A Girls Predicament

It seems as though our last post about the qualities of a lady douche has struck a chord in the Makin’ Lemonade reading community, and from the wreckage has emerged our FIRST GUEST BLOGGER! She has submitted a post called “A Girl’s Predicament”. Let’s see what she has to say about all this girly doucheness…

"In a conversation, I generally focus on the other person rather than myself; I truly am interested in what people are up to, what their hobbies are, how they’re doing, etc. I already know all that stuff about myself and this is why I prefer talking about the other person instead. With the opposite sex, however, this is oftentimes misconstrued as romantic interest or flirtation—and this is where the line between being friendly and being flirty begins to dissolve. He thinks I’m flirting, but I know I’m just being friendly. Let me illustrate with an encounter that I observed just last week:

My friend and I had just boarded a plane heading back to the U.S. I had reserved the window seat (fortunately) and she had reserved the aisle seat. Across the aisle from her, maybe 2 feet away, an older gentleman had just taken his seat. (By older, I mean old enough to attend AARP meetings with our dads). Anyway, he begins making small talk and asking where she is from, what she does….you know, the basics. Well, my friend answers in her usual upbeat and friendly way. As I settle in, I’m half listening to their conversation, but not thinking much about it at all. Twenty minutes pass. All of a sudden, I hear my friend mention that I am from Las Vegas. This is her way of trying to take the focus off herself. It doesn’t work—in fact, it works against her. The Las Vegas comment gives him an idea. He suggests that they take a road trip to Vegas together (they are both from the same area) and when would she like to go? From there, it becomes very clear that he is interested in her romantically. He mentions he is recently divorced and would like to take her out to dinner. The next 12 hours on the plane are slightly uncomfortable for her. Every couple hours he tries to strike up a conversation and she politely tells him she’s in the middle of a very interesting movie. At the end of the flight, he throws out his final offer, gives her his contact information, and alights the plane.

There are a few unfortunate realities about this encounter:

1. A man should not be hitting on a woman who could easily pass as his youngest daughter. No way.
2. He wasn’t picking up on subtlety. (Since he is recently divorced, we’ll give him a break; this dating thing is probably new for him). In my friend’s words “He had no game.”
3. It ended up being awkward for both parties: she had to reject him repeatedly and he unsuccessfully tried to find love on China Airlines.

So what is my point in recounting this story? My point is that being friendly can backfire. In this particular instance, my friend was being friendly, nothing more. She didn’t flirt, she didn’t touch, she didn’t try to make future plans. She made it very clear that she only wanted a platonic, 12-hour relationship. He, on the other hand, thought she was showing interest and giving him the “go ahead.” Why did he think this? Because the perception of friendliness can often be confused with flirtiness. And what is the solution? Well, there really is none; that’s why it is a predicament. You can’t be unfriendly; that’s just not cool. The closest thing to a solution is to merely try and pick up on subtlety more. This being said, some people will never pick up on anything more subtle than the other person actually saying, “I’m not interested in you.” Since most of us women would feel horrible actually saying this straight out, the “games” will continue. And by “games” I really mean “not saying what’s on our minds”—and that’s an entirely separate post.

Thus, the moral of my story is this: Request a window seat if you have the option. That way, you only have ONE person sitting next to you. If this person acts extra “friendly” and you’re not romantically interested, you can always look out the window and pretend like you’re really into cloud formations.

Stay tuned for next week’s post. Clever Alias (i.e. the “male Delilah”) will be answering the age old question: How can we be lovers if we can’t be friends?

Happy dating!

Sincerely,

The Less-Famous Dr. Laura

(www.vegasbanana.blogspot.com)"

Not sure that will be our next post, but it's a consideration...

Interesting stuff, thanks Dr. L.!!

-Clever Alias