Perhaps the trickiest part about looking for a potential partner is reading the situation. It's hard to know what the other person is thinking. Is she into me? Does her body language suggest she's flirting with me? Did she intend her words to be some sort of hint or signal? Often times, guys will interpret the signs completely wrong and end up feeling totally embarrassed about how they acted. Guys from around the world took to the internet to share the obvious signs from girls that totally went over their heads. Read on for some sad and cringeworthy tales:
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#1 Mixed Signals
Her wink was a disorder. I should have known because I have this myself. I mean, it hasn't been diagnosed or anything, but every now and then I'll randomly wink and it's gotten me in some rather precarious situations... The most memorable was at a Model UN competition. A new guy from another school was super nervous and had a hard time speaking, so I gave him some tips during a break. When we got back in, I sat down across from him and it happened. I winked. He smiled. The next break came and he followed me into the hallway, asking me if I wanted to get dinner. I'm a dude and very straight. That was an awkward conversation.
#2 It Wasn't Me
This happened in my last year of high school. I had a crush on a girl in my band class. I played the clarinet, she played the flute. We were both in the first row, so we sat directly across from each other and naturally looked at each other during rehearsals. At our school, all the graduating band kids were allowed to write a short blurb that would be included in the program for our spring concert. Anyway, on the concert day, I was hanging around backstage, flipping through the program while waiting for the parents to start arriving. I eventually got to her blurb—her favorite band memory was "looking across at a certain clarinet player." Turns out it wasn't me.
#3 Mental Gymnastics
I asked a girl to go ice skating with me for New Year's Eve. She excitedly said, "I'd love to!" A few days out, I asked her when I should pick her up. She seemed confused. she clarified that "I'd love to!" doesn't mean "yes." I'm not upset about it. I don't need to deal with that kind of mental gymnastics.
#4 An Impossible Situation To Read
I went to a girl's place to watch the Olympics. It was our second "date." She told me I could sleepover because we had been drinking. Her brother and his girlfriend were there so I didn't think anything of it. It started to get late, so I asked her for some blankets and pillows to sleep on the couch. She told me that I could just sleep in her bed with her. I still did not think anything of it.
Her brother gave some pajamas to wear and I changed. I got into bed while the girl was brushing her teeth. Next thing you know, she walked into the bedroom totally naked and got into bed. It caught me off guard. I was suddenly filled with happiness. I moved in to kiss her (we hadn't before) and she said, "I am not ready for that." I was so confused. I just rolled over and questioned reality until I fell asleep.
#5 Invasion Of Privacy
This girl I liked freshman year of high school came up to me before a concert. She mentioned a part of my shirt had become untucked and then proceeded to tuck it in herself, putting her entire hand down my pants. Afterward, she acted as if nothing happened and ignored my now more obvious advances. She also got a boyfriend not long after.
#6 A Huge Curve
The girl I liked asked me, "Hey, do you wanna go to prom with me?!" I said, "Yes, of course!" and she said "Great! We're all going in a group, and you can be Mildred's date!"
#7 Conversion Tactic
I moved to a new town for a job and I didn't really know anyone. I got a haircut and the hairdresser seemed to be flirting with me. She ended up giving me her number. The next day, she asked if I wanted to come over to her place. I was like, heck yes. I got there and there were like three other people with her. I turned out she was hosting a Mormon bible study or something and was basically trying to convert me to Mormonism.
#8 Falling Asleep
I had some people over at my house back in high school. A girl grabbed me by the hand to go into my room with me without saying much of anything. I made a few attempts at getting things going, but she ended up just falling asleep with me on my bed. I was definitely a bit confused.
#9 The Awkward House Tour
In the 10th grade, my super flirty female friend Janice came over after school. "Can I see your room?" she asked me. She was legitimately curious about my personal quarters. We ended up playing PS2 and having a tickle fight, which only happened because my dumb self tried to put the moves on her. I had to play it off once I saw that wasn't why she came over.
#10 "I Have A Boyfriend"
A friend from high school and I were hanging out. After talking for a bit, she leaned over and kissed me, and for the next hour we made out. Nothing else happened though. The next time I saw her (a couple of days later), she was talking about her new boyfriend. I thought she was playfully referring to me so I went in for a kiss. That's when she stopped me and said, “I just told you about my boyfriend.” I was really confused. I haven’t seen her since.
#11 Temporary Fling
This girl and I had been flirting for a couple of weeks, and we finally ended up alone in my truck just before soccer practice. We started making out, then after a few minutes, she hopped out of the truck and into another car with a friend. I shrugged then made my way to play soccer. The very next morning, before I had even seen the girl, her friend came up and told me Erin was now in a relationship with some other dude. What the heck, Erin?
#12 Whipping Out The Diary
I had a coworker who kept flirting with me. She gave me her Facebook and phone number. She constantly kept seeking me out just to talk. She'd always have those "sparkly" eyes and tone of voice. Eventually, she messaged me to pick her up at a parking lot. We went around town sharing ice cream and loitering in random stores until 3 a.m. Then, she randomly asked to come over at midnight. We sat in my room and we put a movie on. The whole time, she refused to cuddle. She kept talking about how boys were always trying to make a move on her. Then she took out her diary from high school and read it to me.
#13 Hurtful Body Language
I was laying on the grass with my love interest. We were having such a fantastic time together and I told her how I've always wanted to kiss her. She responded, "Why don't you ever try?” I then seized the moment and went in for a smooch. Immediately she moved away from me. Profoundly hurt, I told her "That's why." Later on , she told me she was diagnosed with severe bipolar and had split with her husband. There were ample red flags, but she was like a siren nymph who I actually could not deny.
#14 Into The Jokes
She was laughing hysterically at EVERY joke I told. I turned out, she wasn't into guys. Apparently, she just genuinely thought I was freaking hilarious. We sat next to each other through the class we both had for that year, but I never saw her again once it ended.
#15 Respectfully Declining
In high school, these two "popular" girls thought they'd have a laugh by going up to the "nerdy" group of boys and asking them one by one when they were alone if they'd be interested in having a date with them. When a boy said yes, they'd pull a date (the fruit) out of their pocket and laugh.
I guess they just assumed because we were nerds and virgins that we would desperately say yes, but they got a pretty big awakening when all the boys rejected them. We then had some girls come over and say that we were mean for making them cry, but I reckon it's a heck of a lot more cruel to plan on embarrassing a bunch of teenage boys the way she was going to than us taking what they said seriously and respectfully declining.
#16 Java Jumble
Usually, on Fridays after work, I like to go to a coffee shop to catch up with some more work. This girl who is about my age (late 20s) works as a barista there. Sometimes she has the Friday afternoon shift, sometimes she doesn't. Anyway, she was always sort of flirty to me, which I initially attributed to her job persona.
A few weeks ago, she was there at the register with a group of friends being outright flirty. The moment I crossed the door, they even said: "Oh, here comes your coffee boyfriend!" I played along with no awkwardness at all. A couple of hours later, I was done with my work so I approached her to say thanks. I then asked her out. Her reply?
"I have a boyfriend."
#17 Being Used As A Shield
I went to RenFest with some friends. Tagging along was a girl I hadn't met before. We walked around for the better part of the day and I noticed at almost every opportunity she was being very flirty with me, made several brushes up against my arms and seemed to want to hold my hand a lot. I took this as a sign that she was interested in me, but as it turned out she was using me to shield herself away from the other friend that she came with, who was quite interested in her. It was a big blow to my already fragile ego.
#18 Lovey-Dovey Duped
A girl I was seeing in college started talking all lovey-dovey on the phone with me almost every night.
The usual. She would stay stuff like:
"So what are you doing tonight?"
"I can't sleep and I miss you."
"No, you hang up first."
"No, you."
We saw each other every day. We studied together and went for dinners. A couple of months later, I confessed my feelings for her. She said that was weird and that she wasn't looking for a relationship. Then she got herself a boyfriend two weeks later.
#19 Caught By Surprise
I asked a coworker out and she said "Yes." I thought that was a good hint. The next day, she called me and said she only accepted it because I caught her by surprise and she didn't know what to say. She wasn't really interested in going on a date with me.
#20 A Jerk Move
In high school, a girl asked me to go to a school dance with her. This was a girl I had liked for quite some time, so I thought this was a good indicator. The day before the dance, she told me, "I'm actually going with so-and-so. I asked you so that you would end up without a date. I think you're a jerk and you don't deserve to go."
#21 Single Mother, But Not Single
I needed a haircut for my friend's wedding that I had been putting off until the last minute. Since it was early September, all the places I usually went to were full of kids getting their back to school haircuts. So after a long search, I found a hair salon that could take me. The girl cutting my hair was very nice and we were talking about a lot of stuff. Some things I thought were more than just small talk, like local places we both went to and things we did when we were kids.
She also mentioned several times that she was a single mother. I took her constant mentioning of being a single mother to mean she was single. After I paid and left, I thought about it for a while and worked up the nerve to go back and ask her out, thinking she had been sending me signals. When I did, she told me she had a boyfriend.
#22 Stood Up
I'd been hanging out with this girl for a couple of weeks, at the same bar, on and off. We'd flirt, make out, etc. At some point, she agreed to go on a date with me. Then stood me up. No communication, no nothing. So, I gave up and went to the bar we hung out at. She showed up 20 minutes after I did. With another guy.
#23 Picky Tastes
Last summer, I asked a girl out who, prior to me asking her out, was complaining about how nobody loved her. I said: “No, that’s not true”. She replied with, “Oh really? Please hit me up.” So I told her how I feel. She said no.
#24 Different Preferences
In high school, I had a best friend who I was secretly into. She invited me over to her parents' house after school every Friday. Her parents were never home. She literally would strip naked as soon as the door closed and invite me to join in as well. I'd comply... then nothing. We'd sit on the couch and watch TV, eating popcorn while both of us were buck naked. After three weeks of this, I tried to kiss her. She reacted in total recoil. Then, she told me she's only into girls.
#25 Scanning For Intentional Innuendos
I went to a small real estate office to do some computer work. The only person in the office was a drop-dead gorgeous girl. I explained what I needed to do with the computer system. She asked if she needed to log off. I said no. She said, "Okay, just let me know if you need me to go down." I scanned the situation for intentional innuendo. It was clean. She walked away. I did my job then left.
#26 I'm Being Serious
I received a text message at 1:30 a.m. from a girl that I expressed interest in me to come over and help her rearrange her bedroom. Turned out, she couldn't sleep and just legitimately wanted help rearranging her bedroom.
#27 Candle Fetish?
In high school, I worked in retail, and one of the attractive managers walked up after closing. She started going on about her candle fetish, dropping the word "fetish" about 50 times during her little rant. So finally I tried to flirt back. Honestly, I can't remember what I said, but it was probably something brilliant like, "Hey, want to make out in the back?" She then went super-cold and told me she was happily married. Ack, I didn't know what was going on. Sorry!
#28 "I'm Not Flirting!"
A tipsy girl once approached me in a KFC and said she loved my hair.
I said thank you.
She then proceeded to chat and called me "really good looking."
I responded, as a joke, “Oh, you flirt.”
She responded, “I’M NOT FLIRTING!” and stormed off.
I collected my chicken and left needlessly deflated.
#29 Valentine's Day Gone Wrong
She asked if she could have the Valentine's Day rose my manager got me (which my manager did for all the employees in her department). She said it could be her Valentine's Day present from me. I kind of pursued it a little, but never got anything more than that out of it (although we still always spend any work-related event together).
#30 Two's Company
I was on a cruise ship. A girl asked me to come with her to her room so she could "change shoes."
On the way to her room, I kept running the scenario in my head and concluded that she was obviously flirting with me... Nope, she just wanted to switch into more comfortable shoes and felt she needed company on the way.
#31 Getting Comfortable
I made plans with a girl once to come over for dinner and a movie, platonically. When we got to the movie portion, she took off her pants laid beside me in my bed. I made a move. To this day, she claims she was only getting comfortable and wasn't interested. She's my wife now and I tell the kids she made the first move.
#32 No Reciprocity Allowed
Back in high school, a girl in my class openly told me that if she got the chance, she would get intimate with me. She was kind of on the hot side, so I tried to make something happen. About a week later, she was grabbing me all over, in-between classes, so I proceeded to grab her as well. She got mad and wouldn't talk to me for a week. I was left very confused afterward.
#33 Make Me Your WCW
In my senior year of high school, there was this cheerleader who asked for my number and would always flirt with me, saying we’d be the cutest couple in the school. She always wanted me to come over to her apartment in downtown Indiana. At some point, she told me to make her my WCW. Everyone at school was telling me to ask her out already because signals couldn't have been more clear. When I asked her out to lunch, she freaked out and was shocked that I would interpret our friendship for that...
#34 Too Rude
A girl asked if I wanted to hang out with her before we went to hang with our friends. We watched a movie and she laid her head on my lap. Then, suddenly, I'm a creep because I "tricked" her into coming over to hang out alone. I was really confused. Over time, most of our friends believed me because she "did dumb stuff like that all the time." But that was a shocker to me and it kind of messed with my head. Apparently, I was so unattractive that her excuse for hanging out with me had to be that I tricked her.
#35 Friendship Vs. Relationship
I was chilling with a group of friends, and she kept sitting next to me. She texted me a lot that following week. The following Saturday, we were chilling again, and as expected, she sat next to me. We were going to watch a movie and at some point she just started leaning against me until she was basically laying on top of me. Later that evening, I decided to ask her out because all my friends were picking up the signal too. She gave me a kiss on my cheek and told me she'd think about it. The next day I got a text: "I'd rather stay friends with you."
#36 Is She Shallow?
I was a girl I worked with. She had quit the job a week or two prior and came in to get her last check. She came and hugged me, which surprised me because we weren't on hugging terms when she worked there. Then she lingered to chat, staring at my lips while I was talking. She just kept hanging around even with some long pauses, like I should have asked her out or something, but I didn't.
About a week later, I got her number from another coworker and we briefly texted. After a while, I asked her out and she said no... I would have preferred no answer at all. Who knows, maybe she was feeling it when she was in there and then a week later, she remembered what I looked like.
#37 No Hard Feelings
A friend of mine had recently broken up with her boyfriend. We both got pretty tipsy at a party. She started getting super flirty and was hanging all over me. We were getting looks from people at the party. She asked if we could go back to my place. I didn’t ever really think of her that way—we met while she was in a relationship and we had established a friendship that wasn't romantic in the slightest, but she was cute so I figured why not?
We got back to my place and she was sitting on the couch. I went to make a move and immediately I could tell she was not down. She literally just wanted to sleep on my couch instead of going to her own place. It was awkward and embarrassing, but we laughed it off and we’re still friends two years later. I’ve since learned that she’s a total flirt when she gets drunk and to not think anything of it.
#38 Notebook Flirting
I used to sit next to this girl in class when I was about 15. She would always playfully poke me and give a lot of physical attention. Then one day, she took my notebook and wrote: "You're fit" on one of the back pages. I was super into her at the time, so I got crazy excited and nervous. Then two days later, I asked her out and she told me she just wants to be friends.
#39 Overly Suggestive
I had a few drinks at my place with a girl I worked with. After dropping hints and innuendos the whole night, she ended up half-naked and on my lap. When I leaned in to make a move, she said she’d end me if I tried anything. I’ll never understand what the heck must have been going through her head with all that suggestiveness.
#40 Up In The Air
My friend in college. We spent a lot of time together, to the point where we would talk on the phone for hours a few times a week. We even started saying I love you to each other. At some point, one of her friends forced her to go on a blind date with another guy. She never said anything to me about it after that day, so nothing changed between us—we continued on for months talking to each other and saying I love you.
Then one day, she flew up to visit me. I asked her to make it official and be my girlfriend. She said she was getting married in a couple of months to the guy she went on a blind date with. A year and a half of therapy and medication later and I met my now-wife.
#41 It Was All A Set-Up
I was in high school and worked a part-time job with a girl from my school. She was pretty flirty with me at work. She always asked the manager to take a break any time she saw me go for mine. One time, she had me hold her phone and told me to tell her if it vibrated because she was expecting a text. It did and when I gave the phone to her to check it, she jumped up and down, laughing and saying her grandma was visiting her for the weekend. She was hugging me all over.
She ended up asking me on a date to go bowling. I showed up and her friend who I'd never met was there too. She ended up flirting with other random guys in front of me and wandered off with them, leaving me alone with her friend. The friend then told me she would never do that to me and asked if I wanted to be her boyfriend. It was so obvious she had been flirting with me the last few weeks just to try to set me up with her friend who far less attractive than she was.
I saw through it right away and noped out of there. Later at work, the girl was like, "Sorry it didn't work out with you and my friend." The flirting stopped and she quit shortly after.
#42 Blocked.
I was talking to a girl for about three months, just doing the friends thing. One day, out of the blue, she said, “Why haven’t you asked me out yet?” Little old me said, “I didn’t think you were looking for a relationship right now.”
“Oh no, I’m definitely looking for something.”
“Well, do you want to make this thing official then?”
“Oh sorry, I’m not interested in you in THAT sense, I was just curious.”
Oh boy, that was an ego buster. A few weeks later, she was with a new guy. I found out because she sent me a bunch of pictures of them together over Snapchat. I proceeded to block her.
#43 Playing Games
Yesterday, a lady from work, who had constantly been flirting with me, asked if I wanted to go out with her to the NJ State Fair. I said sure, was pretty excited about it. I went to the fair but she was a no-show. No call. No text. Nothing. So there I was at the fair, all by myself in the heat. I tried to make the most of it, but since I was alone it was really hard.
I saw her today at work. I asked her why she didn't tell me she wasn't coming. She acted shocked that I actually went. Obviously I was actually going to go. If I promise to do something, I'm going to do it. I got stood up and it was all her idea. My one day off work, ruined.
#44 Not Interested
She sent me pictures of her legs from the bathtub. Two weeks later, she was complaining to her friends that I wasn't getting her signals that she wasn't interested in me.
#45
She said she wanted a guy like me. She didn't want a guy who is me.
