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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1684 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 18, 2025

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Several times now, I've had text conversations with women where they seem to scare themselves off.

One kept pushing me to ask her sexual compatibility questions, which I answered as delicately and dryly as I could. She'd rave excessively about how attractive I was and how she's looking forward to seeing me again (we met once, briefly, and she tracked me down on social). Since I know it's a bad idea to build up a date this much and set sexual implications, I complemented her back but kept it light and fun.

Then the day of the date, suddenly a co-worker got fired and she has to work a double. Also "You're not expecting sex for this meeting, are you?" Well no, I was not, despite everything you've said being suggestive of that, because I was going to take it slow. I reply "Light canoodling at most." There's mutual availability tuesday, and thursday, but she suggests thursday, mentioning "she'd like more planning, usually." Now I haven't heard anything from her since.

Before this, the shape of the exact same thing happened. She started talking as though she was already assuming we'd be in a relationship with her "adding spice to my life and shaking things up." This is way, WAY more than I'd typically send when I haven't even met someone in person, it assumes too much. Then suddenly she was astronomically ill from "allergies," which continued for several days, her apparently being home from work, yet replying less than when she was at work, until I stopped texting.

I want people to turn up for an in-person date. I very carefully don't say things that create too much pressure or assume things about compatibility, because it comes off as pressuring and dishonest ("OMG I'm so into you" ...we haven't actually met yet, miss, maybe save that for after the first date). But then they themselves do that exact thing, bail the day before.

Fucking everything I do is tiptoeing around not triggering anyone's anxiety so as not to be treated as a threat, then they trigger their OWN anxieties, treat me like a threat, and presumably pat themselves on the back for having spotted a manipulative predator who was Only After One Thing.

What the fuck is going on here?

When I interact with someone in real life, I get really confused and anxious whenever they start praising me. Then they get confused as to why. This is why. Because whenever someone gives me unprompted compliments or raves about me, they swiftly ditch me, which is why I don't believe what anyone says anymore.

It looks like your dryness and hesitance is what turned her off from you. She was trying to push boundaries and get more personal with you and you didn't match her energy, so she either assumed you're not interested in her or she did too much and got embarrassed. She found you, reached out and made the conversation more intimate and what she got in return is some tiptoeing and dry responses.

Since I know it's a bad idea to build up a date this much and set sexual implications

It's bad when your first message to a woman is "omg you're so hot I can't wait to fuck you". Yeah don't do that. It's not bad when she's the one initiating it, it's essentially a green light for you to take it there.

Fucking everything I do is tiptoeing around not triggering anyone's anxiety so as not to be treated as a threat

Stop doing this. You're so worried to not come off as a creep, it probably makes you even more of a creep. I'm not saying you should be DMing women "I need a footjob" 10 messages in, but it's ok to show interest and be flirty. If you're dry, all it tells them is that you're not interested at best or a boring loser at worst. If it's on the apps, they've got 10 other men they can talk to right at this moment, they won't waste time to discover the real you.

If you're actually into these women and want to meet them, stop being dry and show some interest ffs

light canoodling at most

Right so I think she wants to be slutty but then got anxious that she was coming off as too slutty and needed you to let her know she wasn't a slut so she can go back to feeling free to act like a slut.

I think you were supposed to tell her she's not slutty but in a fun and flirty way. How do you do that? I dunno!

I probably would've said something like "my policy is to not kiss until at least the fifth date" which sounds not true but wait could he be serious but also changes the subject from her not sluttyness to my not sluttyness.

Extreme emotional lability, or rather, all over the place. Consider the extreme positive affect and the sudden cold feet as expressions of the same flaw. Best to stay away if she can’t even keep herself together.

You did the right thing by staying firm and stable. Don’t let that kind of woman suck you into her aberrant emotionality. And, like many things, dating sucks until it doesn’t.

Which app are you on where this keeps happening? I've used the apps before and, as I said below, I haven't had any problems remotely similar to what you describe. I've had women cancel dates at the last minute before, but they've always rescheduled and gone off eventually. And what are the rest of the conversations about? If you're keeping it to normal topics like sports, hobbies, politics, movies, music, etc. and she suddenly shifts it to how good looking you are and how she wants to fuck you, I can understand why you'd want to stick with it, but if the entire conversation is nothing but flirty banter then you should seriously question whether the woman is worth pursuing.

I'd recommend sticking to educated women with good professional jobs who are looking for long-term relationships and whose profiles are reasonably filled out and suggest that they already have rich, fulfilling lives without you around. These women tend to be much more stable than the hairdressers and retail clerks of the world who lead crappy, uninteresting lives, have no discernable hobbies or interests, and are looking for a guy for sex, or validation, or because they don't otherwise have a social life. I wouldn't even mention sex in a conversation until it's reached a certain stage, i.e. home plate.

Sounds like you dodged a couple of bullets there. Congrats, it could have been worse: having a brief online discussion with a neurotic is much less trouble than having a relationship with a neurotic.

If something like this happens almost every time, then maybe it's you. But if it's just an occasional thing, then maybe it's them.

Just read her mind, bro, to know how to thread the needle in continuing the sexual banter such that you're not too dry (or she might get the ick from you being too boring or too pussy for some bantz) nor too forward (or she might get the ick from you being too creepy, eager, or perverted over some text flirting).

Some people are just crazy, or, to be a bit more charitable, have vastly different preferences and styles from you in life and relationships.

When meeting people IRL, there's a lot of screening that happens before the conversation, like being at whatever place you met at all, seeing the other person's appearance and behavior before you actually talk, etc. Online dating exposes you to a lot of people who wouldn't have passed those filters at all. So you've got to learn to do that filtering yourself.

In other words, keep firmly in mind what kind of woman you actually want and what kind of relationship you want with her, and reject women who don't seem to match that. Nobody is going to give you a pile of gold stars for going on the most dates. If you're already feeling like you're tiptoeing around and weirded out over text conversation, reject and move on, as an in-person date is likely to be a waste of your time. I'd definitely put being excessively complimentary and sexual before you've met at all in that category.

This was an actual in-person connection, otherwise I'd consider anything sexual a massive-er red flag.

Everything I've heard of dating apps lately sounds awful, I'm hoping my kids will be able to find someone in some sort of organization like I did and my parents did and their parents also did -- college, church, volunteer work, whatever.

Not sure what's going on with the woman in question, though, or the in person compliments.

They aren't awful at all if you think of them as a way to meet people you wouldn't otherwise meet. They come with a whole different set of incentives in that the sheer amount of availability leads to an expectation of instant chemistry, but I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing. You can go on a date with someone and think it went well, only to find that the person isn't interested in going out again. A lot of people complain about that, but the complaint is entirely one-sided in that these people almost never talk about how they didn't feel anything special about someone but decided to give a second or third chance in hopes their opinion would change. People are more likely to stick it out for a few dates in a market where potential partners are scarce, but that comes at the expense of a greater emotional toll. Imagine a situation where two people go out a few times. A is genuinely excited and views B's willingness to go on additional dates as evidence that the feeling is mutual, while B isn't that excited and is only going on additional dates because they think they should give things some time. When the truth inevitably comes out, it's going to be much harder on A than if B never let things get past date number one. And it's much harder if A doesn't have scores of potential matches just waiting in an app on their phone.

All that being said, if a woman was being as aggressive to me as in the OP's example, I probably wouldn't let it get that far. I've used the apps and everyone I've met has been normal, or at least seemed normal.

You never know what's going on in this woman's life. Just as women can smell desperation, so can you and I. And desperation makes people neurotic. And neurotic people can act very unpredictably. The "You're not expecting sex" line was enough of a warning signal to set my alarm off. (Which isn't to say it's unreasonable of her to not want intercourse on a first or any date, but it's weird to ask like that over text.) I'm guessing she is very attractive to you, otherwise you'd be able to shrug this off. My advice is shrug it off anyway.

It's not a weird expectation, I'm just annoyed that sexual anxieties are coming up, when she's the one who's making things sexual in the first place. It seems like a self-own on her part.

I'm just sick of women laying it on way thicker than they need to, and it turning out to not have meant anything all along. Whereas I have to constantly hide or downplay my genuine interest in people.

I'm also way over-exposed to prog/leftist/SJW sexual mores, where all women apparently live in such overwhelming fear of sexual assault, I'm surprised they ever leave the house, much less try to bilk men for attention.

Rule #3: before you've had sex with someone, don't use the word "canoodling" in conversation.

...does canoodling mean something other than what I think it means?

This chick is talking about sexual preferences and how handsome I am and the sorts of shit she gets up to, yet I'm scary for talking about sitting next to eachother with our heads together chatting?

talking about sitting next to eachother with our heads together chatting?

Is that what canoodling is between a grown man and woman? I imagined more contact than that, but probably less than sex. But I also can't recall anyone ever actually using that word. Maybe in a book somewhere?

I picked it up from Anansi Boys, as it happens.

The only context in which I've encountered it.

She likes the attention of a man being sexually interested in her, but not the risk of actually having sex with him.

Fucking everything I do is tiptoeing around not triggering anyone's anxiety so as not to be treated as a threat,

This unfortunately sounds exactly like something one type predator would do...

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