Nice Guys Need to Learn How to Untangle Mixed Signals

You’ve been on a couple of dates with a girl you really like. You thought everything was going great, and suddenly she seems to have lost interest. What’s going on? In the midst of your disappointment, you need to find out what went wrong, keeping in mind that this might not even be your fault (although it might).

Let’s take time to look at mixed signals and to figure out what they might mean. If she seemed to sincerely like you in the beginning and then lost interest, it’s most likely because she got bored, annoyed or overwhelmed.

Boredom and being annoyed are often triggered by the same things and can be closely related, although not always. If you’re constantly talking only about yourself and never asking about her, never letting her have any input on the date, or are rude and negative, she will get bored or annoyed or both.

If you’re smothering her with compliments and not giving her any room to breathe, she could get overwhelmed. Everyone, male and female likes compliments and likes attention. But too much of a good thing is still too much.

If you’re smothering her by clinging to her, fawning over her, calling her several times a day or worse, acting like she belongs to you, you’re asking for trouble, and she’s probably going to cut you loose.

It’s important to reach a balance between showing her that you like her (maybe a lot), and leaving her alone to miss you and to have a bit of breathing space. Don’t go overboard with attentiveness. If you sense this is happening, give her some breathing room.

It could also be possible that she misinterpreted your intentions in the beginning. In this case, you might have been sending mixed signals. Did she think that the two of you were developing a friendship, while you were hoping to develop a love relationship?

It’s possible that depending on how the two of you started out, she might have thought that you were just friends and that going to the baseball game together, or a movie was just something you were doing as buddies.

Then when you moved in for a goodnight kiss or tried to hold her hand, she might have suddenly realized that you wanted to be more than friends. If she wasn’t prepared for that, or isn’t interested in that, she might back off without offering an explanation (although she should).

The area of interpreting one’s intentions from the signals they give (or don’t) is a difficult one. However, if you’re closely paying attention to what you’re doing and the signals that you’re sending, you stand a much better chance of not mis-communicating or misunderstanding what’s going on.

It is certainly possible that after you’ve gone out a few times, she might just decide that she’s not interested. It would be great if she just told you that, but sometimes that doesn’t happen.

If you find yourself in this situation, take time to consider how you were handling the dating relationship and try to put yourself in her shoes. It may shed some light on her mixed signals.

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Dr. Molly Goodman is founder of the Goodman Institute For Better Sex.
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