Inadvertently Flirting When You’re Taken

There’s been a lot of blogging about the article Gawker did on flirting while in a relationship and the (way more hilarious) follow up.

Since this article was first posted, the morality of flirting-while-taken has been blogged to death, but one of our readers sent in a different take on this situation.

Recently, while visiting my girlfriend, I was in an awkward situation that I was reminded of while reading these articles. We were hanging out with my girlfriend's group of friends, most of whom I hadn't met yet. One of the guys was gay, but I figured that he knew I was straight since I was visiting this girl, so I didn't even consider the possibility of accidentally flirting with him. However, later in the night, once we had left the place where we were hanging out, my girlfriend got texts from this guy saying "hey is your friend gay?" and "is your friend coming back to hang out with us?" Then, the next day, once I had left, the guy told her that I was "raping him with [my] eyes" and flirting with him the whole time. Now, I did talk to him a little bit, and maybe he took my eye contact for something much more than it was, but I certainly didn't even think of the possibility that I was flirting with him. This particular situation is complicated due to the differing sexual preferences of the parties involved, but it still made me wonder about an age old question: what exactly is flirting and how do you know when you're doing it?

I'd really like to hear your two cents on innocently flirting, or even innocently talking to, someone who might be interested in you, even though you are off-limits due to a monogamous relationship. Obviously every situation is different, but are there certain things that one can do to avoid leading on someone you're just trying to have a simple conversation with?

We think this sums up the other side of the problem. Yes, there are guys who feel the need to mention the fact that they have a girlfriend even if you’re only interacting with them because they rear-ended you at a stoplight (“Sorry I hit you, bythewayIhaveagirlfriend.”)

But what about when you smile at someone for two seconds and he follows you around the bar for the rest of the night?

We see this more of a question of etiquette than anything else. Yes, it sucks to feel like you accidentally led someone on (or, even worse, to feel like you were the one led on), but, at the end of the day, it’s not really that big of a deal.

If someone’s coming on too strong, drop the g-bomb (or b-bomb, depending on your gender/sexual preference). If the person still doesn’t get the hint, walk away.

But if he’s not letting on that he thinks you’re flirting and only texts someone afterwards (like in the situation above), is it really an issue? You’ll probably never see the guy again, and, even if you did, he doesn’t need to know that you saw those messages.

There’s no need to make him feel bad by rubbing your relationship in his face—especially if he isn’t coming on to you at all. Some people are just going to see things that they want to believe are true, and even if you invited them to your heterosexual wedding, they’d still tell their friends that you were making eyes at them during the first dance.

We’re taking off early for the weekend and heading to LA. See you Tuesday (no pun intended).

UPDATE: News Roundup: Why Do Smart Women Have the Toughest Time Dating

In discussions we’ve had with our readers after this morning’s post, we’ve come up with something we failed to mention before.

Our main problem with Dr. Benzer’s article is that it confuses intelligence with ambition. The hypothetical woman he describes in his article is very ambitious, but it’s not clear that she meets the conventional definition of “smart” (i.e., naturally intelligent and very well educated).

And while Dr. Benzer neatly outlines the problems faced by cutthroat business types, he doesn’t really touch on the problems faced by intellectual women.

If you can’t help but contextualize every film you see, and you like to spend the post-movie drink breaking it down scene by scene, it’s hard to date people who can’t keep up.

And so the real problem smart women face, in our opinion, is that they either spend too much time rubbing their obscure degrees in men’s faces, or they play dumb.

And neither solution is very effective.

News Roundup: Why Do Smart Women Have the Toughest Time Dating

The other day, a reader sent us this Huffington Post article: Why Do Smart Women Have the Toughest Time Dating.

It’s a good read, especially for the overly ambitious DC types, but the author leaves out one important trap smart women sometimes fall into the dating world: faking dumb.

It goes something like this: a woman thinks that men are more attracted to dumb bimbos, or she’s worried about scaring off a date with a less impressive resume, so she puts on this fake ditzy persona every time she goes out with a guy.

Why do women do this? Because they always see their attractive, successful male coworkers show up to the holiday party with Bambi, the personal trainer.

And while a lot of guys do date women who are more attractive than they are intelligent, when smart women get frustrated and decide it’s time to be more like the hot, dumb women who get ass, the smart women pick the wrong trait to emulate.

Guys like these women because they’re hot, not because they’re dumb. The unintelligence is the (minor) downside, it’s not the thing they’re attracted to.

Faking dumb isn’t going to attract a man. That’s like a guy watching Twilight and thinking it’s the fangs that make Robert Pattinson so irresistible to women.

What’s worse, faking dumb could hurt your chances of a relationship.

Remember, for a lot of guys, relationships and sex are two different things. The former requires putting in work, the latter delivers pleasure in its purest form.

When a guy wants sex, all he needs is a vagina. But when he wants a relationship, he needs a little bit more.

So if you pretend to have less, you’re not going to fall into the “relationship” category. Why would he invest time and energy in someone who can’t hold an intelligent conversation?

A Word of Advice

The dating world can be a dangerous place.

There are social scenes to navigate, assholes to avoid, and heartbreak lurking at every corner.

It makes sense that we sometimes need to ask other women for directions. But they don’t always offer the best advice.

While your friends can provide perspective on a situation you’re too embroiled in to evaluate objectively, they can also sometimes point you in the wrong direction.

Sometimes you ask your friends questions that you know the answer to. “Should I text Brian? He never responded to my voicemail from last Tuesday, but… I feel like I should send him one more text. Just so he knows I’m interested.”

If you actually thought this was a good idea, you would just send the text. But you’re asking your friends because you want them to tell you to do it.

And, most of time, they will. We all want to believe that things really are that easy. That you can text someone and he’ll magically be into you again. That he’s only ignoring you because he’s really hung up on his ex. And so we tell our friends to go for it.

Or sometimes we can see the writing on the wall, and we don’t want to tell our friends that their new crush is clearly not interested.

The outcome is still the same. If you’re asking “Should I do X?”, it’s probably because you’re looking for your friends to egg you on. And they will, because they’d want you to do the same.

If you have to ask, you probably already know the answer.

Survey the District: What to Give

Survey the District’s coming early this week, and this question comes from one of our male readers.

Dear Date the District,

What are the right gifts to be getting a girl at the different stages of a relationship? For example when is it okay to get jewelry, lingerie, toys, vacations, clothes? I don't want to scare her off and I don't want to be a cheapskate.

MP

Well, feel free to buy us jewelry, clothes, and vacations on the first date.

The answer to your question, like most relationship questions, is: it depends. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to gift giving, especially because it’s sometimes hard to pin-point what stage you’re in in a relationship. Some couples might only see each other once or twice a week six months after their first date, while others might get married on their three-month anniversary.

It also depends on the person. Some people might be freaked out if you tried to buy them a sex toy as an anniversary present. Others would love it.

If you’re strapped for cash or just not into the whole showering-your-lover-with-gifts thing, you probably don’t need to worry about giving gifts for no reason in the first few months.

Things can get confusing around birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries. If you’re lucky, the first milestone you’ll hit as a couple will be your birthday. Then you can see what your S.O. gives you and give a gift of similar value (both monetary and sentimental) when his or her birthday/December rolls around.

If you’re not so lucky, start small. If it’s a birthday, consider something that doesn’t come with an obvious price tag. Tickets to a concert, play, sports game, or event can be great if you’re worried about not making your gift too personal. Just make sure that it’s something the recipient wants to go to and that he/she is free that night. Buy two tickets and make it clear that he/she isn’t obligated to bring you.

If tickets aren’t quite up your alley, it really depends on both of your personalities and disposable income. But if it’s something that would be too extravagant to pick up for yourself on an impulse buy, it’s probably too much.

If you’re still stuck, try asking friends for advice. If you’re trying to buy a present for a girl, consult her friends. If you’re trying to buy a present for a guy, ask your friends. They’ll probably have better advice.

When a holiday or anniversary rolls around, it never hurts to talk to your partner about expectations for gifts. You can bring it as a joke, but if you’re serious enough to exchange gifts, you should be serious enough to discuss it. If he/she seems freaked out, say something like, “Well, I love buying presents, so you’re getting one.”

If you’re really trying to express your feelings with AMEX, again, it’s a good idea to start with baby steps and gauge the reaction each time. Start by bringing back a small gift from a vacation, or send flowers to her house for no reason. If she doesn’t seem freaked out, try waiting a few weeks, and you could try surprising her with clothes. If you’re still getting the green light, you can keep building up, but jewelry’s probably best saved for special occasions (i.e., holidays, birthdays, anniversaries). And vacations should never be a surprise.

But if things get awkward, it’s less about the gift you gave and more about how you react. If the person seems freaked out, tell him/her that it’s a combination present (“Well, I figured this would be Christmas and your birthday. And Hanukah. And Arbor Day.”) If the recipient seems dismayed, say, “Oh, this is just part one. Wait till you see part two!”

And then come up with a part two. Fast.

Just Say No to the Naked Make-Out (Part 2)

So what should you do if you’re in Maggie’s position? If you’ve spent too much time dry humping in a thong to ever go back to go back to a Victorian courtship, but you don’t wanna give it up until you have some sort of title (i.e., girlfriend)?

You don’t want to make it seem like you’re trading sex for relationship status. And that’s not how you should think of it either.

If it’s 3 a.m. and you’re nakedly grinding all over a guy, if you tell him you won’t go all the way unless he agrees to be your boyfriend, he’s gonna agree. In fact, there’s probably not very much he wouldn’t agree to if he thought it would get him laid.

But that doesn’t mean it’ll stick in the morning. I had a friend who once did just that: he took a girl home, she fed him the “no sex unless I’m in a relationship line,” he readily agreed, and then left the next morning before she woke up. When she called him, he didn’t pick up, and he finally texted her to tell her that he “realized he’d made a mistake.”

Like we said yesterday, when it gets past a certain point in the naked make-out, a guy’s mind is focused on only one thing: getting sex ASAP. If he can see your nipples, he won’t be able to have an honest talk about “where things are.” (Although you should avoid that topic as much as possible, especially in the beginning.)

But if you have been doing the naked make-out, here’s what you can do.

First, you need to figure out exactly what you want. Most girls tend to think about these situations in the abstract. They say they want their hook-up buddies to be their boyfriends, but they don’t really have a clear picture in their minds of what that means.

A guy could call himself your boyfriend and still blow you off six nights a week, pick up random girls in bars, and sleep with your best friend. The title means a lot less than the way he acts around you.

So figure out what kind of boyfriendly behavior you’re looking for. Do you want him to take you out to dinner once a week? Only call you when he’s sober? Introduce you to his friends? Call you to check in at the end of the day?

Once you know what you want, you need to start reinforcing that type of behavior. The most important part of this is usually hardest to do: you need to ignore him when he’s not treating you the way you want to be treated. But you have to do this in actions, not words. You can’t tell him, “I’m not gonna hook up with you unless you take me out with the guys.” If he texts you at 3 a.m., ignore him. If calls you and asks you to come over and watch a movie, tell him you’re busy. If he accuses you of blowing him off, blame it on work or school or yoga class.

But when he does the right thing, turn on the charm. If he asks you out to dinner, put on your nicest dress and make sure to compliment him if he looks good. Act in a way that will make him want to take you out to dinner again to replicate your behavior.

But this doesn’t mean you should use sex as a form of positive reinforcement. If you only let him go all the way after he takes you to dinner at Komi, he’s basically paying you for sex. And, unless you’re Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, this isn’t the path to a relationship.

You’re still going to have to figure out the right time to sleep with him. But until you are ready, avoid bringing him home.

This can be weird if you’ve already been doing the naked make-out. And you’re going to have to come up with pretty creative excuses. Tell him you’re tired. Say you have to get to work early. Make up a story about your crazy roommate.

You’re also going to have to play some things by ear, because the situation will be different for every couple. But, above all, you need to change the way you’re thinking about things. Don’t tell yourself that you’re waiting for him to say “girlfriend” before you’ll let him go all the way. And project this attitude when you’re talking to your wanna-be boyfriend. Don’t feel like you have to explain yourself or arbitrarily withhold certain things for set periods of time. Tell yourself that you’re in charge, and act like you can do no wrong.

If he straight-up asks you about the lack of loving (in the Biblical sense), you can say something like, “I don’t have sex unless I’m in a relationship, and I don’t know you well enough yet to know if I’d want to date you.” Make it seem like the decision is yours to make, not his.

Just Say No to the Naked Make-Out (Part 1)

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Friday Night Playlist

Not to be used with a random guy who bought you Delirium Tremens at Saint-Ex.

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Survey the District: But How Do I Let Him Know That I'm Interested?

Dear Date the District,

One of your posts talked about texting... OK, I get that you don’t ever want to look desperate. But how do you let a guy know you’re interested? Sometimes he asks for your number and then never calls, and sometimes I think it might be because I didn’t seem interested enough at the bar. So what’s wrong with texting him to clear the air?

Anonymous

Well, anonymous, the answer to your question is simple: never let a guy know that you’re interested. If a guy’s not calling you, it’s not because he’s worried that you’ll shoot him down. The lack of interest is on his part, not yours.

I don’t buy the whole He’s-Just-Not-That-Into-You craze, the book that your best friends were all telling you you had to read five years ago that turned into a movie that is single-handedly responsible for my desire to punch Ginnifer Goodwin in the face (seriously, WTF was she doing in a chick flick?).

Realizing that a guy doesn’t like you is painful, not liberating, and my problem with the He’s Just Not That Into You franchise is that it encourages girls to act like psycho bitches (i.e., leaving a guy five messages in a row and then validating that behavior by saying, “Well, if he doesn’t like me, it’s his loss!”).

Most of the time, if you try to show a guy that you’re into him, he’s not gonna be that into you.

It works that way for girls too. I went to a happy hour with some friends recently, and two of my friends (let’s call them Kate and Angela) started talking to two guys. The guy Kate was talking to was really cute, and Angela’s guy… was not. They all exchanged numbers at the end of the night. Kate’s guy called her the next day and asked her to go out the following night. On their date, he kept telling her how happy he was to have met her. He texted her three times that night, and Kate never responded. She said she never felt a spark.

Angela, on the other hand, didn’t hear for her guy for almost a week. And she noticed. Even though she claimed she wasn’t interested, she was worried that he’d rejected her. And that made her care.

Like we talked about last week, when you know someone’s interested in you, that person becomes less exciting, less appealing. It’s the unknowns that really get inside your head.

It’s the same way for guys. So even though a guy might respond to a 3 a.m. booty call text, he’s not gonna stick around for breakfast the next morning. He’ll continue to hook up with you for as long as it’s convenient, but when you ask him to come to your office holiday party, he’ll conveniently be out of town, and you’ll probably stop hearing from him for a while.

If you want to go out of your way to let a guy know you’re interested, he’ll get the message. But that will just make it hurt even more when you realize he’s not.

Not-So-Desperate Singles Event?

Normally, we're not advocates of singles nights. They're usually 1) a huge waste of time 2) incredibly awkward and 3) filled with such desperate, misguided aging bachelors that the few normal people who show up leave feeling beyond depressed because it seems like all the good ones are taken.

But on Friday night, the mysterious "Atieno and Alana" host an evening of "champagne and conversation" at Napoleon Bistro. We'll show up anywhere if there's a champagne tasting (which there is), but Atieno (a real estate agent who "finds houses and spouses") wants you to come to meet someone who you'll really connect with. And she has a plan to make sure it's not a guy who still gets dating advice from his mom.

Here's how it works: you show up looking hot and bring a friend of the opposite sex who's a real catch (i.e., someone you would set your best friend up with). Add champagne. Rinse. Repeat.

We're a little worried that it might just be cute girls and their awkward, cute-but-not-in-that-way-but-a-really-sweet-guy friends from college. But you never know. And did we mention the champagne?

E-mail us at datethedistrict@gmail.com if you want an invite. Otherwise, we'll see you at 1847 Columbia Rd NW this Friday at 7:30.