Ambiguity In Dating Is Itself Signaling

on flowers

When I did my dating workshop thing, we had a Q&A session with the models there. Chatting about dating, mostly. One of the guys— a very well-spoken finance bro— occupied like twenty minutes of the Q&A with this conversation:

Finance Bro (FB): “Yeah so I keep getting in this pattern where I start a thing with a girl, it’s great for a couple months, then she wants it to get serious and I have to break it off. It’s like clockwork, it sucks.”

Model: “Huh. Does she know from the get-go you don’t want anything serious with her?”

FB: “I mean, when I just start seeing someone I don’t always know yet, you know? It takes time to figure out if someone is The One.”

Model: “Obviously yes, nobody expects you to know for sure on date one. That’s fine. But when you know it’s not her, what do you do?”

FB: “Look, clearly I don’t just tell her a bunch of stuff I don’t mean. I’m not a monster, I’m not trying to deceive anyone.”

Model: “So when you figure out that she’s not it, you tell her. Right?”

FB: “I mean, I try to be honest about where I’m at.”

Model: “I don’t understand what that means.”

FB: “Well, I mean, I don't want to like— if I'm not sure yet, I don't want to prematurely shut something down that might actually be good."

Model: “Okay but we’re not talking about when you’re not sure. We’re talking about when you know. Like when you’ve decided, in your head, that this isn’t going anywhere long-term. Do you tell her then?”

FB: “I mean, I’m not going to lie to her if she asks.”

Model: “But she has to ask first.”

FB: “Oh come on, what do you want me to do? Give a disclosure speech on date three? ‘Hey just so you know I find you attractive but I’m not sure you’re the mother of my children?’ That’s insane.”

Model: “No, we want you to say something when you figure out the answer is no. On whatever date it becomes clear to you.”

FB: “I guess… like, yeah, I could do that, and it’s probably the right thing in some sense. But it also means I’d be spending a lot of time alone, so I’m trying to figure out some way of dating where I don’t just scare girls off by declaring my lack of interest in a serious thing while also not being dishonest.”

Model: “That’s literally impossible. You’re attempting to ‘avoid dishonesty’ while still maintaining a relationship that would fall apart if the woman understood what you were actually thinking. You see why that’s impossible, right?”

FB: “Well, okay, that’s one way of characterizing that. But when you think about it…”

[snipping out like fifteen minutes of increasingly-tense back-and-forth]

Model: “OH MY GOD. YOU ARE BEING SHITTY AND DISHONEST AND NO AMOUNT OF QUESTIONING US WILL ALLOW YOU TO KNOWINGLY SLEEP WITH WOMEN WHO YOU KNOW WANT COMMITTMENT, WHILE HAVING NO INTENTION OF PROVIDING IT, AND STILL BE ETHICAL. I AM GETTING PISSED OFF. WE ARE CHANGING TOPICS NOW.”

(I messaged him after the workshop to suggest that he look into hiring a high-class escort as the actually ethical solution to his problem. I don’t think that he took my advice; alas.)

Ambiguity Is Environmentally Unavoidable On The Apps

Situationships suck. Also, dating apps structurally encourage situationships.

This arises organically because men can’t signal unambiguously between the following for any given woman on a dating site:

1. I am interested in you for a short-term thing only.

2. I am interested in you for a relationship (because I think we are extra-compatible)

3. I am interested in you for a relationship (because I’m desperate oh please God someone like me back)

Think about it. Long first messages/using “roses” or whatever godforsaken metacurrency are ambiguous between (2) and (3) and frankly roses don’t even rule out (1) reliably. Likes and short messages could be any of those three since it’s low-investment, but also short messages are the known-good Dating App Meta Strategy for first messages from men, which means there’s no real signal value there.

So men who do want to signal genuine interest in a specific woman can’t; and most women who get messages will necessarily be getting them mostly from men that are interested in not-a-long-term-thing because that’s just a much weaker filter.

I quite liked this essay which discussed this dynamic:

women's feedback loops for determining their attractiveness are broken

Also, women can very easily read the Hinge profile badge saying “I’m interested in a long-term relationship” as being a concrete signal of what that man wants from her specifically but it’s not and really, it can’t be, because “interested in a long-term relationship” never made sense to have on a profile: what he’s “interested in” is almost certainly dependent on the woman in question.

(It’s also generally-understood among men that “long-term only” is the likes-maximizing answer one can give to that question, which finishes eliminating what precious little signaling value the badge may have had in the first place. See, this is why we can’t have nice things.)

Which means by default a first date off the apps will feature a man who’s not necessarily that interested in the woman. Which isn’t going to be apparent because the first date behavior of a man who’s interested and a man who isn’t will be basically identical.

Ambiguity After A Small Number Of Dates Is An Honest Signal Of Disinterest

Men are neither monsters nor saints. I think our finance bro above was perhaps at the 25-percentile of honesty, making him basically mediocre ethics-wise. He’s unwilling to explicitly lie about specific things to the girls he’s dating (no promises of eternal fidelity), and he’s a little uncomfortable leading her on but not quite enough to where he doesn’t do it.

Also, I note a man doesn’t have to be a shitbird to lead someone on: he just has to be a little bit people-pleasy and conflict-avoidant and prone to wishful thinking. It would be so convenient if he started to feel differently tomorrow, wouldn’t it? Maybe it’ll happen! Who knows!

I know a girl who keeps getting into relationships with guys that keep pumping the brakes on commitment-shaped things. “oh i don’t wanna say we’re dating”, “I don’t want to move in together yet,” “maybe later when my life is less crazy we can start making this a thing.” She takes them at their word, and I think this is to her detriment. That’s what this failure mode looks like, in practice: long strings of guys who never said no but, equally, never quite said yes.

Which means the signal inverts. It’s not that women should be looking for a specific signal that a given man isn’t interested in a relationship— it’s that if a woman doesn’t notice actively positive signals about same then this probably indicates the man is fundamentally not interested in a long-term relationship.

You might stay or not stay given this (I’m not your mom), just as long as you’re making this call while understanding the information being conveyed.

Honest Signaling Of Interest Looks Like Romance

I touched on some discourse a few days ago which was discussing the plight of men who keep getting hassled to give their girlfriends flowers.

The argument on the anti-flowers side is that flowers are kind of an arbitrary symbol; the preference to get them is neither more nor less arbitrary than the preference for highly specific sex acts.

I think that’s basically half-true. The symbol of “flowers” is arbitrary but the thing being symbolized is very, very real, which is: willingness to explicitly validate the importance of the romantic relationship for the other person. As a man it actually feels, on a gut level, quite dishonest to do lots of romance-coded things if you’re not feeling super into the relationship, and I think this— not really the expense or annoyance of physically getting flowers— is the reason why unsolicited flowers are an honest signal of commitment.

Another version of this is either unsolicited relationship escalation (“hey, wanna be boyfriend-girlfriend?”) or unhesitating agreement to relationship escalation or asking if you want to get married or move in or bringing you lunch at work. Any of these work! Because they’re costly signaling. Come on, haven’t you read your Robin Hanson?

But you can’t demand the flowers (or similar), because if you demand the flowers and he complies then you have merely had him demonstrate that he is willing to go through small amounts of trouble to avoid a fight and not have you feel bad. You’ve wiped out the signal you wanted, and the signal was the only thing valuable about the flowers in the first place.

And now, in traditional rationalist fashion, I’ve written 1600 words of theory and example to get us back to the blindingly-obvious common knowledge that everyone else basically knew already, namely:

Flowers don’t count if they’re asked for.

See also: