If that's true, then the only way to let a woman know you're interested in her is after she has first told you. But that's a horrible way to make room for different personality types. Some women are assertive. Some are less so. Should the more reserved women just stay single?
Do the more reserved women want to stay single? Maybe they do!
And most people have introvert friends and extrovert friends. You meet safe and good people through friend circles and then they get you to meet the other person.
Don't you think it's pretty ignorant to pretend the only type of relationships happening between 18 -> 21 year olds throughout every college in America is exclusively "safe and good people met through friend circles" as opposed to two people just randomly in a class together where the guy typically just says "hey, what are you doing later? want to hang out/study together?"
I've had multiple conversations with women who are somewhere between disappointed and despondent that guys don't hit on them more.
>I mentioned to several of the people I interviewed for this piece that I’d met my husband in an elevator, in 2001. (We worked on different floors of the same institution, and over the months that followed struck up many more conversations—in the elevator, in the break room, on the walk to the subway.) I was fascinated by the extent to which this prompted other women to sigh and say that they’d just love to meet someone that way. And yet quite a few of them suggested that if a random guy started talking to them in an elevator, they would be weirded out. “Creeper! Get away from me,” one woman imagined thinking. “Anytime we’re in silence, we look at our phones,” explained her friend, nodding. Another woman fantasized to me about what it would be like to have a man hit on her in a bookstore. (She’d be holding a copy of her favorite book. “What’s that book?” he’d say.) But then she seemed to snap out of her reverie, and changed the subject to Sex and the City reruns and how hopelessly dated they seem. “Miranda meets Steve at a bar,” she said, in a tone suggesting that the scenario might as well be out of a Jane Austen novel, for all the relevance it had to her life.
I think the solution that leaves everyone happy is: start a conversation with that woman, but if she's not interested, leave her alone.
Look at it in utilitarian terms:
* If the woman you're talking to isn't interested, your attempt to start a conversation will create a brief unpleasant experience for her.
* If she is interested, there's a chance at a great, long-lasting romance which will benefit both you and her.
The positive utility from finding your future spouse is much larger than the negative utility from a brief unwanted conversation. So on expectation it often makes sense to start that conversation.
"[27/F] Why don't guys approach me? I even go out on my errands alone, or hang out at cafes alone (like, go out and eat while reading a book) just to put myself out there."[1]
(edit) removed link to avoid HN's flooding someone's Reddit post
