Why Men Think Women Are Flirting

This explains some things:

Basically, quoting Justin J Lehmiller, “It’s adaptive for men to error on the side of over- rather than under-perceiving women’s sexual interest.” There is little to lose and something to gain by misperceiving friendliness or politeness as sexual interest. Hence it may have become hard-wired into human males.

Update: This is not to say this justifies men being aggressive, in any form, toward women. Men need to realize it is easy for them to make erroneous conclusions and women need to realize they may sometimes need to be “less than subtle” in their communication with men.

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4 thoughts on “Why Men Think Women Are Flirting

  1. Ah, so it’s all about men’s misperceptions. I would have guessed. We could on the other hand call it “Conversation Misperception”, a congenital mental disease afflicting all women in which, through wishful thinking, a woman assumes a man is interested in anything she has to say when in fact his one and only interest is copulation as soon as possible.

    It’s wishful thinking in either case then. The woman wishes the man would listen to her, and the man wishes she would shut up and take off her clothes so he can insert his penis in her. They’re both pathological, each in their own way.

    Humans may be “hard wired” in some rudimentary ways and one of those, surely, is that we are able, not only to observe but to perceive and understand. That if anything is what sets us apart from other creatures. We are quite capable of short-circuiting the process of understanding however, by engaging in wishful thinking, for which another word is selfishness.

    “Yes yes; your sister steals your clothes whenever she’s over, your cat died and you found a new job, blah blah blah; how does that get me into bed with you? (Maybe if I act interested she’ll fall for it and think I care about her well-being or some dumb shit – actually maybe I do care, for if she’s not well I may not be able to stick my penis in her).”

    Here’s a clue; you should never have sex with someone who’s dumb enough and/or pig-selfish enough to want to have sex with you without knowing you for a good long time. There. I said it. Call me old-fashioned. Some things are timeless and this is one of them, even though it may be for me to know and you to figure out.

    Is it still all men’s fault? If it is, the video skips over the point. For one thing, women can enjoy the fact that men are weak, needy, even desperate little turds for them. It gives the woman a sense of power she’d never have otherwise. If some guy is weak for a woman, and she’s perceptive enough to see it but not perceptive enough to understand the long term consequences, then it would take a strong woman not to fall to the temptation to take full advantage of the dumb bastard. And many do. To the undoing of both.

    It’s like two paupers, each pretending to be rich so as to be better able to take advantage of the other. Eventually they both find out that the other was playing them, then they both feel betrayed and rightly so. They each hate the other and for plausible reasons.

    I believe that’s why we’re said to “fall” in “love”, rather than to “ascend in love”, and that’s because it IS a falling, because it isn’t love. Its lust. It’s “falling from what love is all about”, to quote a friend.

    And so we come to the fact that some cultures have many different words for what we tend to lump together and call love. It’s like Eskimos and snow; there are all manner of varieties of snow, each with its own characteristics and one must know them each and understand their benefits, purposes, uses and potential pitfalls. When engaged in sex, we might say that we’re “making love” for example, but more often than not it’s just the opposite. We’re falling, because of selfishness, into a trap that leads to frustration, anger, mental illness, substance abuse and hate and a thousand other pathologies. How many spouses kill their partners, to say nothing of divorce? That’s nothing like love at all, no matter how many copulations take place.

    Go ahead and tell me it isn’t so.

    Anyway, I’m the smarter one in the marriage. We’ve been known as “Mister Genius and Miss Information” (I solve problems and she passes on information). My biggest challenge now is to help her understand exactly how wrong I was. She knows I was wrong (men always are of course; it’s been programmed into our culture) but she has absolutely no idea why or how.

    • I think this might be so for you because of your attitude towards women. However, my reason for commenting is a bookmark to note that a lack of comment does not mean agreement or consent. “It gives the woman a sense of power she’d never have otherwise.” I don’t gain any sense of power from talking with men or when I think a primary motive could be to get me into bed. Women don’t need to involve men to have a sense of power and it certainly wouldn’t be related to sex. Sex is a fraction of a day. Sex is fun. I find your references to men’s primary thought being to “stick it in her” as offensive to men and women.

      • @ Barb L
        Based on your very civil comment you are a nice person. However, you are giving men entirely too much credit.

    • I don’t know what planet and/or species you are from, but it’s not one I’m familiar with. If that doesn’t explain the difference in our experiences then perhaps you need a larger and better sample to study and upon which to draw your conclusions.

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