You\u2019re pretty sure this girl is into you. You talk relatively frequently, you\u2019ve hung out a bunch of times, and she seems excited and present when you\u2019re together. But then, when you\u2019re apart, you have to do all the work. She doesn\u2019t text you. She doesn\u2019t schedule a date. She doesn\u2019t ask how YOUR day is.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s 2016!\u201d you say. \u201cSHE could reach out to ME, you know!\u201d<\/p>\n
Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh. As if it were that easy. As if all she didn\u2019t want to DO right now was text you and move this relationship along. Trust me, she\u2019s sitting in her apartment agonizing with her roommates over why YOU aren\u2019t texting HER either and wishing with every fiber in her being that she could.<\/p>\n
Yes, she could reach out to you. She is just as capable as you are of making the first move. But there\u2019s a huge reason she\u2019s not. There\u2019s a huge reason any woman who you\u2019re involved with, at least in the beginning stages, isn\u2019t texting you first or is being unpredictable and mind-gamey and vague about how she feels about you. It\u2019s super frustrating, especially if you know she\u2019s into it.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll be happy to know her behavior has little to do with how she actually feels about you. It has to do with what she feels like she has to do.<\/p>\n
Let me explain. Every woman you know has watched \u201cHe\u2019s Just Not That Into You,\u201d the rom-com that essentially taught us that when it comes to love, you men are very simple: either you are obsessed with us or you DGAF about us. You guys are very black and white.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s sort of because you have to be.<\/p>\n
To put it in the simplest terms on earth that I will expand upon in a second, you are the pursuers, and we are the ones you pursue. It goes unsaid that you are in control of any romantic interaction. Because of this dynamic, you have permission \u2014 and are in fact encouraged \u2014 to behave in that simple, black-and-white way. If you didn\u2019t, how would we know you\u2019re pursuing us? How would any romantic interactions happen if the person who\u2019s supposed to make them happen isn\u2019t making them happen?<\/p>\n
What sucks about being a woman is that we don\u2019t have the luxury to behave in that way. We\u2019re expected to sit idly by and wait for YOU GUYS to make things happen. Regardless of how much I want to, I\u2019m not \u201callowed\u201d to express my feelings in a way that will make things happen. Yes, still, even in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course you\u2019re allowed to make things happen! My life would be so much easier if women made things happen!\u201d you say as you take a swig of your Miller Lite and sit down at the bar with your bros who are nodding aggressively in agreement.<\/p>\n
OK, yeah, sure. Technically, like I said before, we are indeed capable of making things happen. But we women live in a world in which our worth is based on how desirable we are to men, which affects our willingness to make things happen.<\/p>\n
Have you ever wondered why there are so many hot, semi-nude women on television and movies and advertisements and hardly any hot, semi-nude men? That\u2019s because pop culture operates under the assumption that the only media that needs to be created is the kind that satisfies heterosexual men (aka you!). The entire world is inundated with visuals of sexy naked women because presidents of media companies believe that only straight dudes watch Netflix and look at ads on the subway.<\/p>\n
All of this f*cks with this dynamic between men and women. It has created a culture in which women are the desired and men are the ones who get to do the desiring, not the other way around. Think about it for a second. NOBODY wants to see sexy naked men as much as they want to see sexy naked women. Even straight girls who really do love the D get freaked out by dick pics. And that\u2019s because men are supposed to be subjects that desire and women are supposed to be the objects to be desired. The other way just feels\u2026wrong.<\/p>\n
So once women catch onto this subject-and-object-of-desire dynamic, either consciously or unconsciously, we ask ourselves, \u201cWait a second. How much are dudes desiring ME?\u201d And then this question, whether we want it to or not, becomes an important metric that we use to gauge our value as a woman in society.<\/p>\n
Yep. This is sexism, you guys. It\u2019s sad, right? It\u2019s very sad and very f*cked up. We attain our confidence and self-worth not from ourselves, but from whether or not you guys want to have sex with us.<\/p>\n
But this is why we won\u2019t make the first move. Because if we pursue you before YOU get the chance to pursue US, it removes you of the opportunity to desire us. It removes you of the opportunity to be that subject that desires and it removes us of the opportunity to be that object that is desired. And we need you to desire us to give us worth.<\/p>\n
This is also why your crush is playing mind games and making it challenging for you when you pursue her. She\u2019s complicating your life with bullsh*t because she has to keep you desiring. She\u2019s making you jump through hurdles to make sure that she\u2019s desirable enough for you to overcome them. She\u2019s not necessarily doing these things purposely or consciously, either. They\u2019re just one of the many millions of things women have to do to ensure that YOU DESIRE US.<\/p>\n
Personally, in spite of what literally everyone tells me to do, I don\u2019t really make it challenging when guys pursue me. If you want me and I want you back just as badly, you\u2019re probably going to get me. I don\u2019t fear feelings or letting dudes know that I\u2019m into them. Like, that dating app Bumble, in which only girls can message guys first, is my jam.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019m also single. I\u2019ve freaked guys out with this behavior. And that\u2019s because I don\u2019t have actual permission to make things happen like you do. At least, not without feeling like I\u2019m compromising my value as a woman.<\/p>\n
The good news is things are changing. Feminists were like \u201cWTF, no\u201d and are working on changing the way women are depicted in the media and in the world, and it\u2019s working: My once-shy girlfriends are slowly coming around to being more obvious with guys about their emotions, and dudes are slowly coming around to the idea that a woman who says what\u2019s on her mind is attractive. Also, Bumble is a thing! The more these things happen, the more OK women will be with telling you how they feel about you.<\/p>\n
So, this is why your crush is taking forever to respond to your text or not being super attentive. Have some patience, and just know that she\u2019s not ignoring you because she wants to. It\u2019s because she has to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You\u2019re pretty sure this girl is into you. You talk relatively frequently, you\u2019ve hung out a bunch of times, and she seems excited and present<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16065,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16063\/revisions\/16065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}