The other day, my parents asked me (22M) if there were any women that I find attractive (I guess because they’re paranoid about me being gay lol) and I told them yes, there’s a fair number of women that I’ve seen in public that I’ve found attractive.
They asked me, “Do you talk to any of them?” and I said “No??? It’s inappropriate to approach women in public unless you have business with them.”
I told them that it is only appropriate for a man to talk to a woman he doesn’t know when the social situation is explicitly designed for meeting strangers—dating apps, hobby groups, meeting friends of friends, etc. In my view, cold approaching women you don’t know just because you’re attracted to them is harassment.
My parents told me that I’m being ridiculous and making excuses because I’m nervous. They are adamant that I need to learn to approach women or else I will never find a partner. I told them that times have changed and this is disrespectful and potentially predatory behavior along the lines of unsolicited flirting and catcalling. Approaching women is a violation of their personal space and could make them feel very uncomfortable, especially if they feel like they don’t have an easy way out.
My parents are almost 60 and they are very conservative, so they don’t exactly follow progressive discourse, and I feel like they’re super out of touch on this as a result. Particularly, my mom tends to strike up conversations with other women in public, and she’s skeptical when I tell her that I can’t do the same thing because I’m a man and would be viewed as a potential predator.
But I also don’t get out much, which makes me second-guess how distorted my understanding of the social world is from reality. My parents are like a broken clock, and sometimes they DO have a point about something despite 90% of their opinions being insane. Maybe there is a more nuanced reality that I’m not picking up on.
So I wanted to ask here. Are my parents out of touch? Am I out of touch? Are we both wrong? I want to know your opinion.
Do you talk to men you don’t know in public? Small talk, or jokes at a bar? In the grocery store? Why wouldn’t you talk to women? I am a woman and have daughters and none of us is offended by this, nor even the hypersensitive one, not even the lesbian. It’s friendly talk.
It’s harassment if you don’t stop when you get a rejection. It’s harassment if you sidle up with some horrifying personal comment about her body, or grab her arm and make her listen. You aren’t going to do any of that. Small talk is not harassment, flirting is not harassment.
You are right in one way - it was bad that guys used to be able to say anything with absolute impunity, and women couldn’t stop them, I was around for the end of that. Those guys didn’t treat women like people, but in a way, neither are you, right? We are just people, talk to us like people.
I mean I generally don’t talk to strangers in public unless I have a specific reason to. Why would I talk to someone I don’t know in a supermarket? They’re just other people doing the same thing I am
"Woah, those apples look so good! Which ones are they? "
“I can never tell if a watermelon is ripe, can you?”
When I am buying something, often someone will say “have you tried that before? What is it like?”
Stuff like that. Small talk. We aren’t machines, we are social animals who interact with each other. I do think people are quick to discount the value of weak social interaction, shallow relationships, and focus on deep friendships and romantic ones, but those weak connections are so valuable too. They are like a glue for a community, connections that don’t demand much from you.
I’m far from extroverted and moderately socially awkward, but still my life is so much better when I look up and say hi to people.
Yeah have never had anyone say anything like that to me at the grocery store unless I’m shopping with them. If they did I’d probably just be vaguely annoyed. Maybe it’s s culture thing I don’t know
This ^ I was at the hospital today getting some lab work done. Another guy was sitting across from me, head down, in his hands, breathing heavily.
“Hey man, you OK? You don’t look so hot, can I get you some water or something?”
He was OK, 81 years old, he was just upset from being jacked around by the hospital administration. We had a good conversation. I think he was fine when I left.
This is probably the best advice you could give tbh. All the relationship stuff can’t be forced anyway but you can at least practice not freaking out and fumbling the bag around women. Not everything has layers of double meaning, romantic tension and secret motives. Sometimes you just wanna approach someone and tell them something because it’s fun to talk to strangers.
I don’t talk to anyone in public because I have historically considered it to be a violation of their right to be left alone. I believed that people stick together in groups of their friends or family, and those groups don’t want to interact with each other. Solo people are a group of one. If everyone follows those rules, there will be no unplanned or unwanted interactions with strangers. Given the current state of the world, the constant phone usage, and general social unrest, it made perfect sense to me that nobody would want to interact with anyone that they didn’t already trust. Based on the responses to that post, it seems like that mental model is flawed.
But this is why I assumed that the discourse around sexual harassment extended to approaching women at all. It was because I already believed that talking to strangers in general was an act of violating their space. So, I assumed that the discourse around guys being creeps was also talking about that. After all, I’d probably get nervous if someone randomly started talking to me, so of course it would make sense for other people to feel super uncomfortable from it, especially if you don’t know if the person talking to you is a predator.
This is an example of how wanting to do the right thing, combined with my limited social understanding, leads to weird and extreme takes.
This makes sense, if they modeled steamrolling people instead of gentle conversation I can understand you don’t have practice or guidance on conversation, and also it’s really normal to feel like you need to have alone space if your family didn’t give you enough of it.
But - unplanned and unwanted are two different things. Without that element of luck, randomness, our lives would be so dull. It’s nice when spontaneous conversation happens. It doesn’t have to go anywhere, doesn’t have to mean anything. I would say if you want to practice the non-confrontational small talk literally just look up from your phone when you are out and about and say hi to people, let them greet you too, see if you feel more comfortable over time.
I will note this is a sort of regional thing - Florida is sort of like ‘The South’ and kind of not, but in terms of people just striking up random conversations, we are like the South. It’s very much normal here. NYC is different people are in a hurry and brusque.