Something that happened this morning had me thinking about women who tease. There is a lot of fiction on the subject just as there is a lot of fiction about self-sacrificing chivalric knights.
Taking them in reverse order, the dark truth about the knight of the Provençal tradition is that women hate him. And the truth about teasing—not just sexual teasing—is that, outside of fiction, when a woman does it, she always means to say no. If you try to initiate something playful with a woman and she gives you a teasing answer—that is to say, enough to let you know that she knows what you are angling for without actually delivering even a partial thrill—what she is really doing is brushing you off.
The brutal truth is that she feels about you the way you do about panhandlers. If you live in the city, you know that feeling. The panhandler doesn't even need to open his mouth; you know what he wants and you'd rather just avoid it; he makes eye contact and you're already figuring out how to say no without being too brutal about it. She feels the same way about you; this is equally true whether "you" are just some guy who wants nothing more than to make her smile or the man who will always love her.
It's the fear of that that brutality that keeps you both lying to one another and to yourselves. Even if, after much "teasing" she gives you something, the something you get is almost worthless because you know that she didn't want it. She just wants peace the way you just want to be able to go back to walking down the sidewalk with this panhandler behind you. You don't really care about the panhandler you give money to than you do about the ones you refuse; in both cases, the motive is to get past this moment.
A woman who is really interested in you will entice you, which is a very different experience from being teased.
Taking them in reverse order, the dark truth about the knight of the Provençal tradition is that women hate him. And the truth about teasing—not just sexual teasing—is that, outside of fiction, when a woman does it, she always means to say no. If you try to initiate something playful with a woman and she gives you a teasing answer—that is to say, enough to let you know that she knows what you are angling for without actually delivering even a partial thrill—what she is really doing is brushing you off.
The brutal truth is that she feels about you the way you do about panhandlers. If you live in the city, you know that feeling. The panhandler doesn't even need to open his mouth; you know what he wants and you'd rather just avoid it; he makes eye contact and you're already figuring out how to say no without being too brutal about it. She feels the same way about you; this is equally true whether "you" are just some guy who wants nothing more than to make her smile or the man who will always love her.
It's the fear of that that brutality that keeps you both lying to one another and to yourselves. Even if, after much "teasing" she gives you something, the something you get is almost worthless because you know that she didn't want it. She just wants peace the way you just want to be able to go back to walking down the sidewalk with this panhandler behind you. You don't really care about the panhandler you give money to than you do about the ones you refuse; in both cases, the motive is to get past this moment.
A woman who is really interested in you will entice you, which is a very different experience from being teased.
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