What stops a man from pursuing?

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Maximilan_Kolbe said:
For me (I’m married, but have babies at home so it wasn’t that long ago I dated), I’ll admit it was generally a lack of physical attraction, or a girl who seemed overly eager. I’m not saying this was wrong or wrong, but that’s just how it was. Perhaps it was a bit of shallowness on my part, perhaps not, but I had visions of finding a wife who I was enamored with spiritually and physically, and didn’t spend much time pursuing someone if either component was missing. And since it landed me a wife who I find totally beautiful physically and spiritually, it worked for me.

As a guy, I also appreciated a girl who show interest commensurate with mine, but not one who seemed too eager, because frankly, a woman who was too interested didn’t grab my attention. Again, perhaps it shouldn’t be that way, but again, it just was. I needed to pursue her, but be given some bread crumbs on the trail to follow allowing me to know she was interested, but not desparate to have me.
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I can see where you are coming from about the desperate part. You lost me on the pursue part. Why the need to pretend on the part of the woman? What is the right amount of breadcrumbs? Is there such a thing as too many…or too little? Why the need for games in the first place?

Anyway the dating game is way too advanced for someone like me with a low level of social skills. I’m content to leave dating to the neurotypicals. 🤷
 
Sarcelle said:
I can see where you are coming from about the desperate part. You lost me on the pursue part. Why the need to pretend on the part of the woman? What is the right amount of breadcrumbs? Is there such a thing as too many…or too little? Why the need for games in the first place?

Anyway the dating game is way too advanced for someone like me with a low level of social skills. I’m content to leave dating to the neurotypicals. 🤷
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Well, and it varies enormously from person to person. I had to basically paint a sign saying, “Hey, I like you” for DH to ask me out, and I felt horribly conspicuous about it.

To be fair, though, we were still teens.
 
ZellieFan said:
Please come back and explain what this means! Wow! If a man felt that way about me, I would be super flattered. I bet she has no idea that she has this effect on you.
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By “gravitational pull” I mean that I feel drawn to her when I’m around her, more than just physical attraction. She’s kind, modest, understanding, and reminds me a lot of my mother (in the sense that men unconsciously look for someone like their mother and women for someone like their father). Not in the sense of needing to be taken care of.
 
Xantippe said:
How about college events? There are a lot of lectures, movies and so forth on college campuses.
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Merely hanging out and doing interesting things can be done inexpensively, certainly. It is where dating becomes discerning marriage that finances start to limit pursuit.
 
Most men aren’t much good at reading minds of women they hardly know or don’t know at all. Have to send hints his way. Some eye contact with a smile, a willingness to engage in conversation away from the “herd”, dropping hints, etc. In other words, most men feel they need some invitation to open a conversation, but at the same time, signals can’t be too blatant. Subtleties abound …
 
Zzyzx_Road said:
Most men aren’t much good at reading minds of women they hardly know or don’t know at all. Have to send hints his way. Some eye contact with a smile, a willingness to engage in conversation away from the “herd”, dropping hints, etc. In other words, most men feel they need some invitation to open a conversation, but at the same time, signals can’t be too blatant. Subtleties abound …
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In terms of signals being too subtle and being too blatant, how are women supposed to know that? The recipient, the man may have his own standards. Some men may have a narrower “dynamic range” than others. Please do not tell me about relying on my mysterious feminine wiles. I got none of those. I have all the subtlety of a speeding freight train.

It’s just the way I am. I prefer being a straight shooter than weaving and dancing around the obvious. I mean why go through all this song and dance? Relationships are plenty complicated enough, why pile on more complication?
 
When I was single I pursued the women I was attracted to, and didn’t pursue the women I wasn’t attracted to. It’s fairly simple.
 
Sarcelle said:
In terms of signals being too subtle and being too blatant, how are women supposed to know that? The recipient, the man may have his own standards. Some men may have a narrower “dynamic range” than others. Please do not tell me about relying on my mysterious feminine wiles. I got none of those. I have all the subtlety of a speeding freight train.

It’s just the way I am. I prefer being a straight shooter than weaving and dancing around the obvious. I mean why go through all this song and dance? Relationships are plenty complicated enough, why pile on more complication?
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It looks like you have a pretty good sense of humor. Lighten up a bit. Introduce yourself, learn a little about him, and be on your way. If he’s interested, he will find you.

God Bless You
 
ZellieFan said:
Just trying to pick the brain of the male members. If you feel that you are called to the vocation of marriage and are around single, faithful, Catholic women through various activities, what stops you from pursuing one of them? As a woman, I can think of some reasons but I think my perspective is probably wrong (since I am not a man).

So men, tell me what prevents a man from pursuing a woman for a deeper friendship or courtship? Thanks! 😃
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Sometimes I feel like God is telling me it is her turn to be the pursuer.
 
Naskor said:
Sometimes I feel like God is telling me it is her turn to be the pursuer.
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Unfortunately, you have to hope she’s getting the same message. Not a lot of women think to themselves “Gee, he looks tired of chasing after so many women, maybe I’ll make this one easy for him”.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
Unfortunately, you have to hope she’s getting the same message. Not a lot of women think to themselves “Gee, he looks tired of chasing after so many women, maybe I’ll make this one easy for him”.
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Also, if she likes you, she’ll probably chase back a little.

If you have to chase hard and be the only one chasing, that’s probably a sign that she doesn’t like you that much.
 
Unfortunately, body language is a foreign language to me. I have about as good a chance reading that as I do reading Swahili. I’ve had people tell me someone was flirting with me, but I honestly had no idea.
 
Xantippe said:
That sounds a lot like my husband–he also has no small talk. He’s outgoing and passionate at work when talking about work stuff (and also is capable of talking to people he knows about everyday life stuff), but has a tendency to turtle when dealing with new people where he doesn’t have an obvious common subject to reach for.

I was fortunate to meet him at an event where there was a subject close at hand that he is interested in and animated when talking about. Otherwise, we would never have gotten off the ground.

So, for that personality type, I would suggest:
  1. events that provide something to talk about with new people
  2. online dating (a good profile will have lots of jumping off points for conversation).
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That’s me to a T.

It’s been a LONG time since I’ve dated. I’m 57, been married 27 of those. Caveat, I was non-practicing in those days.

What’s being asked here is to define “chemistry”, something highly individual. Oddly, my degree is in chemistry and I worked as a chemist for many years before moving to IT. The faith dimension was not part of my life then, but it was for me a mix of some level of physical attraction, and mental connection. The physical attraction did not have to be perfection by any stretch, and for me it leaned more to the “cute” rather than supermodel side.

For the mental connection, I’d say the unique feature is that she somehow broke through my reserve and was someone easy to converse with. I didn’t have a huge number of GFs, but the common feature was meeting and talking for hours afterwards, about everything and anything. For the most part that was more important than looks. Looks was more “as long as she isn’t a turn-off”. Also important was doing things together, in our case these days biking, hiking and traveling.

And here I’ll mention one of my quirks. One of the biggest turn-offs for me is makeup, especially lipstick. I really appreciated gals who stuck with the natural look, or used makeup very sparingly. This aversion remains to this day. My wife of 27 years has worn makeup once in our relationship: very sparingly on our wedding day, and never since. Maybe one time before when she was maid of honour in a friend’s wedding.
 
Xantippe said:
We just heard from several men saying that that was a turn-off for them…
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There is no single Helen of Troy way to look, act, or be that is going to make every eligible man want you. There just isn’t. If Old Scratch himself were offering contracts to the contrary, I wouldn’t believe him. Life does not work that way. You have to take some chances, and you have to get some sense of how to make good choices through the experience of making some wrong choices. Well, and look at the bright side! When you are looking for that one good man, the only thing worse than having no men pursuing you would be if far too many were doing so!

I think a thread like this helps because it lets you know the spectrum of common reasons behind common reactions.

OP, when a man isn’t pursuing you, he may not be attracted to you, he may think you wouldn’t be attracted to someone like him, he may be afraid he’ll turn you off if he shows an interest, he may think (or know) that someone else has his heart set on winning you, he may be nursing a broken heart, he may only have eyes for someone else, he may be oblivious to the whole concept of how a guy who wants a wife goes about actually getting one, he may have a vocation to the priesthood, or who knows what.

That may seem like quite a laundry list, but the point is that when asking yourself “why aren’t men pursuing me?” you have to understand that the first reply will be, “which man do you mean? They do not all have the same reason.”

I think I’d be primarily concerned with finding out what kinds of things that the kind of men you want to attract find attractive. That depends very much on what kind of person you actually are and what kind of man you are looking for.
 
EasterJoy said:
There is no single Helen of Troy way to look, act, or be that is going to make every eligible man want you. There just isn’t. If Old Scratch himself were offering contracts to the contrary, I wouldn’t believe him. Life does not work that way. You have to take some chances, and you have to get some sense of how to make good choices through the experience of making some wrong choices. Well, and look at the bright side! When you are looking for that one good man, the only thing worse than having no men pursuing you would be if far too many were doing so!

I think a thread like this helps because it lets you know the spectrum of common reasons behind common reactions.

OP, when a man isn’t pursuing you, he may not be attracted to you, he may think you wouldn’t be attracted to someone like him, he may be afraid he’ll turn you off if he shows an interest, he may think (or know) that someone else has his heart set on winning you, he may be nursing a broken heart, he may only have eyes for someone else, he may be oblivious to the whole concept of how a guy who wants a wife goes about actually getting one, he may have a vocation to the priesthood, or who knows what.

That may seem like quite a laundry list, but the point is that when asking yourself “why aren’t men pursuing me?” you have to understand that the first reply will be, “which man do you mean? They do not all have the same reason.”

I think I’d be primarily concerned with finding out what kinds of things that the kind of men you want to attract find attractive. That depends very much on what kind of person you actually are and what kind of man you are looking for.
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If I recall correctly from other threads and posts, the OP is married. She may simply be trying to start a public conversation on the topic for the benefit of the wider audience.
 
Xantippe said:
  1. online dating (a good profile will have lots of jumping off points for conversation).
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Personally, I think online dating may be making the problem worse instead of better. I wonder if we are spending too much time behind our keyboards and screens and not enough time in real life contact. There was even an article in the Chicago Tribune about how people are losing conversational skills due to being online so much:

chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/sc-fam-0512-conversation-101-20150515-story.html

If you cannot get past the cookies, please Google “Chicago Tribune beyond texting”.
 
Norseman82 said:
If I recall correctly from other threads and posts, the OP is married. She may simply be trying to start a public conversation on the topic for the benefit of the wider audience.
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She’s married? Well, let’s hope so, then!

Maybe she has a friend with difficulties in this area, and she doesn’t know what to say to her?
 
ZellieFan said:
Just trying to pick the brain of the male members. If you feel that you are called to the vocation of marriage and are around single, faithful, Catholic women through various activities, what stops you from pursuing one of them? As a woman, I can think of some reasons but I think my perspective is probably wrong (since I am not a man).

So men, tell me what prevents a man from pursuing a woman for a deeper friendship or courtship? Thanks! 😃
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Usually anxiety and not knowing what to say or how to proceed.
 
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