When Women Say “No, Thank You” to Our Offer of a Date
Men must learn to see the lifetime of inflection points that inform women’s choices about our demand for intimacy
This article is paired with a second article titled: We’re All Incels on This Bus
Recently, a woman friend told me about being asked out on a date. It is a story from more than twenty years ago. She was sharing it as part of a larger conversation we were having about relationships. It’s not a dramatic story. It isn’t a story that was difficult to tell. Which makes it all the more instructive because it is so innocuous.
Twenty years ago, a man she didn’t know well asked my friend out. “Would you like to go out to dinner?” he said to her. They were in the process of closing up at the end of the day at a conference where they and others had been working together. My friend said, “Thank you, but no.”
The man then came back the next day in the course of their interactions and said, “Are you sure? I’m only asking for you to go to dinner.” The implication being, “Just take a little time to get to know me. If it’s not right for you, no big deal.”
She again said, “No, thank you.”
