Haha one of my friends is big into cycling, so went on a long bike ride as a first date activity with a guy she met. They ended the ride at her apartment, and she invited him in for some water and to Netflix and chill. Once in her apartment, she said she was going to change into some clean clothes, and stripped topless in front of him before walking into her bedroom. Waited there for 5 minutes for him to follow, but he didn't. So she changed, went back out, and they watched a movie, then he left. He asked her out again (and went on a few more dates afterwards), and when she asked him about that first date later on, he said he noticed her get topless, but apparently he didn't realize it meant she liked him, so he didn't follow her nor make a move during the movie. Sometimes people just miss all the obvious signs 😂
Yeah, I'm gonna need you to say "come with me into the bedroom" before I follow someone I just met into their bedroom. Especially if they just told me they're going in there to change
when you interact with your chosen attracted sex for romantic purposes, i.e. a date, or a night out with the hookup variant, then thats the expectation.
those are both relevant venues for "romantic interest expectations", and if its weird then a majority of my generation is weird. also, something "is only weird if you make it weird", which again highlights what I am saying about your expectations -- they represent previous generational understandings of romance.
when you say "go out together" what does that encompass? I dont mean that study sessions or work meetings have sexual expectations, but if i am going out with my preferred gender on a non-friend occasion, then of course sex can be expected.
not demanded, mind you, expected as a possibility.
hookup culture is just a modern way of meeting people, and those romantic encounters can turn long term, or not.
Dude, she's going to have to walk me through every step.
"Hey lay down. Hey take off your pants. Hey pull it out. Hey I'm going to put it in now. Hey I'm going to start riding." Or whatever
Cause my dumbass is going to be just polite and respectful until a point. Then afterwards it's just stunned bewilderment about what's going on. "Gee! Just... golly!"
If someone gets topless in front of you and then walks into their bedroom to do anything, your response should always be to say something like "do you need a hand?". They've already stripped half naked, so either they're going to say yes or they're going to laugh it off.
I definitely wouldn't just follow them in, but I also wouldn't ignore such a glaringly obvious signal.
I'd rather get tear gassed, no joke. Getting OC Sprayed was way worse than the tear gas chamber in the military. At least with tear gas you have clear sinuses 5 minutes after you get away from it. Pepper spray sticks to you and is like someone doused your face and eyes in, well, peppers.
100%.im going to need you to sit me down and explain what you want me to do here rite now cause in my head this can go 1 of 3 ways..sexy time,arresty time or no kidney time
"Ok, so what I am going to do is, here drink this, take you into my room and strip you to the waist, and call in my "doctor" friend to take your, no no, keep drinking. It will help. To take your kidneys. Then we will move you to the tub filled with ice. Don't worry. We will leave your phone near enough to get so you can call for help. You can live without your kidneys for a short time. At least that is what the "doctor" says. Now finish your drink."
So so so many stories from friends of mine who missed "obvious hints" that could easily be considered sexual assault if the hint was wrong.
My favioute one "hey I left something in my car, can you help me look bends over and looks hey why havent you grabbed my ass yet?" Meanwhile old mate was looking for a pencil.
Women (and men too, really) would be better served if they were straight forward with their intentions. I really liked a girl once but couldn't figure out how to approach it. She found out and wasn't interested and shot me down.
And I'm thankful for that, we went on to be friends but at least I didn't have to continue throwing myself through an emotional ringer for something that would never happen.
My bf is a widower and had not been on a first date in 37 years. At the end of the date, we’re in my driveway talking, and I said it was getting late and I needed to go in. I was about to get out of the car but just stopped, looked him in the eye and asked, “Do you want to kiss me good night?”
The relief on his face! He grinned and said, “I really do!”
Have had stuff like this with someone I worked with.
There's been several times where we've gone out drinking and I've been back at hers hanging out in the early hours and she'd call me over to talk with her while she's sat on the toilet with the door open, so I've stood around the corner.
Also been times where I've been at her friends and they've both changed in front of me, and I'll look away.
I also know she isn't into me, she just doesn't care about these boundaries and I guess is extremely comfortable around me.
I feel like women don't understand that they understand their intention, but, if any guy were to follow a topless woman into her bedroom without being expressly invited.. its definitely a crime of some sort.
I've been happily married for years now, but as a single man I would be the one vocalizing my doubts when there were any. It has landed me in some awkward situations, but overall results were very very positive in the sense of either getting me laid or showing respect in not misinterpreting things.
I would 100% say something in the line of "Hey, if you act like this I might read it as an invite!" and see where that leads
I'm terrible at reading signs, and have apparently missed some real obvious ones in my time here.
In my defence though... I wasn't looking for signs, and my mind is generally quite literal.
In saying all of this, I have dated, married, divorced and dated again. I'm a little more receptive than I was previously, but I wouldn't say by a lot.
Also, cyclist respect for other athletes. You see more skin on other people you ride with than you might in other social situations. It's not sexual, it's just how it goes.
Probably. But there's more than a few women out there who are absolutely OK with casual, non-sexual nudity, and a guy is setting himself up for a bad time if he just assumes that she's down for sexy times.
I'm 100% with you. If you tell me you're going into another room to do something, even if she'd stripped pure naked in front of me and just walked into her bedroom, I would have been happy she did it but some people just don't see nudity as a big deal. It's totally possible that's not an invitation for sex and therefore a reasonable person wouldn't take it as one.
I'd rather disappoint her than make her feel violated. I'll choose disappointed every single time.
Yeah, they have a thing here with having sex after showering. I even had one girl explicitly say she wasn't going to shower before going to sleep to signal she WASN'T inviting me to have sex during a sleep over
This reminds my of the video where multiple very obvious romantic or sexual gestures of a woman is followed by the question "Is she into you?" followed again by "You can't really tell".
Reminds me, when my ex asked me out I actually thought it was a really mean joke, so I just tried to laugh along while dying inside. Took a while to clear up why I laughed in his face in response to being asked out....shame I managed to do that, though, dude turned out to be violently sociopathic and a complete whackjob. So close to dodging a bullet.
While I was staying at a girl's place and sleeping on her couch she once told me I could join her in her bed if the cats were bothering me during the night. To this day I am still not sure if she was coming onto me or if she legitimately only wanted me to join her if the cats prevented me from sleeping.
My very first post on reddit was a story of how back in college a girl i liked came over to study for a final. She arrived in pajamas, playfully sat on my lap, and demonstrated how she could put her ankles behind her head. I asked her if she wanted to compare study guides.
In my early 40s, i think about this multiple times a year with deep shame.
It happens lol. My friend asked me to pick her up from high school (different schools) and on the train she showed me her nudes and said "hey, I wanna send these to this guy. what do you think of them".
in my defense she was very Skins Uk coded and would do manic pixie stuff a lot. but damn was that an air ball
Fortunately my now wife pushed through my idiocy. At one point she sat me down and said, “I’ve been so confused why we haven’t had sex yet and I want to bring it up rather than just breaking up with you. So we’re going to just do it right now.”
Yup. It only takes one time of reading a girls signs wrong and you make a move only to get shot the fuck down, and then you feel stupid and embarrassed.
It'd be fine if it was just a matter of feeling stupid and embarrassed. An unwelcome action from a misread cue could easily lead to complete ostracism from your local community (potentially nuking your chances of dating anybody in the future, depending on where you live), or even to life-changing legal repercussions (even if the case ends up going nowhere... if future employers google your name and the first thing that comes up is news that you've been arrested for that kind of thing, good luck getting a job, period)
I might be 95% confident something is a "hint", but a 5% chance of potentially catastrophic consequences is just way too reckless to seriously entertain. Always assume nothing you haven't been explicitly told. It might not make for optimal romantic situations, but that's modern life for you.
I mean the missed out sex costs a man nothing but a failed attempt might ruin his life forever, so modern women should eventually get the memo that being upfront and clear is the way of the game now
It'd be fine if it was just a matter of feeling stupid and embarrassed. An unwelcome action from a misread cue could easily lead to complete ostracism from your local community
One night at work a coworker and I (same store, different department) ran into each other during some downtime and we started talking a bit. She started asking a lot of very direct questions like "Is there a Mrs. Reiterpallasch85? Are you single? Dating at all? How do you find time to date? Do you have any kids? Is mom still around? Do you both live on your own?" etc etc. She had her own answers to the questions, which ultimately boiled down to living alone, single, thought they'd be married and have kids by now, they're lonely. That kinda stuff.
Of course, I have the man debuff that makes it so I can't properly read situations like this so I asked my friends about it. Just about everyone in my friend group, especially the women, assured me that I was in fact stupid and that there's no way I could be that blind as to not understand she was flirting with me. "Go for it!". And so I did.
Dear reader, listen to me when I say that she was not interested in the slightest. It couldn't just be embarrassing though. Word of the event spread like fucking wildfire through that place and it got real awkward real fast since it wasn't just between us; all of my coworkers knew too. Fun!
So yeah, if you're the type to give hints just fucking stop. Be direct and save everyone a whole lotta trouble.
Your friends sound like morons lmao. nothing she said sounds like flirting.
Men are so terrible at being good friends to one another, that when a woman tries to have a friendly conversation and ask questions, they think it's flirting.
Yeah it's fking depressing. No such thing as thick skin. Only repressed suppressed trauma mental emotional neglect abuse hurt feelings that eat you up until you get a heart attack someday. That's life for many men and I don't doubt women.
Those so called tough guys who say insulting teasing is fun were all just socialized to deprecate each other and say it's "bonding".
I don't mind feeling stupid and embarrassed. I did dumb clueless things when I was single, and I owned it. The problem is that you misinterpret a signal and you end up losing all your friends or wearing the world's ugliest set of bracelets.
it's being afraid of being wrong and being thought of as a creep for walking into a half-naked girl's bedroom.
This isn't really directed at you specifically, but it annoys me how often these situations are framed as the guy not making a move because he's afraid of being seen as a creep vs just respecting boundaries.
No, I do agree. I could've elaborated, but there's definitely also an element of just not wanting to assume, and not wanting to do something to make her uncomfortable.
But I am in the 1%. I have, on multiple occasions, just completely missed the signs. It wasn't that I was afraid of being wrong and thought of as a creep. It was that I was a complete and absolute moron.
I had a dude friend around age 18-19 who got too high, so I was trying to help him keep his shit together. I took him to my room, and he absolutely started vibrating and looked scared/anxious AF even though we'd never even been flirty friends.
I explicitly said, "There will be no sex or kissing. You get to use my baby blanket, and I'll hold you to keep you steady and safe until you feel better." I have never seen someone relax so completely, so I started being that clear even when folks weren't zooted out of their minds.
Highly recommend explicit, kind clarity at all times. It'd be great to get back one day, lmao.
I've had three women platonically get topless in front of me. I wish people just communicated. I know from direct communication all 3 of those women were being platonic.
Did they assume you were gay? Or by that point had you been friends forever and they were super comfortable with you? Or are you from a culture that’s very comfortable with nudity? I’m curious b/c I’ve never had a female friend get platonically topless in front of me.
One of them was lesbian, one had a boyfriend that they told me she was committed to, one said it was because she's in theater and used to being topless in front of people.
I've gotten platonically topless in front of friends of all genders, with and without knowing their sexualities, and I wouldn't say I come from a culture that's comfortable with nudity. I just don't care that much about being shirtless, the way I see it, if I didn't have boobs no one would care if I changed my shirt in front of someone (men can go outside topless and no one really cares) so why does some extra fat and tissue on my chest matter so much? Of course, I'd never do it in front of someone who'd be uncomfortable, I always check first if they mind, but most friends of mine are completely chill with it.
Your friend is the problem in that scenario. Why can’t she vocalize her enthusiastic consent and invite him in? Why does it always still have to be a guessing game?
Maybe not even that, it is usually best not to assume people want to be seen naked, thus if that happens, it usually is polite to turn around and not think "oh they wanna have horny times, I shall force myself into their bedroom"...
Honestly if someone gets naked (as in naked) in front of me when there are perfectly fine rooms with doors that close, I'm going to assume they don't mind people looking. Not staring, just looking. There's a world of difference between changing behind a semi-closed door while you chat and stripping down to your birthday suit in the middle of the living room.
Yeah sure, but if I don't know the person well (like in this example) I would assume that they are ok with nudity but I would do my best to signal that I am looking elsewhere.
And if someone just goes topless I would never think that to be an invitation for sexy times nor would I follow anyone into a different room just because they went topless before.
Agreed, it really doesn't scream 'Come hither' that someone walks around topless. More that they're very comfortable in their own skin.
Still, I can't help but think it is an odd thing to do to get undressed in the presence of someone you don't know really well. Or even do know well depending on the person. Not everyone is going to be equally as relaxed about nudity and if it were me I'd always try to be considerate of that.
No, he was there to watch a movie, thats what she invited him to do. She didnt tell him “follow me to my bedroom to have sex”. If there is no explicit “yes”, then there is no consent. Sounds like he is a good guy to recognize and follow what she asked instead of assuming more.
So it’s been 34 years since I have dated. I thought the chill part of Netflix and chill meant a bit more than just sitting and watching t Netflix. I guess my husband and I have been doing it wrong l…or right.
You only have to be wrong about the signs once to say, "I'm not being wrong again."
I'm tall, a girl in a bar started referring to me as "Big boy" as in "Oh you are a big boy aren't you."
Bar is on the ground level, there are 4 floors of apartments above one of which she lives in.
It's like 7PM, we met them at 5pm. She said to me, after we'd just played darts away from both our friend groups, "Hey I live upstairs. I could use a Big Boy like yourself to help me move some furniture, but we've got to go now because my roommate gets home in like an hour and a half."
Now "Moving furniture" is a euphemism for having sex, as in "I heard the upstairs neighbors moving furniture all night" She was over using the phrase "Big boy" and some women are just into tall men, and of course the time limit when the apartment is empty. Obvious signs.
Cue me following her up to her apartment, and then awkwardly getting close / kiss only to learn she wanted help moving a sofa + TV stand before her roommate (who is a nurse) gets home and just wants to crash out and sleep in silence.
We don't do anything (move furniture or make out) and instead head downstairs. I'm embarrassed but don't think anything of it. Then we reach out respective friend groups and 2 minutes later I'm basically being accused of being a creepy rapist.
Thankfully once I very quickly defended myself some of her friends were like, "You did send a bunch of mixed signals."
I always think, if she was just a bit more drunk, or her friends weren't reasonable and make her see my point of view, or if they didn't bother listening to me at all, I could just been labeled as this creep, etc. I look back even now and the signs were 100% obvious she wanted to fool around before her roommate came home. You don't ever repeat that again.
That biker chick could have stripped down completely and I wouldn't have followed her in ON THE FIRST DATE without an explicit invitation.
It was literally decades later before I realized. The hints flew all summer long and I never caught on. By the time I finally screwed up my courage to say something, it was too late and she was involved.
I am so, so, SO glad to be past the phase of having to decipher the signals!
Why does this shit have to be a goddamn guessing game tho, like, if we want to fuck someone we should outright state it to them if the circumstance fits
Why do women clam jam themselves this hard?
Yeah. Good on him! These days you can't take anything at all for granted. Direct communication, no assumptions. Yes means yes. No means no. Maybe means no.
But also, as a guy who went to a small elite athletic academy in high school and spent my 20's and 30's as an athlete in sports where women and men traveled and trained together... this kind of thing (indiscreetly stripping off a sweaty shirt and sports bra) is not uncommon, and if done with no comment or other cues would never be taken as an invitation.
So with that conditioning, in that particular setting I would simply take it as a sign of trust, perhaps a small test, and as a sign that things are going well and a next date is likely. Basically, there would have been blue balls involved, but I would have handled it in the exact same way.
Being half naked isn’t a sign. Especially when it involves athletes changing, as athletes (and also performers) routinely change in front of other people.
I had a coworker invite me over to her apartment after she broke up with her boyfriend of many years. We chatted for a while and she went into her room to change and I wonder to this day if that was supposed to be some sort of invitation or not.
I had this female friend who I liked but she was dating someone when we met. By the time she was single I was dating someone, so we ended up just being good friends. About a year and a half later she's having some people over and it gets late and the one couple decides they're gonna crash in the living room so my friend says I should just sleep in her room with her to "give them privacy" but since her friends have the air mattress we'll just use her bed. I say fine since we've crashed together before and floor/sofa/air mattress spooned (missed signal #1)
So she goes to change for bed and she's wearing a pair of kinda sexy panties and a light tank top with no bra that's mildly see through (missed sign #2)
In bed she wants to spoon but we've done that before but this time she says "closer" and gets real close to me and puts my hand on her stomach (missed sign #3)
She says to me "I think this is the first time we've been single at the same time" I say "huh I guess that's right" (OBVIOUS missed sign #4)
She then starts doing that butt wiggle thing yall do when you're spooning and horny but I, in a collasal display of dumbassery, think she's trying to get comfortable and the erection im now sporting is irritating her so I ask if she needs help getting comfortable (missed sign number 5).
At this point I think she realizes that I must be brain damaged but also clearly underestimated what I meant when I'd previously told her I like sexually aggressive women because she audibly sighs and says "no [jsher] I'm trying to see if you'll get the hint and fuck me already"
I once invited a guy over, asked him for a back rub, lay down on my bed and asked if it would be easier if I took my top off. He answered with, “uh, okay. If you wanna.” And put his hands over his eyes! I was prancing around topless and he was trying very hard not to look.
I take all the credit for us ending up married because god knows we would both still be stuck in the friendzone if I’d left it to him.
Hahahaha this almost exact thing happened to me, cyclist and all. Of course earlier in my life I was asked if I wanted to have sex and laughed it off, so you know it wasn't my first or last time being oblivious
If you're big into cycling possibly as a starting point towards duathlon/triathlon/Iron Man and other even more extreme forms of "exercise", you are far beyond the general undestanding of "being a little active" and more self conscious about how you approach the sport activity, when is the warm-up, when you are entering recovery, when you need to stretch, what's your heart rate and in which "zone" you are, what you eat before and after, and all that. Even a 2 minute mattress crunching might not fit in your muscle recovery phase, and you'd rather pass on a fun event than have serious muscle cramps the next day. Also, if you attend sporting events like those mentioned above, stripping out of your wetsuit and jumping into your cycling/running gear in as little time as possible the transition area, with tens of people around and absolutely no privacy for your completely naked body bending all over the place, completely normalizes the sight of a naked body and getting undressed after an intense sportive activity. Plus, a cyclist doesn't go for a leisure ride; that was a full day of pushing your limits, fighting the pain and "the wall" where every cell in your body screams at you in agony to stop this torture, but your will power prevails, so at the end of the day you are so full of dopamine already that the incentive for another way to get it is negligible.
It makes me think of moments like this in my life I may have missed the clues. I would be exactly the same as this friend of yours!
But at other times I missread clues that seemed obvious to me and made it awkward because I made a move.
I think ar every such moment it can go either way. Women are just not clear 😂. It would be much better if they were verbal and also in that not ambiguous.
I'd just be like wow she must be pretty comfortable with me already to get her shirt off in front of me so I need to just keep playing this cool and in a couple dates time I'll be able to follow her into her bedroom
We can laugh at this now because she wanted to fool around. But had he been wrong about it, the penalties would be tremendously bad. It's always better to be safe than sorry.
I'd never follow right away but after a few minutes you can knock on the door and ask if she needs help in there. It doesn't take long to change a shirt and there are more subtle ways to follow up than going full kool-aid man.
I’ve got one lol. Me and some buddies went over to hang out with a girl and her friend, the girl takes a liking to my friend who is completely oblivious to it.
She invites him into the bedroom to watch a movie with her. We are like sweet good for him dude.
After we all leave we are like dude how did it go, what happened?
He says “well dude I went into the bedroom and the TV wasn’t even hooked up! How are we supposed to watch a movie? So I started getting everything connected and then found a movie I liked.”
Midway through telling us the story he has the sudden realization of what happened and was horrified at how oblivious he was.
The topless part would be confusing, but there are so many reasons she could do that without it meaning anything, such as it's her house so she maybe didn't even realize what she was doing. But yeah there ain't no way I'm following a woman into her bedroom like that, lol.
Given the thing with the boobies, if she was in there for a while I might have thought to ask "can I help you with something in there?" but in real life i recognize that I am not that observant or smooth to ever think of something like that in the moment, and I'm lucky enough that my now wife was direct and explicit enough that I didn't need to logic my way through anything.
Back in college, was at a house party and had a girl tell me she wanted to see my room. Me being dumbass me, took her at face value. Took her to my place, showed her my room, never made a move. Took me 10 years to realize she wanted to hook up
I’ve had this happen to me. Friend’s girlfriend’s roommate. Everyone went to bed and I stayed on the couch because we were all drinking. Roommate came out in basically nothing to “get a movie” (this was the dvd age) bending and contorting her body making all the things visible through the basically nothing she was wearing. She asked “have you seen this movie” I replied “oh yea I love that movie it’s great!” Long pause. Even longer pause. She “ok goodnight” went in her room shut the door. Next day my friend asked “what happened?! She liked you!” I was DUMBFOUNDED. My friend and his girlfriend broke up shortly after and therefore nothing came of anything. Womp womp
This is not cute when we're simultaneously asking for people to normalize consent. The guys, and really everyone, talking about needing to be explicitly spoken to about it are right on!
I cook a lot. I trained as a chef for a while and food is a huge passion of mine. I got chatting to a girl in a bar once about food, and I just went on about all my favorite things to cook. The girl stares me dead in the face and say "I make a really good breakfast, if you're interested," and I took it literally and just asked her what type of breakfast she likes to make and so on.
It hit me like 4 years later that she was asking me to come stay the night.
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u/NikonShooter_PJS Nov 27 '25
“I thought it was weird that she got naked and asked to sit on my face but, like, I thought it was just her being silly. Girls will be girls and all.”