more often.
my question though is, as a male, how do I make my intentions clear to girls who I do like as friends – sisters even – but have no intention of dating? Especially girls who are used to having guys go for them. You’ll be happy to know I’m very careful to not let any false signals fly, and whenever we plan an activity I always make sure to “assume” it’s a group thing and invite others along, etc etc. But I constantly feel like I have to be careful or withdraw myself so it doesn’t look like I’m trying to get closer than just “friends”.
What’s the best non-awkward way to make it clear that I am NOT interested romantically, but do value their company even 1 on 1 for extended periods of time?
So, the reality of male-female relations is driven by what I perceive as a paradox: that in order to get a woman to like you, you have to not particularly care if she likes you. I admit that this seems true and that it’s my own will that opposes it. I simply don’t WANT to accept it. I fail to see the point if reality is that way. If the only way to obtain X is to stop wanting X, well, I suppose you could force yourself to stop wanting X, but that would defeat the purpose, because then once you obtained it you would no longer want it. If the only way to win a woman is to not care what she thinks about me romantically–i.e., not to particularly care about being with her–then why would I want to be with her?
I think it’s more a case of not needing&emdash;it’s not that you don’t want the company of women, it’s that you don’t need it and more to the point that you don’t need her specifically.
I’m hardly an expert, though.
am–
Don’t engage girls in one-on-one activities. Don’t call them and have long conversations where you talk about your day or your feelings. Don’t buy them gifts. Sometimes girls will jump to the wrong conclusion if the man offers even the tiniest bit of friendliness, but most girls know the difference between platonic and romantic attention.
Hermes–
Your expression of the paradox is correct but not your conclusions. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a girl to like you; it just can’t be the main or only thing. Yes, you want her to like you, but if she doesn’t, your world doesn’t end, and there are other girls out there. If she misses out, it’s her loss, not yours. Girls like having the level of liking be equal. If the guy’s liking greatly outpaces her own, the girl will usually start to feel very uncomfortable around him.
Hermes, I’m designing koanic ataraxia for guys exactly like you. If I had that when I started searching, I would not have gone down the path for which you just expressed distaste.
While men may not often tell women who they are not interested in to back off, that isn’t really your point, is it? A man can avoid leading a woman to invest in him emotionally — that was the complaint — simply by not doing things that suggest his availability to her. If he’s not open to getting serious, he can from the outset avoid spending a lot of time with her, confiding in her, or keeping her posted on the events of his day. It isn’t difficult to not become “inseparable” from a woman he’s not interested in is cruel.
This takes no game at all, and it happens all the time.
That got posted unintentionally before it was done. It should have read something like:
‘It isn’t difficult for a man to not become “inseparable” from a woman he’s not interested in.’
Hermes, one thing to keep in mind is that it’s only “creepy” if she has no interest or attraction for you. (See Haley’s last post “Man as Mirror”) If she does find you attractive, it’s not creepy at all, but rather romantic and exciting. Women love to be asked out by attractive guys. When you interact in non-romantic social context, look for the Indicators Of Interest that the PUAs talk about and proceed. The PUA blogs talk about hooking up in bars etc, but there is also plenty of talk about “day game”, which might be a good place to look for pointers on engaging in a church group.
Just my $0.02. I’ve been out of the dating game a long time and am just basing this on things I’ve heard from single friends.
Hermes, I think you’re conceptualising this wrongly. It’s not that you don’t have to care if a girl likes you, it’s just that you have to develop the fortitude to walk away from the girl if it appears that she is not interested in you. The masculine “strength” comes from the ability to walk away from the deal if it is not on your(reasonable) terms. Supplicating for her love is the relationship killer.
What you have to do is develop two conflicting traits: the ability to love and the ability not to care if that love is not reciprocated on your terms. Once you’ve habituated the “it’s her loss mentality”, strange things happen.
“As for Phoebus…I think men who act the way he has are selfish jerks.”
I disagree with this analysis. I think it is very feminine-oriented when a balanced perspective is needed. I didn’t see ANY sign this guy is a player. I also don’t see any sign Esmerelda gave HIM serious signs she was interested. Nonstop texting would not be an indicator of interest except for a hopeless beta. Obviously he’s not interested in Esmerelda that way, and the fairytale isn’t going to happen.
There’s a lot of projection under the surface here – “if I liked him I would be texting all the time, so if HE texts all the time he must love ME!” I also doubt he cares about her “archnemesis” – guys in general just don’t get into those petty social spats.
So…why should he put his life on hold because she’s feeling unrequited love? Does he “owe” her a relationship because she’s been such a good friend?
I had this discussion with a woman last year which clarified the difference in approach. In the reverse situation – two guys and a girl (and a pizza place) – whichever guy the girl likes wins. As long as he doesn’t flaunt his “victory” to the other guy (how daya like them apples) it’s just life, and the other guy is expected to get over it.
Meanwhile, my friend postulated a statute of limitations (up to two years (!) ) in which the “I saw him first”
EVEN if he’s not interested in girl #1, girl #2 is supposed to put off her own life so as to prevent girl #1 from feeling bad.
I know Haley is on the “guys are too dumb to read women’s subtle signals” track, but the fact in life is that you only get what you ask for. If a woman is connecting emotionally with a man, and goes home and daydreams about how wonderful it would be if he became her boyfriend just like in the movies, without any serious attempt to capture, she’s not going to get what she wants.
But since women today seem averse to emotional risk and want plausible deniability (another element of the subtle-signals strategy), it is unlikely she’ll act on her desire in a way that could actually get him to look at her romantically.
Meanwhile he gets together with someone willing, able and who asks for it – because SHE didn’t ask for it.
Shoot! Copy-paste eating…should be:
“Meanwhile, my friend postulated a statute of limitations (up to two years (!) ) in which the “I saw him first” card should and must be respected. EVEN if he’s not interested in girl #1, girl #2 is supposed to put off her own life so as to prevent girl #1 from feeling bad he likes someone else.”
“Too many topical write about-worthy things have happened”
TL,DR answers:
“Boundless had another post with comments full of Christian female projection about what men find attractive and shaming of the “number rating” system”
The first step in improving reality is to acknowledge it.
“Boundless also had a post on international/interethnic marriages, which of course prompted dozens of comments reeking of the superiority of Christians who marry outside of their nationality;”
Wow, talk about SWPL.
“various other experiences that made me wonder if most women overrate their looks/SMV”
They do.
“and a message board post from a girl who is living with her ex-boyfriend and is very upset that he is getting involved with another woman”
Earth to Cupcake – you do not have the right to dictate your ex’s emotional life. The situation sucks, but accept it and move on/out.
“Don’t engage girls in one-on-one activities. Don’t call them and have long conversations where you talk about your day or your feelings. Don’t buy them gifts.
This is for how to NOT develop an emotional connection crush with a woman? This sounds like PUA advice for how to ATTRACT women!
“Sometimes girls will jump to the wrong conclusion if the man offers even the tiniest bit of friendliness, but most girls know the difference between platonic and romantic attention.”
I disagree – in my experience, young women are singularly clueless about male IOIs. My own intentions have been mistaken far more than they’ve been accurately ascertained.
I also don’t see any sign Esmerelda gave HIM serious signs she was interested.
She was spending all of her free time with him to the point where her roommates assumed they were dating. No woman spends that much time with a man she’s not attracted to.
So…why should he put his life on hold because she’s feeling unrequited love? Does he “owe” her a relationship because she’s been such a good friend?
I never said or insinuated that he should. My whole point was that she acted stupidly and should have distanced herself from this guy so as not to grow romantic feelings for him.
But since women today seem averse to emotional risk and want plausible deniability (another element of the subtle-signals strategy), it is unlikely she’ll act on her desire in a way that could actually get him to look at her romantically.
Women want to be pursued. If he’s not looking at her romantically already, what could she possibly gain from broadcasting her feelings? That’s a humiliating way to start a relationship. She’s already spending all of her time with him; if that’s not enough to excite him to action, telling him won’t help.
(That said…given the demographics of this particular message board, it would not surprise me if Esmeralda were plain, overweight, and dressed a little dowdy.)
I don’t think men understand how uncomfortable a friendship can become if one friend feels the other has disrespected her. No woman wants to get slapped with a reputation for not respecting the wishes of her friends; that’s social suicide.
This is for how to NOT develop an emotional connection crush with a woman? This sounds like PUA advice for how to ATTRACT women!
It’s important to remember that the beta side of men is crucial for women to fall in love, too. It’s the beta side that women tend to fall for in close friendships. If a man presents himself as an emotional confidant to a woman, she will probably fall in love with him so long as he’s not off-puttingly effeminate or deformed or smelly or whatnot.
I disagree – in my experience, young women are singularly clueless about male IOIs.
Could you please enumerate/elaborate? I think the average woman can tell if a man is looking at her a lot, or standing too close, or trying to draw her into one-on-one conversations a lot, or is generally going out of his way for her on a regular basis.
Hah…this is the reverse scenario of “Let’s Just Be Friends!” Never really thought this happened to frequently with the woman being the one to get LJBF’ed.
…but most girls know the difference between platonic and romantic attention.
Ahhh, but than for many girls, that ole rationalization hamster may cause them to ignore the difference and mistakenly interpret platonic gestures for romantic ones.
Who does the onus for her heartbreak and disappointment here primarily reside? The “selfish jerk” of a guy who responds to her friendly overtures or the woman who ignores the obvious signs he’s just not that into her?
I have been in a situation where a girl I saw as a friend (we had a ‘soul-brother/sister thing going on but she held no attraction for me)developed a crush on me. After a while I told her bluntly I was not interested in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, thinking that would solve the problem. It made absolutely no difference. I knew nothing about game then, but it makes sense now. I had only made myself even more the object of her fantasies.
I think it is very difficult for single men and women to be close friends. I’m sure it has worked out in a few cases, but it is very risky.
Never really thought this happened to frequently with the woman being the one to get LJBF’ed.
This happens a LOT. Pretty much whenever men and women are more than casual acquaintances, and especially in college. It’s happened to me.
Boundless had another post with comments full of Christian female projection about what men find attractive and shaming of the “number rating” system
Hee hee! Where’s this? I’ve been away from there too long and can’t find it.
“How Can I Know He’s the One?” The blog post itself isn’t what’s illuminating; it’s the comments.
(Just a warning: it’s over 100 replies long.)
I know what you mean, but I never get IOI’s from girls I’m actually interested in. Girls I’m not interested in, yes. But in general, I’m so nervous around any girls I’m interested in that I can’t establish rapport with them. When I try to talk to them, it seems like the choice is between 1) Letting whatever comes out come out, in which case I seem beta-ish and supplicating, or 2) intentionally avoiding beta-ish and supplicating behaviors, in which case I just come across as weird, TOO aloof, or just plain mean. I know what not to do, and in theory I know what TO do, but when I’m actually on the spot I just can’t suppress my attraction enough to act self-assured and nonchalant yet engaging. I have no idea how you’re supposed to do that (except, as the PUAs would no doubt advise, by practicing on hundreds of bar sluts.)
I think we each think that we’re alone and that the opposite sex has it easy.
We can’t see behind the facade…
> It’s important to remember that the beta side of men
> is crucial for women to fall in love, too. It’s the
> beta side that women tend to fall for in close
> friendships. If a man presents himself as an emotional
> confidant to a woman, she will probably fall in love
> with him so long as he’s not off-puttingly effeminate
> or deformed or smelly or whatnot.
In my experience, this almost always puts the guy in LJBF territory. The only way this works is if he’s alpha enough that the obvious betatude seems out of the ordinary and reserved *just for her*. Guys that end up doing this are almost always going to strike out as they’re much more likely to be too beta than not beta enough.
Haley, I expect more from you given how much you know about game. The above is only true if the guy is already alpha. It’s completely useless advice if the guy is beta as the woman will have almost zero attraction for him unless she’s got very low market value.
“What you have to do is develop two conflicting traits: the ability to love and the ability not to care if that love is not reciprocated on your terms.”
Very well put. Indeed, we might ask: what historical figure can we name who manifested these traits to the maximal degree?
I disagree.
I was the nice guy who got LJBF’d for more than a decade, the same as Esme but with a different set of sex organs. Yes, it was hurtful and it was heartbreaking. It was an endless amount of pain. Do you know what? The fault was mine. I was the one to blame.
Why should women care about my heart if I didn’t care about it? Everybody is responsible of their own feelings. It was my responsibility to get away from these women. They didn’t do anything wrong enjoying my attention. I did something wrong by staying with them.
Now, many years later, when I see that I am falling in love with a woman, I make sure that she feels the same. If I have some doubt, I dare to ask. If I know that she doesn’t feel the same, I get away. Esme has no doubt now. Now it’s time for her to make a decision.
Esme is not a damsel in distress. Phoebus is not the white knight whose duty is to rescue Esme from herself by getting away from her. Esme has a pair of legs and feet to get away. She is not the passive victim and Phoebus is not a monster.
Esme has to grow up and stop being Phoebus’ friend. It is not easy, but life is not easy and nobody has to blame other person of his/her own weakness and passiveness.
In that thread, there’s an illustration of your point about women overvaluing their looks. One of the more prolific commenters notes that she thinks of herself as a 7-7.5. She posted a link to her Facebook profile a few weeks ago… and while there aren’t a lot of easily findable pictures, she appears to be rather heavy with an average face. She seems to be one of the more level-headed posters there, so I hope for her sake that her weight-loss attempts are successful.
I think you are misunderstanding my post. I was writing about things women should do to avoid getting in an Esme-like situation.
However, that doesn’t mean that the man is blameless. By acting available and enjoying the woman’s time and companionship, the man makes it much, much harder for the woman to draw boundaries.
Hint #1:
If he’s great enough for you to have a crush on, there are probably half a dozen or more girls who also have a crush on him.
Hint #2:
Crushes are not love or anything like it. It is little more than physical arousal. Nothing to base a relationship on.
Hint #3:
Anyone who gives a girl that much v-tingle will probably find it hard to be faithful, since other girls will be throwing themselves at him.
Crushes are just another sign of immaturity.
CAB–
One of the more prolific commenters notes that she thinks of herself as a 7-7.5. She posted a link to her Facebook profile a few weeks ago… and while there aren’t a lot of easily findable pictures, she appears to be rather heavy with an average face.
I saw that comment and thought she had to be, um, grading herself generously. I haven’t seen her Facebook profile, but she has previously mentioned that she is working on losing weight. The weight issue alone precludes a 7 ranking, judging by the opinions of most men I’ve come across in the manosphere. A 4 or 5 is probably a more accurate assessment.
A couple of thoughts.
1. The friends -> romance route is often a recipe for disaster. As a guy, I’ve seen the crash and burn of this from the men’s side often enough, especially among younger men (most grow out of it due to being burned by it enough times). In these situations the blame is generally on both the person who is acting as a friend but wanting more yet on an undisclosed basis and the person who wants to be a friend but can tell the other person wants more yet is not willing to tell the other person bluntly that this won’t be happening because they enjoy the benefits of the friendship too much to jeopardize it, or because they simply don’t have the balls to say it. Either way, it’s a bad way to be. If you are a man who is interested in someone, make a move, don’t be her friend. Never enter the friendzone, and you won’t get friendzoned. If you’re a woman who wants more with one of her male friends, you’d be better off letting that go — either he isn’t that into you (if we was, he would have made a move already) or he is fairly clueless, which means he has no Game and it isn’t a great time to get involved with him. Either way, keep the friendship and the romance in separate, non-overlapping boxes. I know this is harder for younger people to do, because larger mixed sex groups of “friends” with degrees of relationship ambiguity seems to have become more common, but the situation is still fraught with risk and potential for disaster.
2. For Hermes. I think that the main issue is that you’re probably getting too focused in on one or two girls in a relatively small setting, which makes it harder to develop the kind of confidence you need. I don’t think you need to talk to hundreds of bar or club girls, but you do need to approach dozens of women in various situations to become comfortable with rejection, and to become more comfortable in your overall method/demeanor of approach. What this does is not only reduce your fear of rejection by making you less sensitive to it, but it also makes you more confident by realizing that there really are millions upon millions of women out there, including attractive ones, such that no one rejection is any big deal. When you get to that point (and of course it has to be calibrated to your level of attraction as well), you can have the confidence internally that will simply come out when you are approaching one of the nice girls at church and so on — it won’t be you projecting confidence or acting confident, it will just be your confident self, knowing that if she isn’t interested, there’s plenty of others around. Of course, you need to believe the latter, which is why it’s important not to be fishing in too small a pool.
“If a man presents himself as an emotional confidant to a woman, she will probably fall in love with him so long as he’s not off-puttingly effeminate or deformed or smelly or whatnot.”
Agreed – it is definitely the vulnerability residing underneath the confidence that is appealing in a man. He offers strength, and a place to rest at the same time.
My rule: if you would not engage the same behavior with someone of the same sex, it is probably flirting – otherwise, it defaults to friendship. An example: if he is kissing you behind the bleachers – he’s flirting! (I doubt he kisses his male friends). Alternatively: if he regularly asks about your day, then, by itself, it’s probably friendly – after all, would a man asking a male friend about his day automatically be suspected as gay? I thought not…