That was a very useful answer, thank you! I’m going to try to repeat back the model in my own words and relate back to the frame of the post and rest of this comment thread. Please let me know if it still sounds like I’m missing something.
Model: the cases where a woman has a decent idea of what she wants aren’t the central use-case of subtle cues in the first place. The central use case is when the guy seems maybe interesting, and therefore she mostly just wants to spend more time around him, not in an explicitly romantic or sexual way yet. The “subtle signals” mostly just look like “being friendly”, and that’s a feature because in the main use case “being friendly” is in fact basically what the girl wants; she actually does just want to spend a bit more time together in a friendly way, with romantic/sexual interaction as a possibility on the horizon rather than an immediate interest.
Relating that back to the post and comment thread: subtle signals still seem like a pretty stupid choice once a woman is confident she’s romantically/sexually interested in a guy. So “send subtle signals” remains terrible advice for women in that situation. But if one is going to give the opposite advice—i.e. advise a policy of asking out men she’s interested in and/or sending extremely unsubtle signals—then it should probably come alongside the disclaimer that if she’s highly uncertain and mostly wants to gather more information (which may be most of the time) then subtle signals are a sensible move. If the thing she actually wants right now is to just spend some more time together in a friendly way, with romantic/sexual interaction as a possibility on the horizon rather than an immediate thing, then subtle signals are not a bad choice. The subtle signals are mostly not distinguishable from “being friendly” because “being friendly” is in fact the (immediate) goal.
What I really like about this model is that it answers the question “under what circumstances should one apply this advice vs apply its opposite?”, which is something which most advice should answer but doesn’t.
That’s the main thing, yeah. The next bit is even what look like exceptions are actually the same thing in a less obvious way.
When a woman knows she’s attracted to a guy and is bummed out that he’s not picking up on her subtle signals, that’s a lot like a man knowing he’s attracted to a woman and being bummed out that she’s not giving him super clear signals to ask her out. He could ask her out anyway, if he’s willing to face rejection, and that would greatly increase his chances of getting a date with this woman. It’d also greatly increase his chances of making salient information like “Desirable women don’t desire you”. Even assuming there are no external reputational costs of doing this, that kind of information erodes his ability to see himself as desirable, and that’s important to be able to justify asking in the first place—because “Hi. I’m a loser, will you date me?” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
So maybe he could ask—or maybe she could be obvious enough that he does notice her signals—but that comes with the risk of learning “(S)he’s just not that into you” and collapsing the would be asker from a state of hope and fear to a singular state free of both fear and hope. There’s a real puzzle in how to best deal with unpleasant information so that we can separate the wheat (“This particular person isn’t interested in me at this time”) without inadvertently accepting in too much chaff (“I’m a loser and no one wants me”) -- because sometimes the latter is true, in part, and we not only have to figure out how much truth there is there but also what to do about it. More skillful behavior will often be more bold, but there’s also generally a grounded security there that enables such boldness. Rather than advise people to make their interest harder or easier to miss, I’d invite them to notice why it is they’re not being bolder, and help them make sense of whether that’s appropriate and if there’s anything they can do to mitigate the costs of failure.
Once you actually get to “Yes, I want to maximize my chances with this person and I’m willing to face the consequences of that”, rather than wanting to balance p(success) with saving face, then bold moves become natural—whether yin or yang, implicit or explicit. And those bold moves do indeed work better at the thing they’re aimed at, than the moves that don’t commit to this target.
Inversely, once you are squared away on “No, I don’t actually want a date with person if that’s the case—and it might be”, you get more skilled and subtle flirtation instead of a clumsy “DO YOU ALREADY WANT TO DATE ME? NO? OKAY!”. And these subtler moves are also more effective at what they’re aimed at, than moves that go all in at the wrong thing.
That was a very useful answer, thank you! I’m going to try to repeat back the model in my own words and relate back to the frame of the post and rest of this comment thread. Please let me know if it still sounds like I’m missing something.
Model: the cases where a woman has a decent idea of what she wants aren’t the central use-case of subtle cues in the first place. The central use case is when the guy seems maybe interesting, and therefore she mostly just wants to spend more time around him, not in an explicitly romantic or sexual way yet. The “subtle signals” mostly just look like “being friendly”, and that’s a feature because in the main use case “being friendly” is in fact basically what the girl wants; she actually does just want to spend a bit more time together in a friendly way, with romantic/sexual interaction as a possibility on the horizon rather than an immediate interest.
Relating that back to the post and comment thread: subtle signals still seem like a pretty stupid choice once a woman is confident she’s romantically/sexually interested in a guy. So “send subtle signals” remains terrible advice for women in that situation. But if one is going to give the opposite advice—i.e. advise a policy of asking out men she’s interested in and/or sending extremely unsubtle signals—then it should probably come alongside the disclaimer that if she’s highly uncertain and mostly wants to gather more information (which may be most of the time) then subtle signals are a sensible move. If the thing she actually wants right now is to just spend some more time together in a friendly way, with romantic/sexual interaction as a possibility on the horizon rather than an immediate thing, then subtle signals are not a bad choice. The subtle signals are mostly not distinguishable from “being friendly” because “being friendly” is in fact the (immediate) goal.
What I really like about this model is that it answers the question “under what circumstances should one apply this advice vs apply its opposite?”, which is something which most advice should answer but doesn’t.
That’s the main thing, yeah. The next bit is even what look like exceptions are actually the same thing in a less obvious way.
When a woman knows she’s attracted to a guy and is bummed out that he’s not picking up on her subtle signals, that’s a lot like a man knowing he’s attracted to a woman and being bummed out that she’s not giving him super clear signals to ask her out. He could ask her out anyway, if he’s willing to face rejection, and that would greatly increase his chances of getting a date with this woman. It’d also greatly increase his chances of making salient information like “Desirable women don’t desire you”. Even assuming there are no external reputational costs of doing this, that kind of information erodes his ability to see himself as desirable, and that’s important to be able to justify asking in the first place—because “Hi. I’m a loser, will you date me?” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
So maybe he could ask—or maybe she could be obvious enough that he does notice her signals—but that comes with the risk of learning “(S)he’s just not that into you” and collapsing the would be asker from a state of hope and fear to a singular state free of both fear and hope. There’s a real puzzle in how to best deal with unpleasant information so that we can separate the wheat (“This particular person isn’t interested in me at this time”) without inadvertently accepting in too much chaff (“I’m a loser and no one wants me”) -- because sometimes the latter is true, in part, and we not only have to figure out how much truth there is there but also what to do about it. More skillful behavior will often be more bold, but there’s also generally a grounded security there that enables such boldness. Rather than advise people to make their interest harder or easier to miss, I’d invite them to notice why it is they’re not being bolder, and help them make sense of whether that’s appropriate and if there’s anything they can do to mitigate the costs of failure.
Once you actually get to “Yes, I want to maximize my chances with this person and I’m willing to face the consequences of that”, rather than wanting to balance p(success) with saving face, then bold moves become natural—whether yin or yang, implicit or explicit. And those bold moves do indeed work better at the thing they’re aimed at, than the moves that don’t commit to this target.
Inversely, once you are squared away on “No, I don’t actually want a date with person if that’s the case—and it might be”, you get more skilled and subtle flirtation instead of a clumsy “DO YOU ALREADY WANT TO DATE ME? NO? OKAY!”. And these subtler moves are also more effective at what they’re aimed at, than moves that go all in at the wrong thing.