Please Don’t Mistake My Kindness for Flirting
By: Joe Duncan
Tags: Life Lessons, Dating, Self, Honesty, Relationships

Please Don’t Mistake My Kindness for Flirting

A Subtle But Common Grievance…

One of the worst things ever is meeting someone new and they think you’re hitting on them, meanwhile, you’re happily involved with someone and have zero desire for anything more. It’s honestly saddening because they can’t conceive of someone not wanting something from them. Imagine living in that reality, where you simply cannot fathom someone just interacting with you, enjoying the moment, living the shared-experience, and not expecting an outcome.

Come to think of it, my entire life, people have mistaken kindness for flirtation. It’s pretty much been a constant. In a weird way, this is why I embrace open and honest discussions and consensual exchanges so hard — ambiguity hurts everyone, whether we want to admit it or not. It’s sad because that’s the world many people live in, everyone around them is just trying to take. It’s a curious thing, the way the world looks once we’ve learned to embrace simply existing and enjoying that existence.

What would it take to get to a place where we could be up-front about our wants, desires, and goals? Do we really believe that people will always nefariously keep their motives hidden? And, what would it take to lower the threshold that our flirt-detectors are set to so we don’t walk around automatically assuming that every nice person we meet is seriously flirting with us?

I know this may burst some people’s bubbles, but not everyone is flirting with you. That rather friendly guy who works down the block from you who’s always smiling? Yeah, he might just be doing his job. That cute girl who’s always really friendly and goes out of her way to make you feel comfortable when you’re in her establishment? Yeah, she knows she’ll get fired if you complain or don’t buy enough stuff. That’s the reality of ambiguity.

This is why open, honest, consensual conversations about romantic interests are so very important. I’ve always communicated a romantic interest upfront, within my first few sentences to someone, so that way we could get it out of the way and move along on either a romantic or platonic level. I know, I know, it’s quite hard to do, it took me a long time to learn, too, because our culture if very prudish and hush-hush about sex and sexuality. But don’t we owe it to ourselves to not have to walk around wondering and being uncertain of people’s motives? Do we really value honesty or do we just pretend to?

Consent is important for men, too. It’s not fun walking through life and having a certain percent of the population always thinks you’re actively trying to sleep with them. Why is this conversation not an adult conversation yet? I don’t know. But I think we can get there. Once we learn to have healthy, honest conversations about our romantic and sexual interests, life actually gets a lot easier. I know that the women I’ve encountered tend to view it as a much-needed breath of fresh air. People generally respond well to a balanced, yet, up-front conversation and respect the honesty. So, why don’t we do it more?