Should a woman ever ask a man out?

[Xantippe]

Whenever I hear the word pursue, I think of someone running away from the pursuer. If someone is running away than that means that they don’t want to be with the pursuer.



If the pursued does like the pursuer why run away in the first place?

Right.

 

[EasterJoy]

Whenever I hear the word pursue, I think of someone running away from the pursuer. If someone is running away than that means that they don’t want to be with the pursuer.



If the pursued does like the pursuer why run away in the first place?

No. I remember one of my aunts who said, “I let him pursue me until I caught him.” Her sense of her husband-to-be was that he wanted the sense that he was the one initiating things and that he was attempting to gain the attention of someone with so much to offer that she wouldn’t be easy to convince to settle on him. Her attitude was, “whatever works for you…if you think I must have more to offer if I’m in no hurry to make a deal, I can work around that.”

The problem these days is that there is no agreed-upon “courtship ritual.” Whether you are a man or a woman, it is all guesswork. That allows people to be a bit more creative and to manage their courtships in a way that they choose themselves, but it takes away the comfort that comes from knowing what is expected, too. (You can’t have everything!)

 

[DarkLight]

Whenever I hear the word pursue, I think of someone running away from the pursuer. If someone is running away than that means that they don’t want to be with the pursuer.



If the pursued does like the pursuer why run away in the first place?

I’m unfortunately reminded that the more socially inept males can end up taking the idea of pursuing a woman to be a license to push attention on a woman who very much wishes to be left alone.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

Whenever I hear the word pursue, I think of someone running away from the pursuer. If someone is running away than that means that they don’t want to be with the pursuer.



If the pursued does like the pursuer why run away in the first place?

Unfortunately, there are some dating advice books that actually encourage women to “play hard to get” as a dating strategy, either to (1) screen out men who aren’t willing to take on the role of aggressive pursuer, or, more problematically, as (2) some kind of weird head game meant to make the man more interested than he would be otherwise.

I can somewhat understand the first reason for this kind of behavior, if a woman personally prefers an Alpha Male who has that kind of personality, but the second reason just strikes me as needlessly manipulative.

I personally feel too introverted in general to be comfortable asking men out, but I feel that way even about platonic social outings with friends of the same sex. I can think of a former work colleague who I really got along well with, but because we were both on the shy introverted side, neither of us felt comfortable being friends outside of work. So the friendship faded away once we weren’t working together anymore. Then she moved to another state and we completely lost touch.

But I don’t think there’s any sin in a woman asking a man out, I think it depends on the particular situation.