So, the “flirting escalation ladder”. A few months ago I was skeptical that it even existed, as I had basically never seen it actually play out. Then half the internet showed up to yell “John that is definitely a thing!”, and since then I’ve been more actively looking for it.
And so far my experience when actively looking for it has been “women do not respond to mild escalation with mild escalation, even when in hindsight they were clearly interested”. Where the signals of “clear interest” here include things like e.g. talked for two hours at a party (and clearly enjoyed it). Girl will just spend two hours sitting there in one-on-one conversation looking like she’s enjoying the teasing and occasional dirty joke or comment on her appearance or insinuation, generally laughing and having fun, and… not the slightest sign of matching escalation level, let alone escalating further.
My current working hypothesis is that the vast majority of people (regardless of gender) only climb the flirtation escalation ladder when at least somewhat tipsy, and I have never observed it because I do not drink or spend much time at drinking-heavy events (I usually get bored in the early stages and leave). But I’ve yet to investigate that hypothesis much, and am very curious to hear other hypotheses.
I often do physical escalation on online dates with minimal or no alcohol (as a straight man). In my experience, the way it happens is not her “matching” or “climbing” the ladder with me, but rather “approving” or “disapproving” of my moves. If I sense she’s disapproving, I stop, and if she seems to passively approve, I slowly escalate further. In many cases, this leads all the way to the top of the ladder without a single active move on her part.
So, your read of “women do not respond to mild escalation with mild escalation” is often correct, but they do notice and climb it as a receptive participant. The active climber just needs to give something to be receptive to.
That was my previous best guess at the norm! It’s what would make sense on priors, and what matches my observations. And it was what I would have expected if there hadn’t been such unanimous agreement in this thread that, no, mutual escalation is totally a normal thing.
If that is what people mean when they talk about “the dance of flirtatious mutual escalation”, I wish they would describe it accurately—it’s a dance of “one person escalates and the other passively approves”. That is decidedly not a dance of mutual escalation, it is not a back-and-forth, and it requires both different models and different strategies.
If that is what people mean when they talk about “the dance of flirtatious mutual escalation”, I wish they would describe it accurately—it’s a dance of “one person escalates and the other passively approves”.
There are various dance styles, they probably meant this one.
I only go further when I detect mutual escalation because I got tired of attracting the kind of person who won’t reciprocate in the escalation process. this makes me attempt to date many fewer people and I think my matching SNR is much better for it. Previously I tried to date people who didn’t escalate in return and it wasn’t great, lots of waiting for ”...so do you want to hang out or...” type moments.
more speculatively people may be having difficulty describing the surface and moving parts of a subspace of human behavior which is both fairly complex and is submerged in noise just enough to not be clearly visible, so in general I’d expect any concrete claim to be a small update that doesn’t completely remove noise
Sounds like you might be able to provide a data point on the main question I’m curious about: roughly what fraction of people (or people of your preferred gender) mutually escalate at all?
So, the “flirting escalation ladder”. A few months ago I was skeptical that it even existed, as I had basically never seen it actually play out. Then half the internet showed up to yell “John that is definitely a thing!”, and since then I’ve been more actively looking for it.
And so far my experience when actively looking for it has been “women do not respond to mild escalation with mild escalation, even when in hindsight they were clearly interested”. Where the signals of “clear interest” here include things like e.g. talked for two hours at a party (and clearly enjoyed it). Girl will just spend two hours sitting there in one-on-one conversation looking like she’s enjoying the teasing and occasional dirty joke or comment on her appearance or insinuation, generally laughing and having fun, and… not the slightest sign of matching escalation level, let alone escalating further.
My current working hypothesis is that the vast majority of people (regardless of gender) only climb the flirtation escalation ladder when at least somewhat tipsy, and I have never observed it because I do not drink or spend much time at drinking-heavy events (I usually get bored in the early stages and leave). But I’ve yet to investigate that hypothesis much, and am very curious to hear other hypotheses.
I often do physical escalation on online dates with minimal or no alcohol (as a straight man). In my experience, the way it happens is not her “matching” or “climbing” the ladder with me, but rather “approving” or “disapproving” of my moves. If I sense she’s disapproving, I stop, and if she seems to passively approve, I slowly escalate further. In many cases, this leads all the way to the top of the ladder without a single active move on her part.
So, your read of “women do not respond to mild escalation with mild escalation” is often correct, but they do notice and climb it as a receptive participant. The active climber just needs to give something to be receptive to.
That was my previous best guess at the norm! It’s what would make sense on priors, and what matches my observations. And it was what I would have expected if there hadn’t been such unanimous agreement in this thread that, no, mutual escalation is totally a normal thing.
If that is what people mean when they talk about “the dance of flirtatious mutual escalation”, I wish they would describe it accurately—it’s a dance of “one person escalates and the other passively approves”. That is decidedly not a dance of mutual escalation, it is not a back-and-forth, and it requires both different models and different strategies.
There are various dance styles, they probably meant this one.
I only go further when I detect mutual escalation because I got tired of attracting the kind of person who won’t reciprocate in the escalation process. this makes me attempt to date many fewer people and I think my matching SNR is much better for it. Previously I tried to date people who didn’t escalate in return and it wasn’t great, lots of waiting for ”...so do you want to hang out or...” type moments.
more speculatively people may be having difficulty describing the surface and moving parts of a subspace of human behavior which is both fairly complex and is submerged in noise just enough to not be clearly visible, so in general I’d expect any concrete claim to be a small update that doesn’t completely remove noise
Sounds like you might be able to provide a data point on the main question I’m curious about: roughly what fraction of people (or people of your preferred gender) mutually escalate at all?