No matter how hard I try to read up on this or ask for people’s help, I cannot tell when another person is attracted to me. And I feel bad about it, because what am I supposed to do if I want to do anything flirtatious or date? Trial and error? Just try it with anyone I think is attractive until I learn what the patterns are? Sounds like a quick way to be seen as That Guy. Even if I just ask, that’s still a pretty forward move, letting someone know I think of them like that. So I really do not know what to do there, and it upsets me.

  • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    1 month ago

    Just because it’s entertaining, I want to add to Keld’s comment that Big Joel did a decent video on the book that popularized the phrase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD6KJ_ThZio

    I don’t remember it verbatim, but there’s a story in it that almost got me in trouble when someone was talking about love languages and I free-associated to it and burst out laughing. The story is something like:

    Patient: I’ve been having this issue. You see, you say that everyone has a main love language, but I really like both physical intimacy and words of affirmation, so how do I tell which one is my main one?

    Quack: Well, let us imagine situations where one is satisfied and the other isn’t: First, consider the scenario in which, if you tried to be physically intimate with your partner, it just goes very poorly, a completely unpleasant experience, but they tell you that they love you and seem to be quite sincere when they say it, and they express that they believe in you, brag about you in front of your mutual friends, and so on. How would you feel about that? Would you feel loved?

    P: Well, I’d miss being intimate, but sure, I’d feel loved.

    Q: Now imagine the inverse: You have marvelous sex, just cum buckets every time, and whatever else a broader sense of physical intimacy might entail. At the same time, they never express love to you or even respect and in fact will sometimes disparage you both privately and in front of others. How would you feel about that? Would you feel love?

    P: Not at all, I get a feeling of malaise just from comprehending the sentence as you spoke it.

    Q: See? Not so hard after all! Clearly this means that words of affirmation are your primary love language.

    I looked for which part of the video it’s in and honestly the actual passage is a bit less funny than I remembered, but also a bit more stupid. Mostly I just wanted to share it as I remembered it because it feels like a concentrated version of the broken reasoning you see all the time when people discuss these issues.