First of all, I apologize if something is not understood, English is not my first language, but I’ll try to explain myself as clearly as possible.
Me (25M) For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had more female friends than male and whenever I make a new friend everyone thinks I’m hitting on her, even the girl herself, when in reality I feel like I’m treating them like any other male friend. This has led to misunderstandings with the girls who in the end think I like them and in some cases have thought that we are dating when I was not even aware of it. This really didn’t bother me that much until recently.
I just got out of a long term relationship and at the same time I feel like I have lost all my close friendships, my male friends have distanced themselves from me because they think I am trying to pick up their partners and steal them away from them.
My female friends, who I counted on for support to get over the breakup, have made some moves on me thinking that I was making them too or their boyfriends have forbidden them to talk to me. Fortunately I am a very sociable person and now I have found a new group, in which I try to be more careful to avoid misunderstandings, although they usually appear.
However, when I have met people who have caught my attention and I want to try to flirt, they end up seeing me as their friend, even on apps like tinder and bumble, women tend to ask me if I’m really looking for something else because apparently “I’m not trying to make any moves on them”.
i feel that if i could understand the line between being friendly and flirting, i could change the situation, but no matter how many times i repeat the situations in my head i can’t find what i’m doing wrong for almost everyone to see it the other way around. i’ve been told to treat the people i like the way i treat my friends to see if it works, but for some reason it doesn’t. the former comes more naturally and the latter i even feel uncomfortable sometimes.
If you have read everything thank you for your time and also for the advice if you have any.
1 comment
Hi!
I am struggling with a similar problem but I am a woman. People naturally like me, which I enjoy (I mean, who wouldn’t enjoy it?) because I am friendly and I guess funny. The downside of it is that some men are genuinely convinced I am flirting with them. My problem is that I believe I am just being friendly – only in retrospect I can understand that men were actively hitting on me and my being friendly and not stopping them could be seen as a green light. I have had problems because of it and I am myself confused about what to do about it. On the one hand, I don’t want to feel under pressure every time I am in a social setting just because of being afraid that someone might misunderstand me, on the other hand, there must be a way to somehow be more cautious about it and prevent such situations. This is exactly what you say about understanding “the line between being friendly and flirting”.Knowing myself (thanks to therapy), I guess in my case the problem is boundaries. I have problems with asserting strong boundaries (as a result, people don’t feel them at all, as my therapist says) and even if I am deep inside uncomfortable with someone touching me, for example, I often do nothing about it until it gets too annoying or straightforwardly assaulting (like touching my butt or breasts). Often I simply see touching my hand or shoulder as a friendly gesture if it is coming from someone I know. Maybe this is where the problem lies. Do you think it might be a similar case to you?
In addition to this, I think when a person is interested in you, they start seeing evidence about you liking them back in the smallest gestures. In theory, it would be amazing to be more cautious about someone behaving as they like you, but in practice, I have no idea how one can do that since sometimes it can bring even more misunderstanding (e.g. because of previous experiences you think people are romantically interested in you while they are not, which may lead to you sabotaging your future friendships).
I hope it makes sense to you. I decided to share since I have a very similar problem and recently it happened to me again, so I’ve been thinking about it a lot.
UPD: I am sorry there is no advice in this comment but maybe we can theorise together what might be the causes or other redditors can recommend us something 😀