All relationships start somewhere. Before you met, you didn't have a relationship and regardless of the circumstances under which you met, it takes time to get to know each other.
This is true even in the case of, say, being a parent. One of my sons is slow to warm to people and spent his first 18 months of life acting like he wasn't sure he approved of me and then very suddenly did an about face one day.
When you first meet, there is a lot you don't know about each other and it always takes time to get to know someone well. This is true even if you spend a LOT of time with the person on an ongoing basis.
In theory, the only way to avoid similar scenarios 100 percent of the time in real life is to be extremely careful at all times about everything you say and do such that it is impossible for people to wildly misinterpret anything you say and do.
In practice, this seems to not actually work. It's a big wide world and there is vastly more room for crazy misunderstandings than rom-coms would lead one to believe.
Trying to avoid the kinds of often ridiculous scenarios that rom-coms involve helps you avoid the low hanging fruit varieties of misunderstandings upon which this genre seems based. This perhaps leaves you with only being subject to the truly byzantine stuff that cannot be readily resolved, which is perhaps not an improvement.
In my experience as a hetero passing female, a LOT of men will seemingly decide the minute they meet a woman if she is someone they are potentially sexually interested in or not. If the answer is NOT, a lot of men will proceed to behave in a way that practically guarantees it will remain platonic even if he changes his mind.
I've seen other women comment on this online. A common theme: If you are a plump woman, a lot of men will be rather obnoxious to you and then sometimes you lose weight and they suddenly and dramatically change their tune. The formerly plump woman is usually not interested in giving him the opportunity at that point.
During my divorce, I spent an excess of time trying to get past such a scenario in part because he was a self-proclaimed "desperate for a date loser" and he was likely ADHD. I have two special-needs kids, so I genuinely understand that some people are really just kind of clueless about some things and not being intentionally ugly.
This incident occurred before I developed my policy that I'm not your mommy. These days, if you need that kind of sympathy and support you might get it from me, but it's unlikely to lead to a sexual relationship.
I liked it that he was a "desperate for a date loser." He had been alone so long that not only was there no competition (or lingering recent drama) to worry about, I felt like no one could possibly assume that I had taken him from someone else or some such.
For various reasons, this seemed really important to me at the time. I felt like I would get a shiny new relationship with an obviously clean start and none of the drama that seemed to be the norm for my life.
But this specific relationship never went anywhere. Ultimately, one of my takeaways was that if you want an intimate relationship with someone, they have to give you time that was previously going to something else and in some sense it doesn't matter what that something else is.
As far as I know, my ex was never sexually unfaithful but he was devoted to his career and his various hobbies and on a good day I felt like I was maybe fourth on his list. So competing with someone's hobbies for attention isn't necessarily a better experience than competing with some other love interest for attention, a love interest who may have been halfway out the door when you two met but no one told you that because it wasn't your business at that point.
If you are too picky about wanting a supposedly clean start to a new relationship, you may miss out on potential romantic partners who may be legally separated but not shouting that to the world and you may also find yourself at risk of being victimized by someone who is good at playing the appearances game but actually is secretly still involved with someone in some fashion for some reason.
I'm not suggesting that you take an attitude of actively disrespecting social norms concerning monogamy and fidelity. But perhaps be somewhat conscious of the fact that things are not always as they appear and don't be too quick to believe that someone's public cover story is really the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
At the other end of the spectrum, if you meet someone who is openly on the record as, say, going through or facing a divorce, don't be too quick to think this person is available. One of the more bizarre incidents in my life is rooted in someone doing exactly that for what seemed to me to be absolutely no reason whatsoever.
At the time, I belonged to an online forum which I viewed as a circle of friends and as a means to further my career interests. I didn't initially tell people I was facing a divorce because it wasn't yet something I was admitting publicly when I joined, though the decision to divorce had already been made and some people were already hearing this privately.
My divorce was a very protracted affair because I have serious health issues and the ex and I have two special-needs kids together. We took things slowly to protect the interests of all impacted parties given that some of us were very vulnerable.
So at some point I did announce on this forum that I was getting divorced because it was in my mind a circle of friends. I talked about it in part to be emotionally supportive to a couple of friends who were also divorcing, so I could say "Yeah, I'm there with you. It sucks. I'm sympathetic."
One of these friends was a guy who somehow seems to have decided that me publicly announcing my divorce in order to be generally emotionally supportive to him and one other person constituted me "hitting on him" or announcing I was available or some nonsense. On top of those details, he lived 1700 miles away from me AND he wasn't anyone I found in the slightest attractive.
But at some point, he got burned by some gal who told him she would leave her live-in relationship for him and then she didn't. So at some point he sort of randomly attacked me and said I wasn't REALLY getting divorced etc. because my divorce was taking a long time.
So basically he was venting his spleen about her but doing so in my direction. It was crazy stuff because I absolutely wasn't making any promises to him or anyone else about leaving my husband by X date to get with them or some such.
I wasn't getting divorced to make myself available to other men, much less to HIM. I was getting divorced because my marriage didn't work.
Furthermore, there was no timeframe for when my divorce needed to be wrapped up. We were trying to do this right and that mattered far more to us than what date things happened by.
There are basically two ways a relationship that is ending can be wrapped up for the convenience of an outside third party with designs on one half of the couple:
In my opinion, only an idiot would WANT someone to simply shaft their current partner so they can hurry up and be next. So not my cup of tea, but, hey, you do you.
This is true even in the case of, say, being a parent. One of my sons is slow to warm to people and spent his first 18 months of life acting like he wasn't sure he approved of me and then very suddenly did an about face one day.
When you first meet, there is a lot you don't know about each other and it always takes time to get to know someone well. This is true even if you spend a LOT of time with the person on an ongoing basis.
Drop by drop the river growsThe drama or "funny" misunderstanding of many rom-coms is very frequently rooted in this fact. One of the two people destined to become a couple says or does something before it is a relationship that made perfect sense in that context at that time, but when more information is revealed later on, the other person feels lied to or otherwise jerked around.
-- Something a Pakistani said to me about this very topic
In theory, the only way to avoid similar scenarios 100 percent of the time in real life is to be extremely careful at all times about everything you say and do such that it is impossible for people to wildly misinterpret anything you say and do.
In practice, this seems to not actually work. It's a big wide world and there is vastly more room for crazy misunderstandings than rom-coms would lead one to believe.
Trying to avoid the kinds of often ridiculous scenarios that rom-coms involve helps you avoid the low hanging fruit varieties of misunderstandings upon which this genre seems based. This perhaps leaves you with only being subject to the truly byzantine stuff that cannot be readily resolved, which is perhaps not an improvement.
In my experience as a hetero passing female, a LOT of men will seemingly decide the minute they meet a woman if she is someone they are potentially sexually interested in or not. If the answer is NOT, a lot of men will proceed to behave in a way that practically guarantees it will remain platonic even if he changes his mind.
I've seen other women comment on this online. A common theme: If you are a plump woman, a lot of men will be rather obnoxious to you and then sometimes you lose weight and they suddenly and dramatically change their tune. The formerly plump woman is usually not interested in giving him the opportunity at that point.
During my divorce, I spent an excess of time trying to get past such a scenario in part because he was a self-proclaimed "desperate for a date loser" and he was likely ADHD. I have two special-needs kids, so I genuinely understand that some people are really just kind of clueless about some things and not being intentionally ugly.
This incident occurred before I developed my policy that I'm not your mommy. These days, if you need that kind of sympathy and support you might get it from me, but it's unlikely to lead to a sexual relationship.
I liked it that he was a "desperate for a date loser." He had been alone so long that not only was there no competition (or lingering recent drama) to worry about, I felt like no one could possibly assume that I had taken him from someone else or some such.
For various reasons, this seemed really important to me at the time. I felt like I would get a shiny new relationship with an obviously clean start and none of the drama that seemed to be the norm for my life.
But this specific relationship never went anywhere. Ultimately, one of my takeaways was that if you want an intimate relationship with someone, they have to give you time that was previously going to something else and in some sense it doesn't matter what that something else is.
As far as I know, my ex was never sexually unfaithful but he was devoted to his career and his various hobbies and on a good day I felt like I was maybe fourth on his list. So competing with someone's hobbies for attention isn't necessarily a better experience than competing with some other love interest for attention, a love interest who may have been halfway out the door when you two met but no one told you that because it wasn't your business at that point.
If you are too picky about wanting a supposedly clean start to a new relationship, you may miss out on potential romantic partners who may be legally separated but not shouting that to the world and you may also find yourself at risk of being victimized by someone who is good at playing the appearances game but actually is secretly still involved with someone in some fashion for some reason.
I'm not suggesting that you take an attitude of actively disrespecting social norms concerning monogamy and fidelity. But perhaps be somewhat conscious of the fact that things are not always as they appear and don't be too quick to believe that someone's public cover story is really the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
At the other end of the spectrum, if you meet someone who is openly on the record as, say, going through or facing a divorce, don't be too quick to think this person is available. One of the more bizarre incidents in my life is rooted in someone doing exactly that for what seemed to me to be absolutely no reason whatsoever.
At the time, I belonged to an online forum which I viewed as a circle of friends and as a means to further my career interests. I didn't initially tell people I was facing a divorce because it wasn't yet something I was admitting publicly when I joined, though the decision to divorce had already been made and some people were already hearing this privately.
My divorce was a very protracted affair because I have serious health issues and the ex and I have two special-needs kids together. We took things slowly to protect the interests of all impacted parties given that some of us were very vulnerable.
So at some point I did announce on this forum that I was getting divorced because it was in my mind a circle of friends. I talked about it in part to be emotionally supportive to a couple of friends who were also divorcing, so I could say "Yeah, I'm there with you. It sucks. I'm sympathetic."
One of these friends was a guy who somehow seems to have decided that me publicly announcing my divorce in order to be generally emotionally supportive to him and one other person constituted me "hitting on him" or announcing I was available or some nonsense. On top of those details, he lived 1700 miles away from me AND he wasn't anyone I found in the slightest attractive.
But at some point, he got burned by some gal who told him she would leave her live-in relationship for him and then she didn't. So at some point he sort of randomly attacked me and said I wasn't REALLY getting divorced etc. because my divorce was taking a long time.
So basically he was venting his spleen about her but doing so in my direction. It was crazy stuff because I absolutely wasn't making any promises to him or anyone else about leaving my husband by X date to get with them or some such.
I wasn't getting divorced to make myself available to other men, much less to HIM. I was getting divorced because my marriage didn't work.
Furthermore, there was no timeframe for when my divorce needed to be wrapped up. We were trying to do this right and that mattered far more to us than what date things happened by.
There are basically two ways a relationship that is ending can be wrapped up for the convenience of an outside third party with designs on one half of the couple:
- Bizarre, crazy "good luck"/wild coincidence.
- The person you want screws over their partner -- and possibly cuts their own throat in the process -- to meet your demands to hit some deadline.
In my opinion, only an idiot would WANT someone to simply shaft their current partner so they can hurry up and be next. So not my cup of tea, but, hey, you do you.