EVER WONDER IF SHE'S LEADING YOU ON?

Girls can be pretty confusing creatures to figure out. One minute, we're happy and laughing and you are thinking that everything is fine. But then minutes later, you notice we are no longer smiling and seem to be deep in thought, with a frown slowly forming on our faces. You can't figure out why on earth our mood changed when to you, nothing happened. But to us, there may be a perfectly good reason for our frown because something as small as a gesture you did might have reminded us of a time we were having a serious argument and you did that exact same gesture. Puzzling, isn’t it?

That’s an extreme example of how complex our emotions can be when it comes to guys and relationships. Girls tend to be hard for guys to read because we’re often thinking and feeling several things at once, and thus if you are trying to navigate your way into a relationship with a girl you really dig, it can be tough to tell if she’s digging you as well or if you’re in the friend zone (unless you’ve got yourself an outspoken, tell-it-like-it-is kind of girl. Then she’s probably already straight-up told you how she feels and there goes all the guesswork. But those girls are like unicorns; cherish them if you’ve got one!).

So what about the guys who are into the girls who aren’t exactly sure how they feel about you yet and therefore are sending mixed signals? You don’t want to waste your time trying to catch the uncatchable, but you don’t want to pass up the chance to be with this super cool chick you found, either. What are you supposed to do with that? Well, the answer is much simpler than you think. And it doesn’t involve waiting it out to see if all this “hanging out” is going to lead to the place you want it to go.

There are several very clear tell-tale signs that girls give off when they start hanging out with a guy a lot. For one, pay attention to how many other guys she is friends with. Are you just another “guy friend” that she enjoys spending time with, like all the others? You can determine that by judging the way she treats you versus the way she treats them.

If a girl is into you, she will most likely want to make plans with you first before seeing if anyone else is free that night. Through a little conversation, you can determine whether you were her first choice or whether her other friend maybe canceled on her. As a girl who used to have a lot of guy friends, I can tell you that if I was actually interested in one of them romantically, he would be the guy I would always text first and see what he is up to. If he wasn’t available, then I would skip the cute shoes and call one of my other guy friends.

Second, trying to judge if a girl likes you or not just by if she flirts with you can be very misleading, especially if she’s just naturally flirtatious. She might not even realize she is doing it, and you could totally read into it wrong. Also, if a girl is leading you on, she may just stay flirtatious to keep you around because she knows you like the attention and that’s just all bad. Instead, look deeper and pay attention to the types of conversations you often find yourself in with her. Does she always seem to keep it casual and not get too personal or vulnerable? Or does she talk about the future a lot, about her goals and ambitions, and open up about deep issues from her past? I know that when I put a guy in the friend zone, I wasn’t interested in delving into super deep topics; I wanted to keep it light and fun and pretty shallow. But if I was into a guy, I was super interested in sharing details about myself to get them to open up in turn because I was trying to see if this was someone who was on the same page with me enough to have a possible future together.

Lastly, and probably the most important and obvious one (but still overlooked by some guys who are just hopeless romantics): does she seem to be benefitting from your friendship more than you are? For example, I have had quite a few guy friends who were head over heels for a girl, and so they would buy her a lot of presents or pay for dinners all the time, but they weren’t getting anything even close to a kiss back in return. If a girl is just leading you on, she knows she’s got you when you start spending your money on her; but if her intentions are not to turn your friendship into a relationship, she isn’t going to put out. Ever. And that’s a telltale sign that she’s just along for the ride and doesn’t view you in a romantic light or just isn’t into you.

So if you find that your hang out sessions aren’t equal in terms of who is spending the money when you go out, or she hasn’t made a move on you or even hinted that she wants to kiss you, STOP. She’s leading you on, and you are wasting your time. Put her back in the friend zone and find a new chick who recognizes that you spending your money on her means you probably like her and she will either start paying her own way so she doesn’t take advantage of you or will start putting out which, 9 times out of 10, means she wants to be in a relationship with you (unless you’ve got yourself a girl who is always looking for a good time, if you know what I mean!).

In the end, no one wants to be led on by the other sex. Girls can be just as insecure when it comes to trying to figure out if that dude we really like is feeling the same way. The world would be a much simpler place if we all could just say what we feel when we feel it and then make decisions based on the straight forth knowledge we have gained. But unfortunately, in this day and age, there are girls out there who are strictly into leading guys on just for personal gain and it’s really sad when feelings get involved because ultimately, the guy will end up hurt. So hopefully I was able to shed a little light into the mind of a girl and the way she thinks when it comes to getting into a relationship to make it a little easier on you. Or, maybe I totally confused you more because I AM a girl and like I stated in the beginning, we are terribly confusing creatures by nature. If it’s the latter, I apologize, and I’ll treat you to dinner to make-up for it; but hey, don’t get any wrong ideas!