That doesn't mean what you think it means
I have for much of my life taken things literally. Only in my recent adulthood have I swallowed the bitter pill that life is, and always will be, a sea of subtext, plausible deniability, euphemism, and self-deception. Bitter not because life is this way, but because the damn system works fine in spite of—and maybe even better because of—all the misdirection.
In college, I thought that studying together just meant studying together. And I noticed that when people met up to "study together", they'd constantly get distracted and mess around and have conversations. So I figured I'd just study alone -- no distractions, much more effective. No, ya dumb idiot, the point is that you're hanging out, studying is the side effect.
But the list of things like this keeps growing!
- "How are you?" is not a genuine question, it means "I want to chat with you, let's start a conversation!". "Fine" is a bad response even though it's true, and "I ran into Kevin yesterday!" is a great response even though it ignores the question.
- "Going bouldering" is only slightly about the bouldering, it's really just hanging out and there's bouldering is happening too.
- Asking someone to come upstairs for coffee after a date has a very special meaning, regardless of your caffeine preferences.
At this point it starts to seem like the takeaway is: people are weird, we REALLY love intimacy yet are petrified of ever suggesting it so we hide behind increasingly comical pretenses.
And that is a pretty good takeaway. But what really sunk in for me is that this is a good and natural state of affairs, not something to be fixed "if only people would just be more direct!" Social dynamics are scary and hard, so it's actually great we have come up with all these fun ways to soften the stakes. Whether to hang-out or make-out, the asking feels vulnerable. But asking to study or grab coffee is justifiable! And if your intentions are not reciprocated, both parties are saved from awkwardness by the plausibly deniable decline. Maybe he just doesn't like coffee!
Flirting, of course, is the Olympic version of this sport. A sensual series of gentle jabs, provocative parries, romantic ripostes. Sleights and feints abound, and yet the fencing metaphor is wrong, because this game is cooperative; both people want the same thing.
Or... At least they're pretty sure they do? They're still trying to figure it out. And here I forfeit my quixotic dream of directness. There's more and less direct ways to flirt, but some level of indirection is by design. With stakes as high as the making or breaking of a heart, it's no wonder we've left escape hatches at every step of the Venusian climb.
Can't think of how to end this post. But would love to hear from you any things you later realized meant something very different than you thought!
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