em8ambitions:
glumshoe:
enby-phoenix:
glumshoe:
vampearlgrey:
glumshoe:
I know people make jokes about being oblivious to flirting, but you really can’t overstate how bad I am at picking up on signs. I dated someone on accident once because I didn’t notice he had romantic intentions by inviting me out to get ice cream until he was holding my hand and asking if I was ready to go steady (I did not understand what that meant, but I said yes out of curiosity). My first kiss was a complete surprise because I didn’t realize that her compliments and touches were meant to be flirtatious until her lips were on mine. My friends have dragged me away from people in bars because I was so eager to make cheerful smalltalk about NASA that I didn’t figure out a drunk stranger touching my hair was trying to seduce me. I once interpreted long, unbroken eye contact as aggression and braved myself for a violent fistfight with a classmate, only for him to kiss me on the lips.
actually thats cute
It’s frustrating, because it means I don’t get a chance to consider whether or not I am attracted to or interested in kissing them.
Say someone kisses me. I react with surprise and confusion. “Don’t you like me?” she asks, feeling hurt that I did not reciprocate.
From her perspective, we’ve been flirting all night. I’ve been talking and smiling and (probably) mirroring her body language. I return her compliments with my own, but seem a little nervous, so she thinks she’ll take the lead and goes for a kiss. When I am startled by this, her feelings are hurt. Aren’t I interested?
From my perspective, I don’t know. I have just been enjoying socialization and following friendly cues from a stranger who, perhaps sensing my awkwardness, makes it easy to follow a script. It has not occurred to me that this is a romantic encounter, and so I have not spent this time figuring out if I’m attracted to her. Do I want to kiss her? I don’t know, and it seems impolite and objectifying to think about that while we are having such a pleasant conversation. Perhaps I do find her attractive, but I won’t know until I’ve had time to intentionally process it.
My attempts to be polite and friendly can come off as extremely rude, I guess.
So what you’re saying is that it would be easier if people flirting with you announced outright that they were flirting? Or am I reading too much into this?
Possibly, yes. Although truth be told, I don’t know if that would make things easier for me or not, because I usually can’t tell if I’m attracted to or interested in someone until I’m already helplessly deep in a crush. So even if I know that someone is flirting with me, I might not figure out if I want to flirt back or kiss them until… well. Hard to say.
If someone were to ask me if I wanted to flirt with or kiss them, I probably won’t be able to answer that honestly. How am I supposed to know? Does “I can’t tell” mean the same as “no”?
@setepenre-set I feel like Megamind could really relate to this bc although he and Roxanne flirt back and forth when they banter, he interprets this completely as them just playing along in their roles as villain and captive. I don’t think he interprets their interactions as actual flirting, and I also don’t think he believes Roxanne would actually flirt with him. And when he realizes that she does like him that way and is actually flirting with him for real, it leaves him dumbfounded ‘cause he’s like…. “wait a minute…. you were seriously flirting with me this whole time??!”
He does not do well with social cues, and honestly, that is a very relatable thing for a lot of people, lol.