Without taking any sort of position on the topic, what can be accepted as “it’s okay to hit on me right now”? I don’t disagree with your assertion btw. Determining collective social etiquette can be challenging, and I’m always interested in other perspectives to better approach other humans in general.

> I don’t disagree with your assertion btw, I’ve dated several coworkers years ago but have never been in a situation where me showing interest was indicated to be unwelcome

How close to the truth is this as a different take on your situation: "you slowly hit on them, and they wanted it, so they didn't report you to HR/make it a big deal"?

I would assume that if you indicate interest and the other person declines, you never bring it up again and you treat them no different than if you had never asked, that’s appropriate? I’d like to think that, at the topic’s core, it’s about empathy and respect for the other person and adults are still adults who can make decisions when there isn’t a power differential (peers, not in a reporting chain).

My question is genuine though and stands: when is it okay to communicate interest in someone? If the answer is never, it doesn’t really impact me, it just feels very telling with the times (third places evaporating, and most people spend most of their time outside the home at work). If there is a line, I’m curious where that line is, not to leverage it but to respect it.

“Don’t be a dick” but you’ve still gotta put yourself out there if you want optimize for luck and possibility. To handle rejection with grace is key.

> But many lovers meet at work, and it doesn’t necessarily end in scandal (conversely, it could lead to a fairy-tale ending, like the Obamas, who met at a Chicago law office while in their 20s). Data from 2017 shows that as many as one in 10 heterosexual couples in the US say that they met at work. Considering some data shows people in the US between the ages of 20 and 50 spend nearly four times as much time with colleagues than they do with friends, this seems all but bound to happen.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220228-the-inevitabil...

in college? where it's known that a ton of meet people/discover yourself sexually/experiment/hook up, a lot? i'm not sure how realistic that is

That’s the same perspective as all my college friends who’ve not found a partner to settle down with (~15y out).

If that's true, then the only way to let a woman know you're interested in her is after she has first told you. But that's a horrible way to make room for different personality types. Some women are assertive. Some are less so. Should the more reserved women just stay single?

Do the more reserved women want to stay single? Maybe they do!

And most people have introvert friends and extrovert friends. You meet safe and good people through friend circles and then they get you to meet the other person.

I've had multiple conversations with women who are somewhere between disappointed and despondent that guys don't hit on them more.

>I mentioned to several of the people I interviewed for this piece that I’d met my husband in an elevator, in 2001. (We worked on different floors of the same institution, and over the months that followed struck up many more conversations—in the elevator, in the break room, on the walk to the subway.) I was fascinated by the extent to which this prompted other women to sigh and say that they’d just love to meet someone that way. And yet quite a few of them suggested that if a random guy started talking to them in an elevator, they would be weirded out. “Creeper! Get away from me,” one woman imagined thinking. “Anytime we’re in silence, we look at our phones,” explained her friend, nodding. Another woman fantasized to me about what it would be like to have a man hit on her in a bookstore. (She’d be holding a copy of her favorite book. “What’s that book?” he’d say.) But then she seemed to snap out of her reverie, and changed the subject to Sex and the City reruns and how hopelessly dated they seem. “Miranda meets Steve at a bar,” she said, in a tone suggesting that the scenario might as well be out of a Jane Austen novel, for all the relevance it had to her life.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex...

I think the solution that leaves everyone happy is: start a conversation with that woman, but if she's not interested, leave her alone.

Look at it in utilitarian terms:

* If the woman you're talking to isn't interested, your attempt to start a conversation will create a brief unpleasant experience for her.

* If she is interested, there's a chance at a great, long-lasting romance which will benefit both you and her.

The positive utility from finding your future spouse is much larger than the negative utility from a brief unwanted conversation. So on expectation it often makes sense to start that conversation.

Don't you think it's pretty ignorant to pretend the only type of relationships happening between 18 -> 21 year olds throughout every college in America is exclusively "safe and good people met through friend circles" as opposed to two people just randomly in a class together where the guy typically just says "hey, what are you doing later? want to hang out/study together?"

Maybe they don't!

"[27/F] Why don't guys approach me? I even go out on my errands alone, or hang out at cafes alone (like, go out and eat while reading a book) just to put myself out there."[1]

(edit) removed link to avoid HN's flooding someone's Reddit post

> If that's true, then the only way to let a woman know you're interested in her is after she has first told you.

And that doesn't happen, so...

The real point seems to be to scare away men who can be scared away from ever attempting this.

Then only dominant/aggressive ones will do so. And they're seemingly the ones women want, so...