Oblivious To Love / Real Life

• If you don't think that it's possible for this to happen in real life, keep in mind that the single most common questions on Reddit's /r/AskReddit are all to do with this trope:
  • What's your best 'they didn't get the hint' story?
  • Did you ever miss obvious hints that someone was into you?
  • Female Redditors what hints have you dropped that guys surprisingly did not pick up on?
  • Male Redditors: what are some hints females gave you, but you didn't get them until it was too late?
  • Female Redditors: what hints have you given that flew right over a guys head?
  • Male Redditors: What hints have girls given you that flew over your head and you now deeply regret? What's your worst "Oh, she wasn't actually inviting me over for coffee at 2 am" moment?
  • Female Redditors: Due to the popularity of the "Male Redditors: What hints flew over your head…" Thread. What are hints that you think are obvious that Men sometimes don't respond to?
  • Any time a girl mistakes me for a socially competent man and starts flirting
  • What are some hints girls usually give guys that they like them but we probably miss?
  • Girls of Reddit, what signs should a guy pick up on that you like them?
  • [Serious]What was the biggest hint you missed from someone who was attracted to you?
  • Guys of Reddit, what's the biggest hint you missed from a girl? : AskReddit
  • Guys of Reddit, what's the most obvious 'hint' from a girl you've missed?
  • Have you ever been oblivious to the fact that a girl was into you? What happened?
  • Ladies, what is the most obvious hint you've dropped that went unnoticed by a guy?
  • Men of Reddit: What signals from a girl were you oblivious to at the time but now haunts you?
  • Men of Reddit; what's the most obvious way a woman has flirted with you that you only realized in retrospect?
  • Guys of Reddit who are oblivious to flirting and approaches by women, what's your story?
• Very, very often the painful reason All Love Is Unrequited.
• A common weakness of the Rational personality type (INTJ/ENTJ/INTP/ENTP) due of Fi (for the former two) and Fe (for the latter two) being on the lower stack. Being the logical type, it's little surprise they tend to have some difficulty wrapping their heads around something as illogical as love which causes clashes against feeling-users like the xNFx and xSFx, with certain courtships like "Playing Hard to Get" flying right over their heads, and would not recognize, let along utilize emotional and social cues if their feeling functions aren't that well-developed. Even the xSTP and xSTJ, who are also logical types, can recognize love much easier than the Rationals due to sensory vs intuitive clash. The best way to get one's feelings across the Rational types is to be blunt with their intentions.
• Naturally, this is extremely common to those with Social Anxiety or Avoidant Personality Disorder, where the desire to avoid rejection keeps them from noticing hints of attraction. At best they might notice but are very likely to dismiss it as the other person simply "trying to be nice" because they're afraid of reading too much into it and risking humiliation.
• Stephen Marks is the creator of French Connection UK and met a designer named Nicole Farhi. According to Today I Found Out, he apparently missed her hints until she booked them a hotel room together for a business trip...then came out of the bathroom mostly naked. Ironically, Farhi is French, but Marks had failed to make the connection.
• Aromantic people can be oblivious to flirting, since they don't experience romantic attraction and may not desire a romantic relationship either.
• Within the LGBT+ community, the phenomenon of what is affectionately referred to as the "useless lesbian" is known and often poked fun at. For whatever reason, it's a surprisingly common issue that sapphic women will end up in seemingly-clearly romantic scenarios with each other, sometimes repeatedly...and still leave wondering if the other party likes them as more than a friend, with neither actually spitting out her feelings. While often exaggerated for comedic effect, many lesbians will speak to similar experiences.
• High-functioning autistic people can actually have this problem due to literal-mindedness and an inability to read facial expressions. Alexithymia is characterized by an impaired ability to be aware of, explicitly identify, and describe one's feelings, it is often found in Autistics.

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