
This comes via Reddit and it has over 13,000 responses. I will be giving you the best responses, but let me give you the short answer — you don’t know the difference — not for sure anyway until you make a move. Granted, you can take a good guess if she starts to stack up indicators of interest in you, but women give off IOIs for all kinds of reasons. They’re just being friendly, they like you as a friend, they want attention, they want the ego gratification of a guy showing interest in them, etc, etc, etc. Rarely are you 100% sure until you make the pitch and she bites or rejects you.
Anyway, here are what I thought were the best answers from this thread:
— “There’s no good answer to that question – a million different people may give a million different signals/hints/signs that they are or are not interested in you romantically.
What I’ve found works for me and what I think is the kindest, least awkward way – both towards yourself and the other person – is to:
- Have some sort of consistently positive relationship/repeated interaction with them first, and then:
- In a light-hearted and friendly way and without implying any kind of emotional pressure, just ask if they’d like to go on a date with you. Use the word ‘date’.
Trending: He Watched 9 Guys Run a Train On Her & Then Later Married Her
If they say yes – congrats, they’re into you at least enough to give it a shot and see where it goes!
If they say ‘no’, for the love of all that is holy, don’t take it as a personal insult – it probably isn’t – keep it light-hearted and take the refusal with grace. They aren’t into you, and throwing a tantrum over it or trying to pressure them further isn’t going to help them be into you what so ever.”
— “If they act the exact same way with other people, you’re out of luck.”
— “If I could go back in time and tell my past self one thing about dating, it would be “If you have fun hanging out with a girl, do just that. Spend as much time as you can, just like you and a friend would do. Don’t even think about actually hooking up, or care if she’s not spending all of her time with you. If things are going to happen, they just naturally will.”
— “As my dear old dad used to say: ‘Women who work for tips are NOT flirting with you.'”
— “Flirting’s basically a dumb game of chicken with gradual escalation.”
— “It’s actually really f*cking hard and I literally had a situation about this right now. She’s the kind of person who hugs everyone, is very friendly with people… She’s basically a puppy. So when I met her and she did all that, I just thought “cool, she seems nice”.
It took me til her saying “yeah, I’m gonna sleep in your bed tonight” for me to understand what’s going on…”
— “You don’t. One persons ‘just being friendly’ is another’s ‘Take me to a hotel and f*ck me right now’.
— “from personal experience, as a man, the women who turned out were attracted to me:
– touched me a lot
– held eye contact
– smiled a lot, and laughed at my jokes even the not funny ones
– always found the excuse to be near me
– made sure I had a good view of their “goods” (cleavage, butt, legs, etc, whichever they thought was best)
– inquired about my relationship status
– talked about their relationship status, unprompted
– fed me things, or gave/bought drinks
– asked to see my tattoos (which required pulling my shirt off )
Also, I noticed that there is a certain “type” of women who are attracted to me, and who in turn I find attractive as well, so in most cases I just assume mutual attraction and plow forward with flirting as hardcore as I can get away with.”
— “Really with some people you CANNOT tell.
I knew a girl who was super friendly with me, I got interested, and then a few weeks around her I saw this was how she treated EVERY guy. Smiles, ‘oh stop it you!’, flirting… I wasn’t special here. I moved on.
I knew a girl who friendly with everyone. We sat down at a birthday party and talked non-stop for three hours. She was friendly with people, but I hadn’t seen her do this before. I got her number and called her, we talked until my phone died.
Our tenth wedding anniversary was about six weeks ago. Our oldest kid turns 7 in a few months.”
— “Yeah look man, or many, there is no secret method. You just have to be forward without crossing any boundaries. The easiest way to know is to ask, straight up. It may be awkward but it’s better than the alternative of waiting for all of eternity. Don’t be afraid to ask either, just think of it like this, right? If you don’t ask you are right where you are right now. If you do ask, you have two possibilities: 1 they like you, and you can move forward from there. 2, they don’t like you, and you don’t move forward, and you’re back in your starting point. You are either exactly where you start having lost nothing, or in a cool new relationship. Nothing to lose, except I guess the possibility of a relationship I guess, but assuming they don’t like you, you’re going to lose it sooner or later, so like I said, nothing to lose, really.”
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