Surviving your 20’s and 30’s in any city is bound to be an experience.
Surviving these as a girl in Los Angeles definitely alters that experience. Men (from boys to Senior Citizens) all seem to consider us fair game regardless of whether we are single or not.
Some of them come up to us bearing gifts such as the moon, the stars, bright lights, clever one liners (well clever in their own heads), or sometimes just a PBR. In attempts to get our attention, some of them bump into us, then apologize profusely and then try to engage is in a conversation (sometimes that can go completely wrong …careful if you bump into us while we’re holding a glass of red wine and that’s white we’re wearing, Mr.). Others ask a question they obviously know the answer to (i.e. what’s the name of this band? Really? Hmmm… I’m pretty sure that drummer is your brother/roommate/etc.). Then there are those that resort to insulting us to engage us in a round of witty back and forths.
Actually, we girls do know how hard it is to walk up to strangers, and even more so a stranger that you might be interested in and put yourself in the line of fire.
So on that note…
Purple hearts all around! Followed by thunderous applause. Take a bow. You deserve it. No really, don’t be shy now. You went to all of this trouble to get our attention. Feel free to bask in this moment of acknowledgement.
Congratulations, you’ve successfully captured our attention.
Unfortunately, you’ve also got the attention of the guy we’re there with. Oh wait; you didn’t notice that guy (who may either be taking everything in with either an amused/angry/frightened look on his face), did you? Or maybe you did notice him and chose to ignore him, proceeding to revert to caveman style tactics attempting to claim us as one of your possessions.
Most girls have been put in this uncomfortable situation at least once in their lives. This exact scenario has been documented in various films, most recently “500 (Days of Summer”). Where Zooey Deschanel’s and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s characters go through this.
If the guy hitting on us is belligerent, cocky, or intoxicated, persistent (or all of the above) then the situation quickly escalates from being just an annoying disturbance to a complete lose-lose situation for the guy we are with.
I just recently had this discussion with a guy last weekend. If the guy we are there with stays out of it, only intermittently uttering stuff like “Leave her alone” /“that’s enough”/ “She’s with me,” etc. then we think of him as a spineless coward who may not be very into us.
Okay, okay so your whole thing is “I’m a lover not a fighter,” we can appreciate that, but sometimes we just need you to fight. We don’t really want you to, but we kind of need you to. Or at least pretend you would.
The other losing side of the coin is if you do not only threaten to beat the guy, that is trying to convince us to go home with him and ditch you, to a pulp but, proceed to do so and in the process end up getting us kicked out of wherever we were.
Unless we specifically said, “Please beat the sh– out of that guy,” all that getting into a fight is going to get you is some or all of the following: a neck ache on top of your other battle wounds from sleeping on the couch, the silent treatment, or a series of chastising statements consisting of a bunch of expletives sandwiched in between other not so endearing terms like imbecile, Neanderthal, ridiculous, insensitive, or jerk.
We’re sorry, but I’m giving you fair warning as I explained to that guy that made me want to write this, there is just no winning in this situation. Deep down we might be flattered, but we (most girls), don’t really like the big scenes that situations like this deliver and really don’t want to encourage this behavior.
From personal experience, I will say there is actually one unfair exception to this rule (unfair to any guy we are actually in a relationship with). If a guy friend (completely platonic guy friend) gets into a similar situation and gets into a fight trying to rescue us, he actually turns into a hero. We may be a little put off or irked by the situation, but it’s something you can laugh about later as you’re re-telling the story of how great your friend was in the situation.
Why this different outcome to the same situation? Well, it’s because this guy friend had no vested interest (other than he’s your friend), and he wasn’t really required to do anything at all.
See? I told you it’s not fair.
Believe me, I have overprotective guy friends who have done this on my behalf many a time.
Now, who knows? This may only apply to my girl friends and I.
However, after hearing guys griping about this and wondering what they’re supposed to do when confronted with this type of situation, all I can say is be aware that you probably will not win regardless of what you do (and we girls do know how much you love winning). However, rest assured if you do end up put in this predicament we’ll probably get over it at some point.
